{"id":3624,"date":"2025-08-11T00:28:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-11T00:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=3624"},"modified":"2025-08-11T00:29:53","modified_gmt":"2025-08-11T00:29:53","slug":"ftv-ode-to-a-monarch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=3624","title":{"rendered":"FTV: Ode to a Monarch"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In the summer of 2025, we said \u2018good bye\u2019 to a Monarch.\u00a0 No, not the royal kind.\u00a0 I am talking about our trusty Monarch wood burning furnace.\u00a0 They discontinued making these amazing units some time ago, but we were blessed to have had such a reliable workhorse of a heating unit for 46 winters.\u00a0 Perhaps I should go back to the beginning of the story so you don\u2019t think I have gone totally bonkers by becoming so attached to a furnace.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0It really is all my father\u2019s fault.\u00a0 Growing up during the Depression and World War II, his generation learned to make due.\u00a0 If something broke, one didn\u2019t go out and buy a new one.\u00a0 The name of the game was \u2018repair, fix, or improvise\u2019 when a piece of equipment went south.\u00a0 Like a lot of your parents and grandparents, he became a jack of all trades.\u00a0 In our neighborhood, if someone needed a garage, the older guys like my dad would organize a building bee.\u00a0 When the city of Marquette said, \u201cSure, we will pave your street sooner than we had planned, but only if you have the curbs and sidewalks in place,\u201d the entire neighborhood chipped in the money and the labor to get it done.\u00a0 The property on the east side of Norway Avenue was all owned by Northern Michigan University, so we only had to take care of the west side of the block.\u00a0 In the middle of it all the digging and form laying was my jack of all trades father showing the younger guys the ropes.\u00a0 If the kids hung around too long, we were also put to work.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I fully believe that if my father had not gone from being an underground iron miner in Wakefield to being a civil servant for the state of Michigan (first in the State Police, then the Department of Licensing and Regulation), he would have been a mason.\u00a0 One of my first detailed memories (at the age of three) is collecting rounded stones from a beach near Sand River for the fireplace dad built in the basement of our first house in Marquette.\u00a0 Our second house had a brick\u00a0 fireplace in the living room when it was constructed but he still built another one in the basement that divided his shop area from the rec room side.\u00a0 My pre-drum playing piano lessons were paid off via him building a basement fireplace for a neighbor.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Dad liked building chimneys, fireplaces, foundations, and rock facades.\u00a0 His masonry exploits were a close second to the carpentry projects which I fondly remember being involved in.\u00a0 Anybody else remember taking part in building projects where one straightened old nails recovered from deconstructing another structure?\u00a0 Our boathouse at camp was made with lumber recycled from the Picqua Furniture factory that was taken down when the new Marquette Senior High School was constructed on Fair Avenue.\u00a0 The same site provided the bricks for the basement fireplace on Norway Avenue and everyone of them had the old mortar removed by yours truly.\u00a0 Life with my parents never involved wasting anything that still had use.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Because we always had a fireplace (and a cast iron woodstove to heat the camp and steel stove for the sauna), we needed wood to burn.\u00a0 When we had enough for our own use, dad\u00a0 would sell the extra for (wait for it) $8 a pickup truck load.\u00a0 He felt bad when he raised it to $10.\u00a0 My folks went out on a limb when I was in seventh grade and invested $500 in a Ludwig drum set for their drum crazy son.\u00a0 On a State Trooper\u2019s salary, that was quite a leap of faith.\u00a0 Many a Saturday morning I was awakened with, \u201cCome on boy, time to make some wood and pay for those drums.\u201d\u00a0 I do not have any hard figures to base this on, but with the amount of fire wood we handled in those years, I estimate I helped pay off that debt at least 3 or 4 times.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Even though I whined and complained about having my Saturdays pre-planned, I actually liked making wood.\u00a0 Dad would contact whatever company was logging in the area and get permission to cut the tops left behind.\u00a0 The usual agreement was, \u201cSure, just don\u2019t go there during the week when they are logging,\u201d hence our wood making Saturdays.\u00a0 Even in the dead of winter, we worked out a system where dad would cut, and my brother Ron and I would haul.\u00a0 We rigged up a crib on a toboggan to haul behind our trusty Ski Doo.\u00a0 Once we packed a good trail, we would load it up, run it to the truck to unload, and repeat.\u00a0 We got many strange looks when we would head home with the snowmobile and our sled strapped to the top of the wood pile.\u00a0 In the fall or spring, we would park as close to where dad was cutting and just toss the blocks closer to the truck.\u00a0 It might even take two tosses before we could load them, but it kept us busy (this was long before ATVs came on the scene).\u00a0 Unloading and piling it at home came next.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When I bought my small house in Ontonagon in 1977, it had all electric heat.\u00a0 The folks who built it wintered in Florida.\u00a0 They explained the heating elements embedded in the ceiling and\u00a0 said they kept the house nice and warm.\u00a0 Of course, they were in Florida during the depth of winter and only used a little heat in the fall and spring.\u00a0 Dad recognized the need for supplemental heat right away.\u00a0 He volunteered to build a chimney so I could put a wood stove in the basement to help keep the electric costs down.\u00a0 Early in the fall, the folks came and spent a few days working on the chimney while I was teaching.\u00a0 We hauled an extra wood burning stove we had stashed at camp (it had proved to be too big for the camp\u2019s original size) and I was ready before the first snow fell that winter.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Each room in my small house had a thermostat half way between the floor and the energy efficient seven foot ceilings.\u00a0 When they kicked on the heat, my head would get very warm but my feet on the floor never felt as warm as my head.\u00a0 The heat was blocked by the dining room\u00a0 table so meal time required heavy socks or lined slippers.\u00a0 The stove did keep the basement toasty warm, but the stairs to the basement were in the attached garage.\u00a0 With no vents to the living quarters over the basement, the heat never really transferred to the floor above.\u00a0 Dad could have suggested cutting some vent holes to get some heat circulating between floors, but he came up with another idea.\u00a0 He did a little research and found that Henry Gagnon from Rockland installed Monarch wood furnaces.\u00a0 Before the snow fell the second winter I was in the house, I had a new Monarch forced air furnace and ductwork installed and ready to go.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0If one has a wood furnace, one needs a source of wood.\u00a0 I asked around and was able to find a few places I could cut my own.\u00a0 The obvious difference between cutting fireplace wood and furnace wood is the volume needed for the latter.\u00a0 Many people who burned wood told me they would find a logger and have them drop off a tandem trailer load of long logs.\u00a0 They would cut these loads themselves and the wood would generally last two burning seasons.\u00a0 With half the load piled and drying for the year, they only had to repeat the delivery process every other year.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0This made sense to me and with my large back yard, I had the room for my own wood lot.\u00a0 The only drawback was getting the wood there across the neighbor\u2019s vacant lot. This required the truck driver to pile it on my side by passing the wood under the utility lines that ran between the lots.\u00a0 This arrangement worked until one delivery came after a heavy rainfall which caused the logging truck to get buried.\u00a0 The ruts were repaired but that was the last ten full cord of wood I would dare to order for lack of a better place to put it.\u00a0 There was a vacant lot next door to our house but both times I offered to buy it, the owner backed out.\u00a0 It was time to find another source of wood.\u00a0 Luckily I found someone selling cut and split wood that could be delivered next to my woodshed.\u00a0 It was a little more expensive, but it also meant it could just wheelbarrowed into the shed.\u00a0 This took much less time than cutting, splitting, and then hauling the wood from the back yard.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Every year, the cost would get bumped up a little.\u00a0 The original long wood I cut cost about twenty dollars per face cord.\u00a0 The cut and split wood started at forty dollars per face cord and went up five or ten dollars every few years.\u00a0 When my wood source of many years announced they were going out of business, the search began for another supplier.\u00a0 With the change came another round of price increases.\u00a0 The last time I had to find a new vendor, the price had risen to just over $100 per face cord.\u00a0 I am not complaining because the person doing the hard stuff (getting, cutting, splitting, and delivering) wouldn\u2019t be in business if they didn\u2019t charge enough.\u00a0 When our last supplier called this spring to tell us he was also going out of business, he was actually happy to hear we would not be needing any more wood.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As we neared the end of the 2024-25 burning season, my wife and I made the decision it was time to replace our old reliable Monarch with a gas furnace.\u00a0 The unit was still in good shape, but wood ash and moisture takes a toll on a firebox so we knew it was time to start looking to the future.\u00a0 The aftermath of my wife\u2019s 2023 heart attack also played into the decision.\u00a0 She found out the hot and humid streaks we get every summer take a lot out of her.\u00a0 The new furnace would allow us to install central air conditioning for those stretches of brutal heat.\u00a0 I was asked why we didn\u2019t just invest in a different kind of stand alone AC, but none of these would have worked as well in our split level house.\u00a0 Plus, after forty years with the same furnace, it did not make any sense to wait when both furnace and AC could be installed together.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The first step we had to take was to contact SEMCO and arrange the gas hook up.\u00a0 They had originally run the gas lines through our neighborhood 30 or more years ago, but the Monarch had a lot of years left in it so we passed.\u00a0 With our neighbors on either side sporting gas meters, it didn\u2019t figure to be too much trouble to get connected now.\u00a0 With the paperwork and check sent in, the local contractor we had called made the final arrangements to install the new units.\u00a0 In order to use the ductwork in place, the natural first step was to remove the Monarch.\u00a0 To keep the mess down, I climbed on the roof to clean the chimney one last time (something I had done every year anyway).\u00a0 I cleaned out the firebox and the chimney clean out and waited for the installation day.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0After a sustained period of drilling and banging, old reliable was parked next to the driveway ready to depart.\u00a0 The contractor went over where we would like the gas meter and AC condensing unit to be placed.\u00a0 He asked, \u201cHave you heard back from SEMCO?\u00a0 It would be good to have the meter bracket installed so we can run everything up to that point.\u201d\u00a0 A quick call to their Negaunee office produced nearly instantaneous results.\u00a0 Before long, the SEMCO guy was here and the bracket was hung.\u00a0 With all of the work SEMCO\u2019s contractors are doing in town this summer, he was confident they would be doing our hook up sooner than later.\u00a0 In a day and a half, we had everything ready.\u00a0 Even though the gas line was not hooked up yet, we could at least use the AC unit this summer.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0It seems the technology used in gas appliances has come a long way.\u00a0 In the summer of 1974, I was the \u2018assistant manager\u2019 of Northern Michigan University\u2019s field studies camp located just south of Picture Rocks National Park east of Munising.\u00a0 Do not let the fancy title fool you.\u00a0 My old neighbor and advisor, Pat Farrell, hired me going into my senior year at NMU because none of the graduate students wanted the job.\u00a0 My primary roles between class sessions were divided between mowing the grass and driving the garbage to the land fill in Wetmore during the week. On the weekends, most of the professors and students left and I became the chief cook and bottlewasher as well.\u00a0 If everybody left, I had the place to myself.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In the fall, my job was extended to the weekends of September and early October.\u00a0 Various campus departments would have weekend seminars (or in some cases, social gatherings) at the field station.\u00a0 It was my job to go out early Friday afternoon and open the camp up.\u00a0 It was located off the grid so this meant firing up the diesel generator and lighting the pilot lights on the furnaces and water heaters.\u00a0 After the group departed on Sunday, I would have to do the cleaning, take out the garbage, and shut down the aforementioned gas appliances and generator.\u00a0 It did not make me nervous to constantly be lighting pilot lights but I won\u2019t miss having to do this on the new furnace.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0One thing Henry G said when he installed the furnace back in the day was, \u201cBe careful how you load this stove.\u00a0 Your house is small (the original living area was only 26 feet by 26 feet) and if you over fill it, you will find it will get much too hot.\u201d\u00a0 The first winter, we ended up having to open the doors and windows when I over did it as the temperature in the house climbed into the 80s.\u00a0 There were two big lessons we learned.\u00a0 First, forget loading the firebox – it worked better to put less wood in and feed the fire more often to prevent the unintended sauna-like conditions.\u00a0 The second was to not set the thermostat to the desired temperature.\u00a0 If we wanted to keep the house around 68 degrees, we set the thermostat (that controlled the damper blower on the firebox) to 62.\u00a0 Once we expanded the living quarters to double the original size, the furnace output matched the size of the house much better.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0We still had nearly ten face cords of ready to burn wood left over so we called Little Brothers – Friends of the Elderly.\u00a0 They run a fuel assistance program and help around 100 homes heated with wood.\u00a0 They arrived with a pick-up truck and large trailer and in a couple of hours, it was heading down the road.\u00a0 LBFE sent a note a few days later saying, \u201cThe elderly man we delivered it to was very happy to get it.\u201d\u00a0 If you are looking for a local charity to support, look into either LBFE or the St. Vincent DePaul fuel assistance program.\u00a0 Both organizations will be needing more help in these uncertain economic times.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Will we miss the wood handling and feeding the fire during the cold months?\u00a0 Maybe a little.\u00a0 Old habits take a while to get out of your system.\u00a0 It took a bit of work, but I always enjoyed hauling and piling wood.\u00a0 The one thing I know I will not miss is trotting down to the basement at 3 a.m. during a howling blizzard to add more wood to the furnace.\u00a0 The higher the wind speed, the more heat we would lose up the chimney which in turn meant feeding the fire more frequently in stormy weather.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0On July 31, the crew from Miller Pipelines completed our hook up.\u00a0 This is a longer story for another day, but it was fascinating to watch them do the necessary planning to run our service line without hitting the existing water and sewer lines.\u00a0 The boring machine they employ is a long way from the days of simply digging ditches for these kinds of installations.\u00a0 With our change over now complete, let me just say, \u201cGoodbye, old Monarch, ye have served us well!\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

FTV:\u00a0 An article about burning wood – who better than to represent the genre than The Crazy World of Arthur Brown?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In the summer of 2025, we said \u2018good bye\u2019 to a Monarch.\u00a0 No, not the royal kind.\u00a0 I am talking about our trusty Monarch wood burning furnace.\u00a0 They discontinued making these amazing units some time ago, but we were blessed to have had such a reliable workhorse of a heating unit for 46 winters.\u00a0 Perhaps […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,8,12,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-from-the-vaults","category-humor","category-woas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3624"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3627,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3624\/revisions\/3627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}