Blast Furnace 1.0

Tonight was the night of the Russian house warming party. The party gimmick, was a heating system for the pool that I helped Werner make / design. And here it is! It's essentially a big oil barrel submerged into the pool. There's a chimney for smoke and an inlet pipe rigged up to a reverse-engineered vacuum cleaner for oxygen. Most of the morning was spent putting the barrel in, filling it with rocks, chopping wood (from the tree some random man chopped down and let us have) and starting the fire. Initially, there were no flames inside, only heat. Putting petrol in and throwing a match in was... The barrel vented with a firey explosion much like a jet fighter exhaust. We burned wood for about eight solid hours, and managed to get the pool from a chilly 7 degrees to a balmy 9 degrees (the sun had nothing to do with it) - success!

The party itself was awesome - about 40 people or so showed up. Loads ended up bringing instruments, so there was a little jam session in the living room, including: guitar, ukulele, alto recorder, clarinet, flute, 'cello and accordion. There was also a guy who played / sang some pretty amazing Spanish guitar.

About 10 of us had vodka and jumped into the pool at the precise time of 11:30 (because any later than that the water would have obviously become too hot to be bearable). It. Was. FREEZING. Luckily we had another fire in the hobo barrel over in the garden, which definitely made being outside more bearable. Lighting the hobo fire involved more petrol, and a flame that could be seen from the front garden of the house.

Stayed up until 4 talking crap and passing instruments around.