Going Green Series - Masonry Stoves
The most efficient way to heat our home presents a plethora of choices. The price of heating oil has skyrocketed this year. We've had one of the longest, coldest winters in decades this year along with heating oil and gas prices the highest ever. This lethal combination of factors has hit hard this winter.
So, after better understanding the ideas of thermal mass and daylighting, we can better focus our attention on super-productive ways to supplement the heat in our home. This is critical if you live with long, very cold winters like we do in Maine. What we would like to figure out for our home are ways to use all of that heat generation to fuel more than just the fireplace! Could it also be heating a boiler that heats our hot water tank or perhaps even a steam (or heat) powered generator that runs some of the appliances? Could the hot water or steam generated also be routed through pipes in the floor for radiant floor heat (and perhaps in the driveway too...?! ) or through baseboard heat units?
And what about the kitchen? We love brick-oven pizzas! In Europe they have long been using kachelofens, a type of masonry stove, constructed of ceramic fired brick to heat their homes. They are different from our typical wood-burning stoves in that the whole mass heats up and continues to put out heat up to 8 hours after the fire has gone out. They can also be built in ways to allow for baking and cooking.
http://www.pyromasse.com/infoe.html
This is a Canadian distributor that also holds seminars on how to build your own
http://www.canadiankachelofen.com/
We discovered a couple in Norridgewock, ME who now build and sell these unique masonry stoves. They traveled throughout Europe twenty years ago and came back here with their designs in hand. They can still only get the cast iron doors from Finland. These are highly adaptable units and extremely efficient with all sorts of potential. They describe the features in this link.
http://www.mainewoodheat.com/gallery.html
Once again, we're attempting to discover ideas that might work for our climate and situation. Even if we can just learn or borrow the principles that are put to use. Our typical fireplaces are large, inefficient holes that draught more heat up the chimney than into the room. We need more than merely aesthetics. Some of these old world ideas bring both efficiency and beauty. Works for me!
