This summer has been an exciting time to deepen our craft in masonry heater building.
Here, Jerry Frisch of Lopez Quarries and I are standing in front of a heater that I assisted him on in a new house on the Puget Sound in the state of Washington. It is a basic Finnish contraflow design which includes a bake oven and a heated bench on two sides. Other masons from the Masonry Heater Association also came to help out on the heater as the whole effort was part of a fundraising effort to raise funds for the MHA in order to be able to do lab testing on stoves to prove empirically to the EPA how clean-burning and efficient masonry heaters are as they draft new regulations for wood-burning appliances due out in a year or two. A more in depth story will follow…
And here is an interesting project that Kiko Denzer and I just completed:
This was an interesting project that involved modifying an existing solidly-built woodstove into a masonry encasing in order to extend its flue path and create mass that would absorb more completely the heat from the wood burned. It has a “bi-pass” damper, which acts as a valve, and allows one to heat up the flue directly. When this damper is closed, the gases then follow a different route: back down, through the bench, and then up to where it re-unites with the original flue. There is another damper called a shut-off damper which is used when the fire has burned out completely to shut the flue system completely and hold in all the amassed heat.
Construction shot showing flue liners in bench:
This project also represents a breakthrough for us in being able to do computer-aided design to conceive of and plan a project.
This is simply an update…. we will post much more thorough posts about each project when the dust from the summer has settled! ‘Till then!…..
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Other Media Links….
Latest News:
- Ledge Stone Masonry Heater Near Eugene, Oregon - December 20, 2011
- Masonry Heater at the Allen's (Portland, OR) - November 14, 2011
- Pizza Party in the Dabbeni Barrel Oven! - October 20, 2011
- MHA Announces New Masonry Heater Education Program - August 6, 2011
- Outdoor Kitchen at Vistara: Wood-Fired Barrel Oven and Canning Stove - July 26, 2011
Videos:
- Wood-Fired Barrel Oven Video - July 13, 2011
- Beautiful Video of BioConstruyendo Patagonia 2011 - April 15, 2011
- Bioconstruyendo: Argentinian Natural Building Festival - May 29, 2010
- Adobe Oven in Golondrinas, Argentina - May 26, 2010
Articles & Essays:
- Response about Rocket Stoves in MHAmember Forum - December 5, 2011
- The Cabin Stove - A Small Masonry Heater at Aprovecho Research Center - September 4, 2011
- Draft-Horse Workshop in Oregon - July 30, 2011
- Details of Plumbing for a Thermosiphon Hot Water System - January 28, 2011
- Resources for Domestic Hot Water Systems for Woodstoves and Masonry Heaters - December 15, 2010
Front Page Archive:
- - February 6, 2011
- Summer is a time of action! - July 1, 2010
- Spring is a time to sow intentions... - April 7, 2010
- The winter solstice marks a new birth for Firespeaking! - November 29, 2009
