When I was building my house, I decided to install a northern European style masonry heater that differs from a typical wood stove in several ways:

a.) You load the fire box and burn it hot. Because the fire gets all the air it needs the combustion is very efficient with little smoke or creosote in the exhaust gases. Instead of going right up the chimney, the hot combustion gases follow a serpentine path and transfer heat to the walls of the masonry path they go through. Therefore, the fire lasts about an hour, but the heat soaked into the masonry mass radiates out for a day or more. It is a very even heat. We burn twice a day when it really gets cold.
b.) Except for the metal and glass door, a masonry heater does not get dangerously hot. In fact, you can lean against it and get warm quickly. It is the next best thing to a hot shower.

My indentured servent...I mean my son, who--along with my other kids--enthusiastically offers to bring in the wood (ha ha).	This is a typical load. It might have more layers or fewer, depending on the size of the wood. We usually burn this much twice a day when it's cold.

After 6 years of depending on the masonry stove for all of my winter heat without any problems, I cannot imagine returning to the noisy, unreliable furnaces that I used to have to deal with. However, the disadvantages are not lost on me.

a.) It takes up more space than a typical metal stove (“architectural feature” is the way the Toronto company I got the core from put it).

b.) There is an up front investment of thousands of dollars just for the core. That does not include the foundation (the heater is very heavy), chimney--and skilled labor if you hire someone to install it. The core must be faced with a masonry material. I used river stone, and it was a lot of work. I do not have any backup heat, but most people would, and that would be an additional expense.

c.) The wood needs to be split and seasoned (dried out). This means keeping it out of the rain, too. Actually, any kind of wood stove should get dry wood.

d.) This also applies to all wood stoves. Chimneys that go up an outside wall are a bad idea. In particular regarding masonry stoves, the envelope of cold air they harbor makes starting a new fire difficult because it doesn't draw properly until the cold air is replaced with hot air. Having a chimney inside the house gives you a warm air envelope in the chimney ready to start drawing right away.

e). It helps if your floor plan on the level that you have the heater is open, to distribute the heat.

I bought a stainless steel coil and installed it in the heater to heat some of the domestic hot water (showers, laundry, dishwashing) for my family.

My friend Greg Kohler calls this "The Fire Channel." We never get tired of it. Fire roars through the bake oven on top (really cool). After the wood has burned to coals, you can bake in the oven. The hot combustion gases first go up, then all the way back down along the sides through heat exchanger channels and finally up the chimney (in back)..	Here is a scratched picture from about 1998 when I was just finishing the stove, except for the doors. I was also making my own kitchen cabinets and drawers (seen scattered around). Both can be done as a do-it-yourself project, but neither is what you would call a "weekend project."

When we moved from the city to our house in the country, I wanted something that would attract the whole family to one place, rather than be scattered throughout the house.The masonry stove does that. It replaced the TV, which we left in the city. Did I mention that it's great for drying clothes on, too?

If you can travel to my house (in Williamsport, Pennsylvania up Bottle Run Road, 3 miles west of Lycoming Creek Road) I can show you my masonry heater. I'm happy to answer questions and go into details, either by phone or e-mail. Contact me.

There are at least two ways to go about buying a masonry heater. I bought the core from a company in Toronto, Canada, and did all the rest of the work myself. Some people hire local masons then to build the foundation, chimney and facing. There are now enough masons in North America to build the heaters from scratch, on location with fire brick. Each way has advantages and disadvantages that I can tell you more about.

Below are some good links about masonry heaters. And you can find other links there about cool related subjects like old fashioned, wood fired bake ovens. Lots of gorgeous photographs to drool over, too.

This Masonry Heater Association (MHA)"Virtual Mall" is a good place to start. http://mha-net.org/html/mall.htm

http://mha-net.org/index.htm This is the home page of the MHA. I really enjoyed reading about some of the member's work in a village in Guatemala with cook stoves. Here too http://mha-net.org/docs/v8n2/docs/mom-2005report.htm

If you are a do-it-yourselfer, these people are selling plans http://www.singingfalls.com/masonry_furnace.html Note that I have not actually viewed this CD. Check out their home page, too. They are shepherds, hand-spinners and weavers of mohair http://www.singingfalls.com/index.html

This page is just sort of fun to see how they make a masonry bake oven--something I've always wanted to do. http://mha-net.org/html/projects.htm