Our Country Cottage A Narrative

  A masonry heater is quite different from your standard fireplace or wood burning stove. A Fireplace or wood burning stove has a fire box with the chimney directly above it. The heat generated by the burning wood heats the immediate area around it and the smoke and some heat go up the chimney. In free standing, air tight and semi air tight, wood burning stoves, there are controls to regulate the amount of air entering the device and thus the intensity of the fire. This is done to prevent overheating and to prolong the burn. These types of wood burners do not retain much heat, so if wood is not burning there is no heat. Who wants to get up in the middle of the night to stoke the fire. Unfortunately, slowing the burn lowers the temperature of the burning wood resulting in more pollution and residue. I know this for a fact because our contractor built a fire in our masonry heater once and closed the fresh air intake to the point where he was used to running other fireplaces he had used. The same day he report