Kimmels Coal Corportion

NoSmoke wrote:The temperature in our house is different depending on where you go, and at what time of day ... when the temp hits 72 degrees in the Great Room, we feel chilled and will fire up the wood stove. We just have gotten used to living in 80 degree temperatures.

We have an old drafty house, and having one room colder than another increases the drafts and makes us feel colder, just due to more air movement.

NoSmoke wrote:One thing I did for our stove though, is add a lot of thermal mass. I hauled in about a ton of rocks and placed them behind the stove

Good idea. The Russian Fireplace technique. I don't think my better half would go for a ton of rocks in the living room, however. Can you post a picture?

Sure.

The one thing I should say about this is though, the heat the thermal mass gives off does not really go far. It only heats the room it is in.

Looks like my foundation walls, when I go down cellar.

My Grandmother told me years ago that with all my rock wall building I was going to use up all the rocks on the farm.

Now she should have known better then that. I have picked rocks out of these fields all my life and can tell you...by swearing on my Late Grandmother's grave no less...that come spring, they walk back into the fields again. Maine does not have a lot of coal, but the one thing it does have is rocks. Plenty of them, and the worse job on the farm has got to be picking rocks! (Okay, maybe gathering up retained after-birth from a Holstein cow has first place, but it still sucks).