The Rural Voice, 1993-12, Page 42RURAL LIVING
More than just a warm memory
High tech has made the modern wood stove, and its cousins, grains
stoves, etc. a very modern way to heat your home
By Corinne Robertson -Brown
Every since people first put heated
rocks into a hole in the ground,
stoves have played an important role
in keeping us both warm and fed.
Mud, rocks, and tile have all been
used, some to this day, to contain a
wood fire.
Marshall Byle is the owner of The
Chimney Sweep's Stove Parlour &
Gallery in Tiverton, Ontario, and is
the past president of the
Ontario Chimney Sweep
Association. He has been in
the wood stove business for
15 years, and has seen the
recent renewal of interest in
wood burning stoves.
"Just after I started in
business, the oil substitution
program of the Tate 70s —
early 80s encouraged people
to use alternate sources of
energy. At that time, there
were no rules on installation.
Insurance companies were
not pleased. The Chimney
Sweep Association put
together a task force to get
current codes on solid fuel
installation, as well as
certified people. I got
involved with the training,
as I was the president of the
CSA at the time."
Recent technology and
training have combincd to
modernize some of the oldest
ideas around. One of the first uses of
metals was to build a stove. Melted
iron was poured into sand moulds in
early China — 25 to 200 A.D. — for
the earliest cast iron stoves. The
technology was slow to spread, and
Europe didn't use cast iron stoves
until the 1400s. In 1490, in Alsace,
the first recorded stove was built
entirely of brick and tile, including
the flue. Back then, the word "stove"
actually meant a single room in the
house that was kept hot and opened
into other rooms to provide heat
them. Later, the Scandinavians
developed the technology of having a
tall, hollow iron flue that contained
iron baffles arranged so that the
escape of hot gasses was slowed
down considerably, extracting
maximum heat. Russian stoves had
as many as six thick-walled masonry
flues, for the same purpose.
parts of the stoves. In the U.S., many
of the moulds used came from a
German supplier, with German words
inscribed on them. As a result, some
of these early stoves became known
as German stoves
Most of these stoves were not
suitable for cooking, although a small
pan could be put on top of them. By
the mid -1700s, some were
incorporating an oven
chamber into stoves. The
efficiency of these early
stoves probably hovered
around 17 per cent.
In 1740, the threat of a
fuelwood shortage around
Philadelphia spurred
inventor Benjamin Franklin,
and in 1742 he designed a
cast iron stove with a
partially open front that
radiated more heat and
burned less fuel. It was
designed to fit into a
fireplace or be used free-
standing. The Franklin
stove, or "Philadelphia
Fireplace" burned wood on
a grate fed by a draft.
Similar stoves have been
widely used for heating for
more than two centuries.
One of Franklin's
innovations was to have all
the metal joints sealed to
eliminate unplanned drafts.
"Airtight" has since become a generic
name for a class of stoves that have
tight joints and a controlled draft.
Franklin also recognized the need
to burn the smoke of the wood or
coal, not simply the fuel itself. He
continued to experiment with
downdrafts and various designs. As a
philanthropic gesture, he declined to
patent his stove, reasoning that he
had benefitted himself from the
inventions of others. As a result,
people manufacturing his stoves (or
Various materials have been used to make stoves. This Jotul
wood stove is made of graphite.
38 THE RURAL VOICE
Stove making became part of an
early industry in the American
colonies. The first manufactured cast
iron stove was made at Lynn,
Massachusetts, in 1642, and more
were produced in 1647 at a blast
furnace in Saugus, Mass. Often little
more than iron boxes with no grates,
these developed further as people
sought to make fireplaces more
efficient and distribute the heat more
evenly. Early manufacturers often
cast intricate designs into the visible