The Never Ending Bukhari Saga
Monday, November 13th 2006 - 7:25 AM
Two weeks ago, Safi installed the bukharis. "Bukhari" is the Dari word for "stove". The lounge room and all the bedrooms would have a bukhari in them for the winter. It's just as well, really, as it's starting to get cold now. The days have been fairly warm still, and it's been sunny most of the time - apart from last Friday and Saturday, which were miserable - but it's getting quite chilly in the mornings and evenings.
Of course, i'm still getting around at home in shorts and bare feet - which probably won't surprise anyone who knows me. But it's definitely time to think about heating.
Installing the bukharis wasn't a simple matter though. Every room's got a hole in one of the walls, up near the ceiling, which connects to the chimney on the roof. From the stove to this wall, you use a section of tin stovepipe. But, even though it happens every winter, and the same bukharis and pipes are used each time, getting the chimneys to fit properly seems to be impossible.
The one in my room clearly wasn't going to work without smoking, and Gavin's one was the same. Beth's seemed ok, but the one in the lounge room smoked like crazy when it was lit. I don't think anyone else's was lit during the next few days though.
In the morning, before i went to work, i asked Safi to install mine last - as we would have to move the wardrobe that was in my bedroom, to make room for it. I intended to take it out of my room completely, as it wouldn't fit anywhere other than where it was - right in front of the chimney hole. I was happy about this, as i'd been thinking about getting rid of it for a few weeks - it was big and ugly and it spoilt the balance of the room. I was prepared to put up with a bit less cupboard space to not have to live with the thing.
So i came home from work in the middle of the afternoon, and me and Safi dragged the thing out into the hallway, outside my door. That evening, i took all my stuff out of it and put it into the built-in cupboards in my room - rearranging everything else so i could fit them in there. I offered Beth the wardrobe, as her room's really big and she's got plenty of space for it - and no other cupboard space. I considered swapping it for one of the two sets of shelves she's got in there, but the dust here makes storing things on open shelves a pain in the arse.
There are three types of bukhari in this house - wood, diesel, and kero (that's "paraffin" for you pommies). I was pleased to find that Safi had installed a wood fired one in my room. Gavin reckoned that the wood ones were possibly worse than the diesel ones, but i like wood fires, and i was prepared to put up the the smoke!
However, it wasn't going to be that simple...
A few days later, Safi moved the stove in the lounge room. Someone had removed a pane of glass from the window, a couple of days before, and put in a sheet of galvanised steel, with a chimney-sized hole in the middle. Now the chimney stuck out through this hole and the bukhari worked without smoking.
There were apparently plans to do the same thing to mine - as Farooq Shah told me that last year my chimney was blocked and several people tried to clear it without any success. The impossibility of cleaning the chimney didn't sound very convincing to me, but i thought i'd just let it go as it would just add to the overall messiness of the whole process of getting heating to work.
I still hadn't tried to light mine because the stovepipe didn't fit properly and so far i hadn't managed to organise a way to make it fit. Now, i just gave up on that plan and waited till the thing was moved to the window.
Well, moving it to the window was, again, not a simple matter. In the end, it took several days. And when it was finally in place, the flue hole in the sheet of tin was too big, so there was a gap around the chimney - but that was ok, i didn't mind having a bit of ventilation. A bit more of a problem, though, was that it was now a bit too close to the curtains for comfort - and i couldn't close the curtains all the way, either.
But, never mind that, at least it was working now, and i could keep my bedroom warm.
That wasn't the end of the story though...
On Saturday, the weather was dismal - cold, grey, cloudy and rainy. It reminded me of England in summer! But i lit the bukhari in my bedroom in mid-afternoon and that made things a bit more cheeful. It smoked a lot though, because the wind was blowing into the chimney a bit - the end of the chimney is horizontal and the wind was coming from that side that day.
Safi and Fatima came in at one point and saw the chimney was smoking. I think Safi must have misunderstood what i said the reason was, and thought it was because the hole in the tin he'd put in the window was too big.
They went away and then Fatima came back with a bowl with water with some strips of cloth in it. She proceeded to wind one of these wet cloth strips around the bottom of the chimney. I was a bit bemused by this - but as Fatima can't speak English and i can't speak Dari, i just let her get on with it. I figured she probably knew what she was doing.
She went away after she'd wound one of them round it, and soon after it started to smoke a bit. And then a lot. Meanwhile, i'm thinking "what the...?", but i didn't do anything - just got up and opened the door to let the smoke out. It was a bit past the point of doing anything anyway and i thought i should let Fatima do whatever it was she was doing, in case there really was some purpose to this exercise.
She came back at this point and seemed surprised at what was happening. She picked up a piece of wood and managed to scrape the charred remains of the cloth off the chimney. Safi came in then too, and told her she should have been putting the cloth in the space round the chimney - between it and the hole in the tin in the window. This would have gone the same way eventually, most likely, as the chimney's not much less hot up there. But i said not to bother, as that wasn't the problem.
So, that was the excitement for Saturday!
Later on, Gavin got an email from Peter, who was living in this house last year, in the bedroom i've got now. He said there hadn't been any problem with the internal chimneys last winter - apart from the one in the lounge room. So, what the business with putting mine out through the window was all about, i'm damned if i know! I decided that as soon as i get a chance, i'm going to move the bukhari back to the internal chimney and check if it works.
To be continued...
You can see some of my photos of Afganistan at
WillKemp-Photos.com/afghanistan