The heating of old houses

[mikey]

1763 colonial not much insulation, with no power and three fireplaces going I could get it to about fifty, I think that's how they lived.

 

[BurnIt13]

And I'm sure they didn't have to worry about it being so warm that they needed shorts and t-shirts (or less), as those articles of clothing probably weren't what they are today. You didn't have to worry about pipes freezing either because there were none.

 

[Ashful]

Wow... great replies! I'll try to respond to all.

A good example would be the Parry Mansion in New Hope. Take a tour. You will see a stove in each room on the main floor.

I am very familiar with the Perry Mansion, although I should go back for another tour. I haven't been in that house since I was a kid, long before I was interested in wood stoves. I always thought it odd they call it "Perry Mansion", though, when the entire house would fit many times over in many of our houses of similar or much older vintage.

Perry Mansion, looking mighty small for a mansion:



I do have a few more examples of wood stove usage from my own family:

My uncle Robert Thompson's 1702 house, just down the street from Perry's. He had only a daughter (no sons), who married William Neely. Originally heated only by open fireplace (no wood stoves), it's now open as a park, called the Thompson-Neely House (not "Mansion", although at least 3x the size of the Perry house).



The Headquarters House (not "Mansion"), built around 1742, and famous as Washington's headquarters for ten days in 1776. The famous Christmas day Battle of Trenton was planned in the dining room of this house. My great grandparents purchased it from the second owner, and it was in my family for many years. Unfortunately, it burned to the ground in 1984, and the house that stands there today is very much modernized. I never thought to ask grandma how it was heated.



My uncle Ivins' farm, originally built in 1692 and later expanded, right up Lurgan Rd. from uncle Robert's place. This was an operating farm until the early 1990's, when my uncle passed away, and was recognized by the USDA as the oldest Heritage Farm in the country, prior to closing the business. Over 11,000 sq.ft., it was heated with a half dozen fireplaces, and one wood stove in the parlor. It had one very interesting fireplace in the 18th century addition, which was placed at a 45 degree angle in the corner of two adjacent rooms, such that two adjacent faces of the fireplace were open to the two adjacent rooms.



Kittel House, built 1740, and purchased by a third great-uncle of mine in 1840, it's still in my family. It has been kept almost entirely original, and only had internal plumbing installed around 1975 - 1980. It was heated by a single wood stove in the central parlor, one cooking fireplace in the oldest part of the house, and four smaller fireplaces (two first floor, two second floor). It looks a lot like the Thompson-Neely house above, but I do not have any photo handy to post.

My aunt and uncle nearby, had a big wood stove installed in the basement that seemed to take gigantic rounds. it had a central grate in the floor and ceiling grates for the second floor for the air to pass. it also had a chain operated draft to control the burn not too far away from the grate.

I don't know the time frame but there used to be a big old woodfurnace in the basement. There was no ductwork. In the floor under the archway between the living room and dining room was a large grate, I think well over three feet square, maybe closer to four feet sq.. On the trim on the side of the arch you can still see where the chain pulley was mounted. I thought it was pretty neat that even way back then they were ingenious enough to control the draft without trecking downstairs. In the ceilings of the dining and living rooms are two ornate vents that allowed heat to rise to the upstairs bedrooms. I don't think it worked all that well because I remember some sort of small heaters in each of the bedrooms. Somebody told be they put hot rocks in them as they had no fuel source.

My last house, an 1880'ish Victorian, had a similar setup. Big coal-fired burner in the basement, with a huge grate (several square feet) in the kitchen floor. There were ceiling to floor registers in every room, with dampers, to provide natural convective heating and control.

As you can guess, it took a crazy amount of fuel to heat with wood. And I'm pretty sure it wasn't dried, there wouldn't have been time or space to do that.

By 1800 PA was mining coal so maybe the heat and ease of storage of coal allowed the previous owners of your house to expand upstairs in the winter.

Very interesting. I do recall one person here posting (last year) that the average household wood usage was 25 - 30 cords for heating, in the 18th century, although I don't recall them having a source for that info. In any case, one hell of a task, with no chainsaw, no hydraulic splitter, and no front-end loader.

I replaced the foundation, rebuilt the foyer (removed chimney), tore out the fireplace and put in the current class A chimney while reversing the living room layout and put in the Castine, then the T6. A modern, 2 stage high efficiency heat pump was installed at the same time.

Anyone who hasn't seen begreen's thread on this project should go find it. Seriously, now... I'll wait. It was very cool.

10 thimbles ,nearly 1 in each room, house was heated by coal and wood stoves.
converted to oil and wood with electric also. Now 2 wood stoves with oil and electric back-up.

Wow! Do you have any evidence on how many of those thimbles were used? How successful are you at heating that joint with two stoves?

OK, it's not old by back-east standards, but my great-grandparent's homestead (built in 1937) was heated with a wood furnace. Apparently it was one of the first (at least in this area). Ducting is still intact as far as I can tell. Would love to restore the place one day, but that would be oodles of $$$ that I don't have right now. At least it has a new roof (courtesy of the rest of the family), so hope remains.

Interesting. Some similar stories in my family, with the last generation to operate many of these big farms has been dying over the last 20 years. Thru several "only child" generations, and a few early deaths, it has funneled down to just a few of us. I'm the only living survivor of all four of my grandparents, and one of just a handful for all eight of my great-grandparents. Makes it kinda tough to keep the old properties in the family.

1797 vintage, fireplaces in each of the non-basement rooms (8), and then at some later point thimbles in every one of those rooms. A relative of the prior owners, who were here 30 years, said a freestanding stove was kept running in each of the 4 downstairs rooms. He said that often wood supply would get low in the winter and they would harness up the team and get some fresh wood. The farmer's wife told us she used to serve the firemen coffee while they waited for chimney fires to burn out.

Sounds amazing. Got photos? Are you sure the thimbles were indeed later, and not original? By 1797, wood stoves were as popular as microwave ovens in the early 1980's.

Our house is a 2500 sqft Victorian with 42+ windows, and I believe was built around the mid 19th century, with 10' ceilings. I'm pretty sure there were 4 chimneys in the house, 2 that were upstairs to heat the rooms. Based on their cleanliness, I'm sure they burned coal. In the 60's when my grandparents bought the home, it wasn't insulated. There were 2-150,000+ btu fuel oil furnaces. One upstairs and one down. From what I've been told, in the 70's the fuel bill was over 400.00 a month. In 79 the house was insulated with ureaformaldyhyde foam, which cut things in about half but then shrank over the years. Fast forward to now, after a lot of money and work we heat with a little 3.5 cuft wood furnace.

I'd love to see some photos! Very cool, that you're able to keep your grandparents' house. Interesting to hear that upstairs and downstairs fireplaces had separate flues in 1850. My first and second floor appliances all share common flues.

I know I don't compare but i like your post so I am joining in. I have a 1943 built colonial, no insulation, lots of windows and a crazy wind that can rip through the main living area. A slate roof and two exterior brick fireplaces with some really nice woodwork and stained glass leaded widows in the house. There was a godin coal stove when we bought it 20 years ago but the town said it had to be ripped out to get the co. I have a tank strapped to a storage room ceiling in the basement, looks like it was for some sort of heating, it only looks like 20-30 gallons worth, kind of weird. Also have a really nice brick outdoor fireplace.... So this house has some nice history, not as much as yours but we absolutely love our house, except we had a pipe bust today because of the way the house was built(pipes in a concrete crawl space) and I could use another bedroom now that the kids are getting older and the girls share a room.....but nice thread

Sounds like an expansion tank.

Yep... classic rig. Sounds like a cool place, Ram! I spent a good part of my childhood in a house built in 1953. Sounds very similar. It was cavernous, and built like a bomb shelter. Had four fireplaces (three indoor, one in back yard), all of which got very regular use. It also had a similar expansion tank in the ceiling, connected to a converted GE boiler.

My Victorian farm house built in 1899 has a thimble in all the downstairs rooms 5 . There were small coal stoves in those rooms. Like yours Joful there was a summer kitchen destroyed by fire 60 years ago. I've completely renovated the house. I took the wood stove out of the kitchen and never saw the coal stoves. Heat rose to heat the 5 rooms on the second floor. Just one Jotul heating most of the house now. Just me and the wife left. 4 bedrooms have the doors shut to save heat. I'm sure house must really be nice. Love the real old homes.

I'd love to see some photos! Our summer kitchen was torn down in 1994, to make way for a new addition to the house. They kept the old fireplace, though, and incorporated it into the new addition. Definitely NOT what I would have done, but my wife likes it, which is really all that matters. I just work there.

His house s a beauty, I've seen 2 pics or so of it, maybe he will show some more?

This place has some character, but has definitely lost some of its historical features, due to prior renovations. I don't think it's nearly as nice as some of the other older houses in which I've spent time, but gimme a few years on that...

Ours is a 1815 Federal. There is/was a fireplace in every room. Plus a bake oven in the each end of the basement.
The basement was setup with a central external coal shute and the house was heated by coal until the oil hot water system was fitted by the 3rd family in the 1930s.

The early owners didn't worry too much as they had servants who literally did the dirty work of moving the coal around.
All of the old chimneys are still here. Where the chimneys have been moved in the roof, the bricks are still thick black with carbon.
How they didn't have serial chimney fires is a mystery to me.

You MUST post photos! Sounds like an amazing place. According to census records (and I guess their religious heritage), the owners of our house never had any form of slaves. At most, perhaps a wayward teen they might take in for food and shelter, in exchange for helping out with the house work.

Our house was originally built in the early 1860's and has been added onto a few times. You can still see the old half log beams under the kitchen and dining room. Parts of the house sag something fierce, but it will all be fixed. It will take some work holding up the second floor while we rebuild the first floor and then readjust everything so the second floor is still straight.

We have some similar problems. A wall was removed in the original living room, and replaced with a too-small re-purposed barn post timber, allowing the second floor to sag. Two basement walls were removed and replaced with timber beams, one of which is way to small for the span, allowing our living room floor to bounce when you walk thru the room. The living room floor will be fixed when we renovate the basement, but the living room ceiling will remain as it is.

Our house has been in my family since its beginning. The oldest portion of the house was built in the 1850's and the large portion of the house was added on in 1906.

Very cool. There were many such houses in my family, up thru my grandparents' generation. Unfortunately, several of them have been sold in the last 20 years.

 

[BrowningBAR]

I am very familiar with the Perry Mansion, although I should go back for another tour. I haven't been in that house since I was a kid, long before I was interested in wood stoves. I always thought it odd they call it "Perry Mansion", though, when the entire house would fit many times over in many of our houses of similar or much older vintage. Perry Mansion, looking mighty small for a mansion:

Which only illustrates the heating needs of old homes. There were four stoves on the first floor of the main portion of the house. One for each room. I did not get to see the rest of the home as it is not accessible. I would guess there were at least four more stoves upstairs.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

It just dawned on me that Ben Franklin invented a woodstove or at least an improvement over an open fireplace. Wiki tells me this was done in 1741. His invention doesn't appear to have worked well, but I bet a lot of people were tinkering around with fireplaces if they had the free time to do so.

1763 colonial not much insulation, with no power and three fireplaces going I could get it to about fifty, I think that's how they lived.

I'm pretty sure they did have lower expectations on heat. If you dress for it, it's not a problem. I wonder if the cooler weather was healthier for them. Bacteria doesn't reproduce as fast and viruses that cause problems in people would quickly die.

 

[BrowningBAR]

If you dress for it, it's not a problem.

As someone that did w inter with the house regularly sitting at 50 during the day and a stretch were the bedroom was 45, I can tell you, no matter how many layers you have on, your hands get cold. You get real tired of that.

 

[Ashful]

Repeating what my mother told me, about visiting my one uncle who lived in the 1740 house without central plumbing or heat, "you went to the bathroom before you left home, and didn't dare drink when you were there." Also, "they lived in basically one room during the winter, where they kept a stove running 24/7, and kept the rest of the house mostly closed off." Not the way I'd want to live, but it never bothered them. In fact, they have a plantation house in Virginia, where they spend a lot of time both summer and winter. That house still has no electricity, so they still live old-school when they're down there. Plumbing is via hand-pump well.

I've never lived without central heat, but I did work in a place with no central heat, and will agree with what BAR said. After so many hours sitting around in 50F, it gets you cold to your core. Very uncomfortable, but if it's all you know...

 

[BrowningBAR]

Repeating what my mother told me, about visiting my one uncle who lived in the 1740 house without central plumbing or heat, "you went to the bathroom before you left home, and didn't dare drink when you were there." Also, "they lived in basically one room during the winter, where they kept a stove running 24/7, and kept the rest of the house mostly closed off." Not the way I'd want to live, but it never bothered them. In fact, they have a plantation house in Virginia, where they spend a lot of time both summer and winter. That house still has no electricity, so they still live old-school when they're down there. Plumbing is via hand-pump well.

I've never lived without central heat, but I did work in a place with no central heat, and will agree with what BAR said. After so many hours sitting around in 50F, it gets you cold to your core. Very uncomfortable, but if it's all you know...

My wife and I watch a lot of old movies on TCM. I pay a attention to movies that show how people lived before 1900. How is it heated? What are they wearing? I notice the frost on the single pane windows and the poor quality doors.

We were watching the 1938 version of A Christmas Carol. When Scrooge first hears the ghosts he is in bed, he is wearing heavy pajamas and a nightcap. He has several thick blankets on the bed, and a curtain around the bed to trap heat. They also showed a roaring fire in the fireplace. And this was portraying the comfort level of a wealthy man. It clearly showed that winter homes were cold and that wealth only offered so much in terms of comfort.

 

[Charles1981]

I think old stone castles version of insulation were huge 6x6 foot fireplaces, hanging tapestries on the wall, and putting brick/stone's heated next to the fireplace under your bed for the evening.

BRRRRR

 

[EatenByLimestone]

As someone that did w inter with the house regularly sitting at 50 during the day and a stretch were the bedroom was 45, I can tell you, no matter how many layers you have on, your hands get cold. You get real tired of that.

In the old section of town here, they went down into the basements for the winter. That should keep them around 50. More if they had a fireplace and the old houses I've been in had them in the basement.

The men of the house were not at home sitting around. I bet they would have been outside where it was colder and the 50 degrees felt very warm. The women were probably working around the fire where it was warmer.

I remember when I was in my young 20s and house poor. I think I kept my house at 55 or so. I can't remember. I was sleeping on a futon and had my sleeping bag on the bed. I remember working 2 jobs to pay for the house and trying to woo my wife with the $30 left over each month. Why she stuck with me is beyond me. I never really noticed the cold. I was only there when I slept .

 

[eclecticcottage]

I've never lived without central heat, but I did work in a place with no central heat, and will agree with what BAR said. After so many hours sitting around in 50F, it gets you cold to your core. Very uncomfortable, but if it's all you know...

Neither the Cottage nor the Old House had central heat. The Cottage did when we bought it, but the copper lines were full of freeze damage and we didn't have the $$ for the infloor heat we wanted to replace it with. So no central heat. The Old House was a bit more annoying cold spot wise, especially the bathroom.

The wind had this place down to 49F Tuesday and it took until the evening to even hit the 60's (running the Republic at about 700 all day, reloading as soon as there was enough room to fit more splits in on the coasl). Yup, that got old QUICK. Sidenote: it's 15 degrees outside now with 0 wind and 75 in here.

 

[Redbarn]

Our oil supplier is a family business in its umpteenth generation and one of their main sales items is still household coal.
Anthracite is their biggest solid fuel sales item. It seems remarkable to me that households still burn coal but it is readily available in SE PA.
On hearing that we were transitioning from oil to wood, they suggested we consider a wood / coal mix.
Apparently this burns hottest and longest of all. This is an old remedy, well proven in drafty old houses in years gone by.
I've not been brave enough to try this in our Jotul insert but did get a trial bag of coal to test.

 

[Cynnergy]

Joful - thanks for taking the time to respond to everyone! It is very cool that you have such fantastic history and property in the family.

As for me, we are in a slightly different situation - there are lots of us who could take on my great-grandparents house (and my grandparents house, and the bunkhouses in the old logging camp, and...) but it is hard to make a living on the BC coast these days. Everyone has moved away for jobs elsewhere. DH and I could probably live there full time (with a big daily commute), but we'd only have my parents and a cousin for company in the winter. I am a bit of a natural hermit and would be ok (runs in the family ) but DH is an extrovert and would go stir crazy.

Maybe when we retire some of the others will consider moving back with us. For now, we feel proud for rescuing one of the cabins and are happy being there for weekends and holidays.

 

[Ashful]

Oh... I forgot to make one of the major points I wanted to argue in my OP! That is on the topic of convective versus radiative heating, with respect to old stone houses.

Like almost any proper old stone house in my area, our exterior walls consist of 18" thick mud-stacked stone, plastered inside and out with lime plaster. End walls containing chimneys can be a bit thicker. Engineers studying heating and insulation sometimes like to treat these walls not as having an "R-value", but as a "thermal mass", the theory being that they're more a constant temperature sink than having any set insulation value. These walls will remain at or very near soil temperature, year round. That makes them actually more efficient or favorable than a typical framed and insulated structure when temperatures take a quick plunge to 0F for a few days, but much less so when we have week after week of 30F average weather.

Now, most classic wood stoves, like my old cast iron Jotuls, are readiative heaters. A radiative heater will try to directly heat objects in their sight path, not relying on air movement. Heat the objects in the room, and the air in the room will assume the temperature of the objects. Conversely, a convective heater directly heats the air, and that air will eventually (very slowly, perhaps never fully, due to the mass differential) heat the objects in the room.

Now coming back around to an old stone house, in which you can NEVER get those exterior walls up to 70F... a radiative stove is fighting a battle it can never win. I can move air to promote convection, and hope that radiation from the stove is falling upon objects, walls and floors in the interior of the home, such that they might heat the air. However, essentially all heat radiated out the back of the stove toward the exterior stone wall, is a loss.

I think that, perhaps, a convective stove might be the more appropriate heater in an old stone house. Now, if I could just get past the way they look...

 

[EatenByLimestone]

The house next to me was the original farmhouse for the area. On the original part of it, the interior walls were brick while the outside walls were stick built. I bet when the fireplace radiated onto them and they warmed up they helped to keep the temperature fluctuations down a bit.

 

[jharkin]

Dont forget that even 'radiant' stoves still put out a lot of heat via convection as well. There have been many threads arguing it and i remember in one i went and dug my old heat transfer text out of the attic and ran some formulas and we ballparked that a cast iron stove with no blower is still pushing almost half its heat ouput via natural convection to the air.

There is a big window next to my stove, I can see this on a sunny winter day watching the heat waves risingin the stoves shadow on the floor.

Didn't you once consider building a large reflective heatshield behind you stove to reflect backside heat into the room? That plus a small box fan back there blowing on the stove back might make a huge difference.

 

[Bigg_Redd]

I've seen mention of many "old drafty farm house(s)" this week, which has piqued my interest. Looking around this old joint, built around 1773, I see one chimney thimble in the basement (walk-out, and likely part of some earlier structure), two on the first floor, and two on the second floor. In fact, there may be two in the basement, for all I know, except the wall where it would exist has been covered in wall board... so who knows?

In any case, the 1773 portion of the house is 1000 sq.ft. per floor exterior, or roughly 800 sq.ft. per floor interior. That's at least FIVE wood stoves for 800 sq.ft. of basement plus 1600 sq.ft. of first and second floor space. It's almost laughable that I'm now trying to keep this same structure warm with one modern EPA stove, but I wonder, how many stoves would have been common in a house of given size? While it seems sensible to have this many stoves to keep the joint warm, keeping them fed must have been a horrendous nightmare, particularly in an age long before chainsaws and hydraulic splitters. How much fuel could a 1770's vintage stove eat per day... times five?

With one Jotul Firelight in this space, I can maintain indoor temps up to 70F down to perhaps 20 - 30F outside, with two large plus one small load per day (4 hours, 9 hours, 11 hours), as dictated by my work schedule. If I let the joint go cold, then I need oil to get back up to temp at outdoor < 30F, but I can maintain pretty well. When we hit single digits, I can't even maintain.

This house has been called a "transition house", in that it was built with a cooking fireplace in the house, and a summer kitchen containing a second cooking fireplace, but it had doors to close off these fireplaces and stove thimbles permanently built into the chimney of each. The theory is that the owners of this house intended to install iron cookstoves in front of each fireplace, but not yet knowing how this tech might work out, wanted to be able to go back to their old cooking fireplaces. I have not verified the validity of this theory, but it was one historian's claim. In any case, we now have one Jotul Firelight 12 installed in the old kitchen fireplace in the main house, and a second one installed in the fireplace in the summer kitchen (now surrounded by a newer addition, and heated separately from the old house).

I'd be interested in seeing some of these other "old drafty farm houses," both in terms of how they were heated in the past, and today.

Did woodstoves even exist on 1770? I want to say they did not or if they did they were horribly crude and non-standard.

I read a book once that made the claim that George Washington burned a cord per day (on average) in the various fireplaces of Mount Vernon.

 

[jharkin]

Did woodstoves even exist on 1770? I want to say they did not or if they did they were horribly crude and non-standard.

I read a book once that made the claim that George Washington burned a cord per day (on average) in the various fireplaces of Mount Vernon.

The Shelburne Museum near Burlington, VT has a gallery of antique woodstoves. Ive seen it and another member here once put pictures up. Early stoves go back well into the 1700s, but those where mostly basic box stoves. There is also Ben's "Franklin Fireplace" mentioned above but its not quite what we would think of as a stove.


I think stoves were around, but not common in the 1700s. In the first couple decades of the 1800s they start to become mass produced as the industrial revolution kicks off and you start to see some really ornate models. Around the same time Count Rumford invented his famous fireplace (1796 ?). What Ive seen in a lot of historic museum houses in New England is that homes built before 1800 have big sqaure box fireplace, or later had them bricked in and rebuilt as Rumfords or had stoves added with the pipe going into the fireplace flue. Homes between 1800 and 1820 often where built with rumford fireplaces in most rooms and possibly some rooms having a dedicated stove from the start (i believe my house is in this group). When the Greek revival architecture style shows up in 1840s you dont see fireplaces at all - just box stoves feeding into one small central chimney. By the Victorian era (1870s on) wealthy homes all have central heat - gravity hot air, gravity hot water, or steam, all usually coal fired. Fireplace come back in the late Victorian era as a decorative item, often coal burning.

When looking at an old house more often then not what we see today is not original, and whether it is or not often depends on how well to do the owners here over the year. The wealthy would chase fad and renovate to the latest styles, even in the 19th century, and hence the biggest most well preserved homes sometimes have the most alterations. If you can find a poor old run down working mans house that's never been updated its more likely to be original.

 

[eclecticcottage]

http://www.spotproperty.com/2632-wilson-cambria-rd-wilson-ny-14172-486110059

This is the brick vernacular I was talking about earlier. It's not on the market any longer, this is a cached site with the listing pics. Ignore the kitchen, that was done by this last owner, it is in the Ell. There is a seperate stairway in the Ell to a large open room upstairs which was not originally open to the rest of the house-we believe this was originally quarters for farm or domestic help. When we first looked at this house about 10-12 years ago, it still had the original wavy glass windows as well as all of the barns and well house, and a porch on the back of the Ell. Now all of the barns are gone, the windows replaced and the porch-also the well house was moved and the well filled. They did NOT replace the roof, or repair failing morter. We planned to keep the porch and use some of the bricks to repair some which were falling apart (these are soft, being early 1800's). Whomever did the windows did not do it properly and they damaged some parts, and one wall now bows. All that said, you can see the main parts of the house that were untouched with the original trimwork and at least one radiator. I believe this place never had fireplaces or stoves (outside of a wood cook stove, which I believe used the brick chimney seen at the back part of the Ell). The town lists the date built as 1820.

 

[Ashful]

Dont forget that even 'radiant' stoves still put out a lot of heat via convection as well. There have been many threads arguing it and i remember in one i went and dug my old heat transfer text out of the attic and ran some formulas and we ballparked that a cast iron stove with no blower is still pushing almost half its heat ouput via natural convection to the air.

Yes, I did not mean to imply otherwise. Stoves marketed as "convective" and "radiant" both use both mechanisms for heating, only the ratios vary.

Did woodstoves even exist on 1770? I want to say they did not or if they did they were horribly crude and non-standard.

Portable wood stoves, as we know them, were mostly invented during the course of the 1700's. In 1700, there was not much to be had, but it was a new and thriving market by 1799. The oldest part of my house was built around 1773 - 1779, and wood stoves were the latest home appliance fad, at that time. Sort of like, 3D TV today... except the stoves actually caught on.

When they built my house, they installed thimbles for iron cook stoves in both the main kitchen and the summer kitchen. However, they still built full cooking fireplaces below those thimbles. Whether the owner intended to cook in the fireplace prior to purchasing one of these new-fangled cook stoves, or cook on the stove from day 1 while keeping their trusty fireplace for when the stove inevitably didn't pan out, we can only guess.

 

[jharkin]

Portable wood stoves, as we know them, were mostly invented during the course of the 1700's. In 1700, there was not much to be had, but it was a new and thriving market by 1799. The oldest part of my house was built around 1773 - 1779, and wood stoves were the latest home appliance fad, at that time. Sort of like, 3D TV today... except the stoves actually caught on.

When they built my house, they installed thimbles for iron cook stoves in both the main kitchen and the summer kitchen. However, they still built full cooking fireplaces below those thimbles. Whether the owner intended to cook in the fireplace prior to purchasing one of these new-fangled cook stoves, or cook on the stove from day 1 while keeping their trusty fireplace for when the stove inevitably didn't pan out, we can only guess.

Ive always found it fascinating to compare notes on our houses Joful, as even though we are in different areas and your place is larger, more ornate and of different construction it seems the builders where in that same transitional period.


Ive shown my stove hearth before:



The fireplace the stove is in is back in the ell. As best we can tell this is original and the ovens where definitely functional, problem is the fireplace opening is waaaay to small, even if we decide the house is later (1820s). There is an actual crane in the hearth (see second pic) and some evidence it was used as a fireplace but still is way to small to have been used for serious cooking in the 1800s.

The paneling around the hearth is all reproduction, on the back side of the stack under the paneling Ive found a concreted in stove thimble which may have been a summer kitchen stove. Its possible there is a thimble hidden on the front or I've had old house experts suggest they may have shoehorned an early steptop stove into the fireplace opening, something like this:

If only I had a time machine!!

 

[hoverwheel]

I read a book once that made the claim that George Washington burned a cord per day (on average) in the various fireplaces of Mount Vernon.

I guess that explains what happened to all the old growth forests!

 

[jharkin]

I guess that explains what happened to all the old growth forests!

Yep, that plus construction. Also prior to the revolution the tallest and straightest Eastern White Pines (many over 200ft tall!) where tagged with a mark as a "King's Tree" and were cut down and shipped back to England to be made into masts for the Royal Navy. Cutting one down to build a house was a serious offense, if you go into a colonial period house and see floorboards or wainscot of boards 3 feet wide they likely came from such a tree and were contraband

 

[BurnIt13]

I guess that explains what happened to all the old growth forests!

It makes sense why these people had tons of servants and slaves. You would need a full time crew just to find, split, and stack wood! Never mind the manpower in bringing in all that wood into the house everyday and to keep the fires going!

Turn back the clock even further to say the renaissance period or before and no wonder why the life expectancy was so low. Life was truly hard!

 

[Dave A.]

On hearing that we were transitioning from oil to wood, they suggested we consider a wood / coal mix. Apparently this burns hottest and longest of all. This is an old remedy, well proven in drafty old houses in years gone by. I've not been brave enough to try this in our Jotul insert but did get a trial bag of coal to test.

Was considering that sort of thing with my too small Century insert that could never heat my house well enough, but read some warnings against doing that as it could cause permanent damage to the stove. The coal supposedly burns too hot for a stove that is not made for it (and apparently no epa stoves are made for coal).