I have been thinking about Finnish / Russian Stoves for quite some time. Then last week, http://cordwoodconstruction.wordpress.com/ posted this article on it's blog. It had a picture of a mass storage fire place that looked quite simple to decipher. I went looking about and found more information on them, and a picture of one in the process of being constructed. The Interior Parts were custom made and shipped to site from a factory, and the exterior parts were accessed on site, and gave the finished product it's local character, built by the home builder.
It was the picture of the Interior Parts that got me really excited. While I had seen some diagrams of various stoves, I had not seen anything like this. Two, 18" flues 2" wide, on either side of a firing hole. They pointed upward of course and had their origin in the firing chamber. This was a pattern that I could understand.
My brain immediately went into over drive, and I have been thinking of pretty much nothing else since. No drawings as yet, but I have come down to thinking a dome style interior, with flues on either side and up the back, with two cooking levels, one for large pots, and the other at the top, for pizza or cookie trays. and through the back, how about copper tubing with water running through, to a tank, recycling on a small pump.
I'm still trying to think through the flues construction and whether to have them go straight up over, or to curve over before going up. The latter more complicated, but if done right, the smoke/air inside could be reheated and less smoke and soot go up the chimney. At least that is the idea.
This is of course very preliminary thinking. So don't get too locked into any ideas yet ;D But the more I think about it the more interesting it becomes. One aspect of this is, that I am thinking more advanced ideas for a first shelter, in that I would build it with Stackwall, and a cob for mortar, with a smallish but effective Fireplace, using clay/non organic sub soil mud. Something our early Neo-Lithic Ancestors would create on the quick and cheap ;D
POST 1 Mini Stone / Clay Fire place-Stove June 17th
First, definitions; Fire place vs Stove
A Fire Place is any open source of fire, with or without a chimney.
A Stove is an enclosed Fire with a heat surface over top, enclosed or not, for cooking on/in.
I know that by the Neolithic people were heating water using pre made containers, by putting rocks from the fire into the water container. Thus heating the water. But I wonder when man or woman (let's not be sexist ;) discovered that by containing the fire, and letting the top rock heat and using it for cooking on?
My idea is to use rocks and clay to form a 3 sided container, with a flat rock on top, and another flat rock for covering the front of the fire... in this way the top rock would heat and serve as the cooking surface.
To move it further a bit, by enclosing the top rock, we get a primitive stove, for baking ;-) how this would be done, would require some experimentation, but I think a thicker base with walls built up over time to cover a wattle frame that would be left in for a period to support the roof of the stove... whether the dome would be capable of self support without the frame is the big question, or if left in, would the wood of the frame deteriorate with the heat being transmitted through the stone and clay...
The other question, is how "mini" would this be ;D I am sure our ancestors did this experimentation a few times in the past, on different continents... what I am proposing doing is nothing new...
As I think this through, I'll add to this and bump it up... but it does seem a way forward to learning.
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