Finnish Fireplace

[Simonkenton]

nogasbill, huh? I like that name. So you are living off the grid. I have spent quite a bit of time in Canada. Whereabouts do you live?
So you build these heaters? Man that roasted turkey looks great. Or, maybe it is a giant Canada goose.
I saw them cooking bread in the Tulikivi but never saw someone cook a turkey. That is really cool.

How do you get water to your house? Do you have solar power?

 

[Oldman47]

Water could be as simple as at my cousin's house. He has a spring uphill from the house and built a small dam to hold a steady pool height. From there it is a simple pipe below the frost line to the house. No pumps and no power needed.

 

[Bobbin]

We have good friends "down east" and they have a masonry heater in their home. It was constructed by a local mason trained in building them. You don't have to buy an official Tulikivi to enjoy the benefits. They burn 4-5 cord/yr. and they fire the stove in mid-October and keep it burning through early April. I can't say for certain but I think it takes about 2 wks. for the mass the heat enough to begin radiating enough heat to keep their home comfortably warm. I found their home a bit on the chilly side when "hanging around", frankly (65-67F). But I'm used to 62-64F as a base temperature for daily activity and a fire in the Woodstock to "cozy things up" when we're lounging.

It's a wonderful concept; and one that delivers a pretty clean burn, too. But it's not something that will deliver "on demand"/instant heat, as I understand it.

 

[Simonkenton]

Takes 2 weeks for the masonry stove to deliver full heat to the house? Good God, that must be a 44 ton stove.
In a Tulikivi, it takes just a few hours for the stove to deliver heat. You light the Tulikivi once in the morning, for about a 30 minute burn, and once again in the evening for a similar burn and you are warm.

For a comparison, my fireplace pictured at left, is completely inside the house. This an American fireplace and not a Finnish fireplace.
If you burn a good fire in it, it takes five hours for heat to begin to radiate out of the back wall. Once the fire goes out, heat will continue to radiate out for about 30 hours.
Which means, if you burn a 5 hour fire every night, you get a continuous heat from the back wall of about 104 degrees.

 

[begreen]

Only problem is that as the fire it cooling down, it is sucking conditioned room air up the chimney. The Tulikivi is a sealed burner with outside combustion air and does not do this.

 

[bholler]

New
Only problem is that as the fire it cooling down, it is sucking conditioned room air up the chimney. The Tulikivi is a sealed burner with outside combustion air and does not do this.

I am sure it also uses allot more heat to get that fireplace up to temp than it does to heat up a tulikivi

 

[Simonkenton]

Yes! The Tulikivi is much more efficient than my American fireplace. I wanted to build a Tulikivi, and I had the model all picked out. However, the fiancee hated the Tulikivi, she said it looked like an oven from Auschwitz.
Women, go figure.
So, I built my American fireplace instead.
I would imagine you get twice the heat, with half the wood, from a Tulikivi.

Nevertheless, my fireplace is a good heater. I incorporated the principles of a Finnish Fireplace, in that, my fireplace is entirely within the house. This lets me get heat from the back side of the fireplace, and the sides of it, into the house.
I do have an outside air intake for my fireplace. If you do not have an outside air intake you are utterly screwed while the thing is burning, as a fireplace sucks enormous amounts of air.

What I do is, about an hour before I want the fire out, I burn pine, which burns hot and quick and has minimal coals. I want that fire to go out.
As soon as the fire is completely out, I close the damper. Then, I have it made, I have 105 degree heat from the back side, and much more than that from the fire box, and no room air sucked into the chimney.

 

[TreePapa]

I had the same idea. I burn it hot and then Shut the damper as soon as I can. I lined my entire firebox with 2 1/2" thick soapstone slabs. About 600 pounds of it!

I like the idea of lining the firebox w/ soapstone. The wife vetoed the idea of a stove / insert when when had the chimney rebuilt after the chim. fire, but adding the soapstone could be a good way to retain a little more of the heat that otherwise goes up the chimney. And it would cover the deteriorating firebricks. Win-win.

Shutting the damper when the coals go out is a bit more problematic. We're usually asleep by then.

 

[begreen]

webby3650 relined his fireplace with soapstone but says he hasn't noted a heating difference after doing this. An open fireplace is a very inefficient heater. Closing down the damper too early could be risky if the coals are not 100% done burning and CO accumulates.

 

[NoGasBill.com]

Hi Doug
I have come across the same issue from time to time. The best strategy to use, which has worked for everyone of my customers, is when applying for your building permit to apply for a " Site Built Masonry Fireplace". If I do not warn my customers in advance, then they apply for a "Factory Built or wood stove " product on the building permit. Installation of "Site Built" products fall under a different set of codes vs a "Factory Built".
You are not breaking any laws if you put in a Masonry Heater, where they allow the traditional site built fireplaces of decades gone by, these codes are still in place. I know that if I went to most building inspectors and asked them straight up if they would allow this type of wood burning product, I know I would get the same answers as you have been getting.
I was looking for the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), to find support for the above recommendation when applying for a building permit. I will continue to look for that, but I came across this on the Canadian government website ... "

Current Building Codes.
A few masonry heater models are ULC listed and are thus
installed in accordance with the terms of their listing. Most masonry heaters however,
even factory kits, are typically site-assembled and are usually accepted under the
masonry fireplace and chimney provisions of the applicable building code. The National
Building Code of Canada has for several years had a requirement for a 100 mm outside
air duct vented directly into the firebox of masonry fireplaces.

Copy and paste the link below for the CMHC's " A Guide To Residential Wood Heating "

http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j...h1bdsAtUKNrachqVg&sig2=z1_50QRZ6SbpMvRZdhuP7Q


Also I have attached a document from our website. The document is from the "Canadian Masonry Research Institute" or CMRI. The CMRI makes the recommendations for the "National Building Codes" or NBC. If purchasing the product directly from us, then you can use this document. Sorry that this document does not cover any other manufacturers or suppliers product.

I do not know how many building inspectors you have in town/city or what percentage of them you have talked too? So hopefully the advice below will be of help to you.

Note: ULC testing is costly IMO, These costs are passed on to the consumer and greatly add to the purchase price of a Masonry Heater kit/installation. We have bypassed this additional cost to keep our heater kits at the lower end price point.

In closing I would like to say that building inspectors can get their "backs up" just like anybody else, especially when you show them something they may not understand or know about. Just keep it simple and tell them you are building a "site built masonry fireplace", period. Do not get to elaborate in the description, keep it simple through the whole process. I would file for your permit and apply as I have suggested. I have over 500 heaters applied for and installed, I only had a problem with 1 inspector who made us have a building engineer sign off on the installation, which cost us $300 in the early 2000's.

Good Luck Doug !

 

[DougA]

Thanks for the explanation. The problem is not with the building inspector, it's with the insurance company. I did spend some time talking to the local building inspector and I understand that I can get approval for most wood burners that are not ULC approved, if I follow increased set backs. After I gave up on a masonry heater, I decided to get a Woodstock stove. Woodstock does not have ULC certification on their stoves (due to the high cost), yet they sell a fair number to Canadians. In fact, the WETT inspector walked up to my stove and said, "I can tell you right now that this will fail" He had inspected a similar stove that was a Woodstock and it did not have the ULC tag.

The problem in both cases is that if your insurance company finds out you have a wood burning appliance or fireplace, they insist on a WETT inspection. No certificate, no insurance. No insurance, no mortgage. No mortgage, no house.

I pressed the head office of WETT as far as I could on allowing a masonry heater but to be honest, I didn't press the insurance company on it. In Canada if you talk to the company about doing something they might not like, you will often get an increase in your rates, even if you do nothing. All companies in Canada have the same or similar policies. You don't bug them unless you are really desperate. Most agents have no idea other than the standard BS. If a certified mason who is WETT certified installs the masonry heater, then everything is great. The problem now is that the cost of a masonry heater has gone way over the budget most normal folk can accept.

My guess is that if someone were to install a masonry heater and didn't say anything, the insurance would not care until there was a fire. Now, we've got a problem and you may or may not be covered. I could not take that risk, so I bought a soapstone ULC wood stove instead. Sad but bureaucratic BS seems to win most times.

 

[NoGasBill.com]

Hi Doug, thank you for explaining in detail your situation. It really does come down to a human reaction. A customer once told me his discussion with his insurance company, after their new house was completed, with one of our heaters. Here is his words to me, from his insurance company ...

Insurance company: "We can not give you insurance, because we do not insure homes with wood stoves anymore".

Customer: " We do not have a wood stove installed in our home, we have a masonry fireplace a masonry heater "

Insurance company: Oh OK, here is your insurance policy then & have a nice day".

I totally know where you are coming from & it is sad to hear that these situations are not always as simple as they should be ?? Back in the late 80's the government built the most energy efficient home ever to be built (at that time anyways).
Hi Doug, thank you for explaining in detail your situation. It really does come down to a human reaction. A customer once told me his discussion with his insurance company, after their new house was completed, with one of our heaters. Here is his words to me, from his insurance company ...



Insurance company: "We can not give you insurance, because we do not insure homes with wood stoves anymore".



Customer: " We do not have a wood stove installed in our home, we have a masonry fireplace a masonry heater "



Insurance company: Oh OK, here is your insurance policy then & have a nice day".



I totally know where you are coming from & it is sad to hear that these situations are not always as simple as they should be ?? Back in the late 80's the government built the most energy efficient home ever to be built (at that time anyways).

The house was designed and built on the R2000 program and was a feature story in Popular Mechanics Yearly Magazine Issue "Best Of What's New" Dec. 1990. (I will post the rest of the pages in next post, maxed out here).

The Federal government went on to build 1 of these "Advanced Houses" in every province, with Ontario being the first to build one of these homes. So 25 years later, with no documented case in North America, has a house ever started on fire or even a chimney fire because of a masonry heater ?? & an insurance company won't insure them, what a shame huh !

While I was looking for this Popular Science issue, I came across a headline that said "Space heaters cause approximately 20,000 home fires and 400 deaths in the U.S. every year, often because of the scorching devices' unfortunate tendency to set flammable objects within a three-foot radius ablaze." Hmmm ... enough said.

Thank you for your input Doug, you got me fired up !!

 

[NoGasBill.com]

OK I believe I have uploaded all pages

 

[3650]

So basically its just a horrendously expensive rocket stove.

 

[bholler]

So basically its just a horrendously expensive rocket stove.

No not exactly there is allot more to it than that. The basic firebox is similar in concept to a rocket stove but the rest of it is not

 

[DougA]

Yup, I built one of the first R2000 homes in Ontario but I did not take advantage of the grants available. Too much gov't BS needed and they insisted on things that I thought were stupid - & I was proven correct many years later. Since we're on the subject, here's my take on design elements worthwhile and not:

NOT worth the effort:
Super air tight. Within a few years, either you or the mice will have enough holes to make it 'holy'. Air tight is good, super air tight is not. Super air tight also requires an air exchanger. Although we originally designed one in the plans, we did not install it as it was not needed. We did a pressure test and it passed but it would not pass now.
High mass. We have more mass in the house than anyone I know and it's not worth the effort or the $$.

Things that are worth the effort:
More insulation than anyone thinks is worthwhile. The R2000 standards are now 'normal' and upgraded homes have significantly more.
Site planning. Lots of windows facing south, very few facing north or west (prevailing winds). Berms or tree lines on the north and west sides to provide a buffer for cold winds.
Lots of south facing glass to take full advantage of solar heat in the winter. Most of the days in the past 2 weeks we have had the stove off and the sun provides our heat. Was almost 80 in here yesterday until we opened the windows.
Proper overhangs so that solar heat does not affect the house int he summer.

I wish you had posted the info 8 months ago and I might have gone ahead with the masonry heater. Too late now and we are thrilled with the performance of the soapstone stove. The risk of not being insurable made the difference in the final decision.

 

[DougA]

So basically its just a horrendously expensive rocket stove.

Sorta like comparing a Lada and a Lamborghini - yes, they are both cars with 4 wheels.

 

[NoGasBill.com]

Hi everyone, thank you for your response and time. I have never posted on a forum before, everything I do is face to face at our trade shows. We have attended over 80 shows here in Alberta Canada in the last 20 years, spreading the word. We approach these trade/home/log home shows with a different approach. We use our outdoor booth to hold a non-stop workshop to educate the attendees. We have never collected a check on site in our booth during these shows. I will post as mush as our time constraints allow to answer any questions or to share information...So I hope you enjoy the reading.

If you want some interesting reading material, I came across this newer book a few years ago. I started at page 64 since I was explaining the health benefits of heating with a masonry mass and negative ions. I could talk for many hours on end, without repeating myself, on all the benefits of using a masonry heater, from the "green" aspect, to the energy savings, outdoor & indoor air quality to forest management, heating water, cooking & barbequing and using your "heater" as an air conditioner in summer months in some regions. etc...

Yes I did mention air conditioning. In our low R -value 70's built home here is Edmonton, Alberta where we can have hot days 80F+ and cool nights low 60's. We leave both our fresh air intake damper & the chimney exhaust damper open throughout the night. The cool air travels through the labyrinth of channels inside the heater core for about 12 hours. The core acts like a sponge to accumulate the cold into the surrounding mass. Since cold radiates as does heat, we essentially have a radiating, 2 ton chunk of mass the same as when you walk down into a cool basement to get relief from a very warm upper floor of the home. We call this the "basement effect".

A finished 2 ton heater can store 500,000 (1/2 million) Btu's in the refractory core and brick or stone facade. In 1 firing of 40 lbs. of wood we can capture over 250,000 Btu's... A 2000 sq. foot home uses between 200,000 to 300,000 Btu's a day to heat. Now minus all the other things that contribute heat to your home on a daily basis ie. lights, dryers, toasters, ranges etc... Your masonry heater will supplement the rest of your heating needs, with no fans, motors or alternate energy source.
We can hold 2 firings inside of the masonry heater core and the surrounding facade. This is how we get to 1/2 million Btu's of stored energy. Aside from heating, how you use these Btu's is up to you ie. cooking, heating water, creating steam etc... It's just a big Btu storage battery. We even have a guy here in Alberta who uses a Tesla "steam turbine generator" coupled into his heater core firebox to generate electricity from his wood burning masonry heater.

Copy and past this link below and you'll find a whole book to answer your questions and learn things you wouldn't have imagined otherwise.

link to "Negative ions" section of the book:

https://books.google.ca/books?id=46...age&q=masonry heaters & negative ions&f=false

 

[NoGasBill.com]

nogasbill, huh? I like that name. So you are living off the grid. I have spent quite a bit of time in Canada. Whereabouts do you live?
So you build these heaters? Man that roasted turkey looks great. Or, maybe it is a giant Canada goose.
I saw them cooking bread in the Tulikivi but never saw someone cook a turkey. That is really cool.

How do you get water to your house? Do you have solar power?

Hi Simon, I just noticed your post I'm new to this....

Yes & thank you, NoGasBill.com was a shot at the utility company. 90% of our customers we meet at our trade shows are mostly building "new construction". We tend to sell to those who are building new, because of the structural supports required for a masonry fireplace. When we are at the shows I give a few examples on how to start paying for your heater before they even move into the new home. Examples, So instead of having 2 utilities going to your house, just have 1 utility ie. electricity (no gas line). Here is how you can make room in your budget for your new masonry heater by just making some simple choices. Now do not have a gas line going to your house, minimum $2000-$3000 savings right there or more. Now if you are committing yourself to using you masonry heater on a daily basis, as most people are, you can put in a simple heating system such as an electric baseboard system (baseboards only to be used when you are away for several days at a time) i will guess a savings of $1500 to ? "what ever else you were going to put in" ie ground source heat pump. No ceiling fans with a masonry heater, savings $1200 to $1500. With a masonry heater the floor to ceiling temperature difference is less than 1- 2 degrees F naturally through convection. When using fans such as forced air furnaces and ceiling fans, we create a "wind chill " effect in our homes. That is why your feet get cold with a forced air furnace, because the cooler air is traveling along the floor, past your feet to the cold air returns. I use the analogy of a calm sunny spring day with no wind and it is 60 degrees out you are nice and warm, but if a breeze picks up then you have to put on a sweater over that tee shirt. Same thing happens in our homes when using fans. These savings just mentioned pay for 1/2 the costs (minimum) of the finished heater or up to 100% + $ left over if you are swapping out your "ground source heat pump installation". You can have a finished heater with the "cook oven" option, chimney & the minimal required brick facade for between $13000 - $15,000
Your ongoing savings come from not using any electricity for cooking, running fans. Masonry heaters also use 1/4th the wood consumption (use soft wood) as that of a wood stove or outdoor boiler system to heat the same area, No chimney cleaning (ever), these heaters are a "no maintenance" system. etc... Our customers have guesstimated about a 5 year pay off of a finished heater, as the worst case scenario...

We live in a suburban 70's home is Edmonton Alberta as I mentioned in the last post. We have all of the typical utilities like our neighbors, except we are hiding a masonry heater in our home. I built our new heater in front of the old fireplace, just salvaging the old chimney behind the masonry heater. Our chimney connection is at the base behind the heater, instead of bringing the chimney off of the side. we have had the heater since about 2001. We use to call in our meter reading for the 20 years before our heater was installed, but "ATCO Gas" now reads our meters because they thought we were falsifying our meter readings to them after we installed our heater. They even went as far as to change the old gas meter out with a new gas meter. This scenario has played out many times with 10 or so of my customers, "ATCO Gas" just keeps thinking the meters aren't working right !?!. The first thing the gas company does is to check the gas line connection to the gas meter for any teeth marks from a monkey wrench, in case we were stealing gas or by passing the meter ... our masonry heaters are that good !

Yes that is a turkey, never cooked a goose, mine or that of anyone else .... With the bake oven or "cook-oven option" (located on top of the heater kit) we do our lower temperature cooking. This oven is called a "white oven" since no flame passes through this section. The "cook oven" dome sits on a 3 inch refractory lid that separates anything going on internally within the firebox/internal channels. The heat is from the floor of the oven or lid of the heater, which ever way you want to look at it. This oven holds about 150-180 degrees F on 1 firing per 24 hrs. & can get over 200 degrees F on a "double firing" (every 12 hrs). This oven will hold the temperatures for the whole day on 1 firing and will hold these temps 24 hrs. per day with repeated "double firings" through the coldest winter months. We cook the turkey up top, but "brown" the turkey down below in the firebox. Now you actually have 2 ovens, 1 "high temp" oven, just like a traditional food fired oven when using the firebox, and a "low temp" oven when using the upper "cook oven". So anything you would cook in a crock pot you would use the upper oven ie. soups, sauces, roasts etc... The lower oven (firebox) is for pizzas, breads, pre boiling water in a pot for pasta, browning a turkey etc... We cook the turkey up in low temp upper oven, and brown the turkey (for appearance) in lower oven/firebox.
The biggest meal of the year is typically a turkey dinner. We cook the whole dinner in the fireplace between the 2 "ovens", ie. turkey, stuffing, veggies etc.... Also no basting of the turkey required, always comes out moist and juicy, so we can actually leave for several hours of the day and not worry about anything. We do use the stove for about 10 minutes to make the gravy though, I'll work on that ....

A customer once described living with a masonry heater "as a whole different lifestyle and a luxury most people can not afford to live without". His wife also said "my house is calm, quiet, no fans or motors running, no dust storms blowing around so I dust much less, and I am now able to live my asthma because of the reduced dust, no dry air from furnaces or wood stoves and no smoke smell".

 

[NoGasBill.com]

Additional pictures in reply to Simon

The kit I installed in our home was a previously "used kit". I used this kit at one of our trade/log home show exhibits in our outdoor "burn booth". I actually used this kit at a Log Home Show in Abbotsford, British Columbia. I burnt about 1/2 of a cord of gummy, tarry, sappy pine offcuts from a log home building yard. After some laborious work to salvage the modular pieces I ship it back to our house in Edmonton, Alberta after the conclusion of the trade show. I did burn this unit non stop during show hours. I used a calibrated pyrometer with a thermocouple to read the temperatures inside the "smoke throat". The smoke throat is the narrow passage above the firebox which has a venturi effect. This is where a lot of the magic happens in a masonry heater. In the smoke throat we would see typical temperatures of 1700-1800 degrees F. I do not know if it was the conditions at or near sea level with the combination of that creosote filled wood off cuts that I was using, from the log home yard. On the last wood load of the day everything must have been just right because I recorded the highest temperature I have ever seen in a masonry heater when I hit 2300 degrees F. It was a monumental moment. I can hit 2000 degrees easily with spruce 2x4's anytime. Combustion of creosote happens at temperatures between 1400-1500 degrees F. Masonry heaters can easily hit temperatures hot enough for proper combustion of creosote. Masonry heaters complete the combustion cycle before the creosote even has a chance to collect on the inside of the chimney walls. Creosote is our friend, there is a lot of energy in wood if you burn it hot enough. So the 2 tricks in heating efficiently with wood is A) lots of oxygen & B) mass to store the energy in. Just the opposite of what we were raised around in North America.
As you notice my "used kit" is always clean internally for life. This kit looks like it has never been used and looks brand new.

Picture of: Fresh air supply to ash drop under new heater
Picture of: Secondary burn chamber of used trade show unit
Picture of: Partially bricked heater with cook oven dome installed, ready for finishing brick and cook oven door
Picture of: Newly finished brick heater with 1st. turkey dinner started in cook oven.



Here is another link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combustion#Combustion_management

 

[Simonkenton]

So you live in Alberta? In all my time in Canada, I was just passing through Alberta. We were hitchiking from way back up in the woods in BC, down to Atlanta Georgia.
Canadians were friendly but not too much traffic in Alberta, we kinda got stuck, so we hopped a freight train in Calgary. No empty box cars, believe it or not, the engineers let us get into the empty 3rd engine, and we rode all the way to Winnipeg.
Here is a pic of me at 70 mph near Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, in August 1973.

Very friendly engineers, they brought us a case of bottled water, and taught us how to evade Canadian railroad police. Automatic 3 days in jail if they catch you.

 

[begreen]

Darn Canadian Hippies!

 

[Simonkenton]

Yes I did mention air conditioning. In our low R -value 70's built home here is Edmonton, Alberta where we can have hot days 80F+ and cool nights low 60's. We leave both our fresh air intake damper & the chimney exhaust damper open throughout the night. The cool air travels through the labyrinth of channels inside the heater core for about 12 hours. The core acts like a sponge to accumulate the cold into the surrounding mass. Since cold radiates as does heat, we essentially have a radiating, 2 ton chunk of mass the same as when you walk down into a cool basement to get relief from a very warm upper floor of the home. We call this the "basement effect".

nogasbill that is fascinating, you leave the air intake and damper open on the cool summer nights, run the cool air through the masonry heater all night, and then the cool temp radiates out into the house all day long.
I do a similar trick with my American fireplace pictured to the left. It would do me no good to leave my damper open all night, because, the chimney is insulated from the rest of the fireplace. Only the firebox is solid.
However, like your heaters, my fireplace is entirely contained within the house, and this is a 2 story house. So, I have about 12 tons of masonry entirely within the house.
On a cool summer night here in the NC mountains, I run some fans in the windows upstairs, blowing out, and open 3 or 4 windows downstairs. I am running 65 degree air throughout the house, and all around, all that masonry all night long.
Next day, shut off the fans, close the windows, not only is the house cooled down to 65 degrees, but that massive stack of masonry is also cooled down. The cool temps slowly radiate into the house all day.

Same thing in the winter, I may run my wood stove for 3 days, low of 30 and high of 50, got the house at 70 degrees. And I got 12 tons of masonry at 70 degrees. That massive stack of masonry has absorbed the heat from the wood stove, the next day, high of 60 and low of 40, don't even need to light the wood stove as the heat from the masonry slowly radiates back into the house.

I love your stories about living in a house with a big masonry heater. Obviously, it is far superior to a wood stove, and the wood stove is a better heater than my fireplace.
Love the idea of baking in the masonry heater.

Although I did want to install a Tulikivi in my house, rather than the American fireplace, to be honest I am not sure if it is cold enough down here to make a masonry heater feasible. Macht nichts, the fiancee vetoed the masonry heater on aesthetic grounds. Women, go figure.

 

[ToltingColtAcres]

Macht nichts, the fiancee vetoed the masonry heater on aesthetic grounds. Women, go figure.

You always could have returned the fiancee and got the Tulikivi... May have been cheaper in the long run, too

 

[Bobbin]

As I understand the concept of "thermal mass": you begin heating the mass long before you "need" heat. You're basically "warming it up", and that makes sense when you're faced with a lot of cement/whatever that's in place to absorb heat and radiate to the living space. Again, as I understand the basic concept, the key is to maintain an even, comfortable heat in the designated space.

I think the important thing is to differentiate between "even" and "comfortable". An "even heat" of 55-60F is leagues away from the comfy 70-72F we may desire in our sitting area. My downeast friends use their thermal stove to maintain heat. Certainly, they derive a more immediate heat delivery to their sitting area when they stoke the firebox, but for the most part their home is not "roasty-toasty". It's not what they wanted when the installed their thermal mass stove. Thermal mass stoves are not "quick delivery" heat systems, Simon..