Wife Tending Stove???

how many of you guys have wife that can and will tend a handfired when you are unavailable??? im asking because ive been working with my wife and she has got it down. she called me today when she thought she may have shook all the fire out and we went over the recovery steps over the phone, let's say I came home to a 92 degree house. woohooo. boy this really takes a load off my mind during the day.

I have just such a wife.
I have to deal with her different terms like "thingys" and "flappers" but she can keep a fire going.
Don't think she would deal with starting a fire from scratch or advanced dieing fire saving but I think I'll keep her anyways.

HEY YOU GUYS - It's role reversal here....I'm the stove tender (wife) and I have to talk to my HUSBAND over the phone about stove recovery techniques if he gets home before me and finds an issue. Of course now that we sold our Majestic (pictured below) which was not air tight by any means and now have a new Harman TLC2000 there haven't been any recovery calls needed so even HE can manage the fire now. LOL. I still love the old Majestic but was worried about it glowing red all the time.

Lory
ParkerFord, PA

You can't strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.

Larry E. wrote:HEY YOU GUYS - It's role reversal here....I'm the stove tender (wife) and I have to talk to my HUSBAND over the phone about stove recovery techniques if he gets home before me and finds an issue.

I think the coalman will back me up on this, but I read somewhere that in the old days (coal's heyday), the wife was the one who knew how to tend the fire. When the husbands were home on the weekends, they would fool around with it and screw everything up. Then the wife would have more work straightening out the mess he made of it.

My wife generally is in charge of the wood stove. I tend the coal burner. She will work at it if I'm gone for a long time, though. She is still kind of stuck on treating it like a wood stove. She did well today, the stove was still burning when I got home and she had shoveled more coal into the scuttle, but the bed was only about 2 inches deep. I have to remind her that it's not like a wood stove, you don't control the burn by how much fuel you place in the stove.

Mine is over her fear of adding coal if I'm not here, but still refuses to empty the ash.
Since she gets up and hour before me I'm happy that she'll open the air a turn so it's nice and toasty when I come down.

Steve

coaledsweat wrote:I think the coalman will back me up on this, but I read somewhere that in the old days (coal's heyday), the wife was the one who knew how to tend the fire.

Yes, I'm sure my Grandmother could probably show even the "experts" here a thing or two about using a hand fired stove.

Larry E. wrote:HEY YOU GUYS - It's role reversal here....I'm the stove tender (wife) and I have to talk to my HUSBAND over the phone about stove recovery techniques if he gets home before me and finds an issue.

Maybe he's just playing dumb, My Uncle only ever had to cut the grass once at his house, he married late in life. His wife was particular about the lawn so the day she asked him to cut the grass he went out and left clumps all over the place.

Mine tends the stove all the time. I keep the coal in buckets ready to go and can go away for a week at a time with no issues. She can now start a fire from scratch in about 10 minutes and have a full stove going in no time. But, we have been burning coal for about 22 years now. If I could only get her to cook on a coal stove then I could get rid of the propane completely.

My Wife is next to useless!

If it were not for my 3 year old son making sure it's done right, she could not fill the hopper and change the ash pan. Leaves the hopper lid half off the hopper. Spill's ashes all over the place.

Lousy cook, too lazy to clean...All she's good for is child care.

BK

I've coaxed my wife into shoveling fresh coal, collecting and bagging ash and she's an expert at lighting a coal fire as well as tending it. But I have come home to a floor full of nut coal when she missed the firebox from 3'.
I tell she has to lay off of the beer & drink more :pepsi:

this is a pretty funny thread cause in the old days when we burned wood in our handfed boiler, we kidded my wife and called her a pioneer women because she was home and allways kept the boiler fed, then she started working when the kids got older so when we got home the house was cold and would have to start fire and let it come up too temp, then couldnt get wood one year becaude of snow so I got the coal grates that had come with boiler and found supplier of coal.. she did a great job of starting fire and keeping it going&the house warm, then this year invested in autofeed stoker boiler....now I am a girly man, My wife hasnt touched the boiler, a bag of coal, or really wanted to come down into the basement.....but the house is always 70-72 degrees, we went away for three days so far and it was warm when we got home.... and havent had to start fire but the once back before thanksgiving . what a life.....
Isnt modern technology great
Ted

Mine can do the shake, clean, add coal routine never had to do it from scratch. Actually the first time she did it I talked her thru it over the phone (I got stuck at work with a crashed server).

Coal is also less work for me since I don't have to keep up with her wood stove feeding habits. Jeeze, its' a wood stove not a WW2 howitzer!

25yrs. ago when I was married, we fired a hand fired coal furnace with soft coal. she was home all day while I worked, she could fire the furnace as good if not better than i. she wouldn't take the ashes out though, to dirty. my daughter works and fires a Hyfire1 manually all week long. she doesn't want a coal-trol, she says that takes the fun out of it.
when my son-in-law gets home for the weekend, she tells him to let the stove alone because he tries to adjust it to much.

I wish!! My wife is totaly unmechanical (as is her entire family) so in over 25 years she has never even opened the door to the stove. The deal we have is I tend the stove & she sits quietly in the den & enjoys the heat.