Our first firing in the new kiln will be a load of bisque. Typically we bisque fire in an electric kiln. Our electric kiln sits in the basement waiting to be wired. Originally, the plan was for our electrician to hook the kiln up to the box that currently is used for the old baseboard electric heat in the house. We quickly learned this winter, that the heat pump is expensive to run when it’s really cold, and it’s foolish for us to heat 2000 square feet of house for two people. After our first ginormous electric bill, we kept the heat pump thermostat down to 58 degrees and turned the baseboard heat on in whatever room we were in, to take the chill off. Doing this cut our electric bill down significantly. We have decided that we need to keep the old baseboard heat, thus costing us a bit more to hook up the electric kiln. Until we can afford to do that, we will bisque in the gas kiln. It’s probably less expensive. One load of bisque equals two or more glaze firings. The electric kiln was two firings to equal one glaze firing in the gas kiln.
So why bother with the electric? It’s less time consuming to fire the electric kiln. No adjusting burners, just turning up switches as needed.
The rebuilt kiln is 4″ bigger in each direction. 4″ doesn’t sound like much but it makes quite a difference. We can now use Jeff’s larger Advancer shelves in the front and the back stack.
We can fit some larger pots in there, and not have to switch to my smaller shelves until we get closer to the top.
Since we are now in a permanent location, we will mud over the fiber to encase it… and perhaps we will color the mortar and paint a cool design. Our wheels are turning, both literally and figuratively!