Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: heating ideas

[Graham Meltzer (g.meltzer]

Jerry Jameson writes

>To anyone listening
>I am on the verge of colonizing  a great industrial space
>located in Brooklyn NY to create a multiple shared living, and artist
>workspace.
>the  dimensions are about 50 x 30 ft with 22 ft ceiling (roof)
>Sturdy masonry walls with industrial windows. Typical of 50's
>construction.
>
>I am searching for inexpensive strategies or technologies to keep the space
>warm for winter.Whilst gas and electrical supply is plentiful, our budget is
>tiny.

In Denmark (and elsewhere in Scandanavia) they have this really neat thing
called a Finnish Mass Stove.
Its a large brick furnace with a wonderfull system of burning chambers and
flues which somehow cuases the fuel to be burnt and then the gases to be
burnt as well. The internal workings are a mystery to me and in order to
build one, you'd need to use precise plans and preferably someone who had
built one before.

But the bottom lines is this ... 
   - they can be built very inexpensively with recycled bricks
   - they burn amazingly efficiently ... one small lump of the right
firewood per day
   - the heat is very solid 
   - they can have aditional baking and water heating facilities built in
   - they look beautiful
   - the smoke is particularly clean having had its impurities already burn off.

Graham Meltzer 

School of Architecture, Interior and Industrial Design
Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia.
Tel:(07)864 2535(w)  (07)870 2090(h)  Fax: (07)864 1528

"The neccessity to unite with other human beings, to be related to them,
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