Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: rocking our fireplace--Russian type

[Lynn Nadeau (welcome]

Sanda Everette wrote suggesting a masonry heating stove. The type of 
Russian stove my sister has might not work well for a common house. 
Besides taking up a lot of space and costing a lot to build, it requires 
a certain schedule for tending the fire. The aim is to create a thermal 
mass with residual heat that will slowly radiate over the long term. This 
is accomplished by creating a small hot fire at certain times of day, and 
damping and undamping it appropriately. This works if you're around at 
the "right" times, but being in and out on work and errands, my sister 
found that they often missed the schedule. And they couldn't heat it up 
fast when they then wanted heat. I can only imagine a common house would 
find this even more challenging, as someone(s) would have to have that 
responsibility, ongoing. 

So check out that aspect. If your goal is more a visual "hearth", with 
heat on a short-term basis, when there is a group in the common house, a 
more conventional fireplace or stove could be  appropriate. 

At RoseWind we are saving a place for a hearth, and one possibility we 
are looking at is a propane-fired stove --- which gives flames to watch 
and makes no mess--- with a field-stone fireplace around it for the look. 
One of our families has such a thing in their home, and it's rather 
attractive. 

A stone project is also a chance to invite each community member to 
contribute one or more stones of their choice -- perhaps stones 
significant to them-- in a way that symbolizes each person's 
participation in the whole. (And how many of us have stones we have 
inexplicably held onto, from a trip or a previous home -- a good thing to 
do with them!) Kids especially like to check on "their stone". 

Lynn Nadeau, RoseWind Cohousing, Port Townsend WA
where our last lots are available (to join the 20 existing member 
families) and our collection of individually designed houses now numbers 
twelve, with another -- a strawbale-- getting its walls raised August 
1-2, 1998. For the first time in our nine-year existence, we now have the 
majority of our residents on site.