Heat - Readiness series

Ureka! I’ve Discovered Warmth …

I kept it under glass on my desk for years… a newspaper comic featuring two cavemen, both dancing around a flaming log.

   The first was proclaiming: “I’ve discovered fire!”

   The other was shouting as loudly: “I’ve discovered insurance!”

  

Perhaps only insurance agents find that funny…

… which may explain why my search online was unsuccessful, seeking an approved publication to link. Found the actual clipping in an old paper file; so here is a partial image and thumbnail for reference. Appears to be dated 1992.  Maybe Dan Piraro has republished this one in a print book collection.
See http://www.bizarro.com/ for more information.

Anyway, I begin this category with the basic need for warmth, as that would be (after light and water) one essential of wilderness or urban survival, even before making a fire for cooking.  Of course, if one is using a flame for light, there is also potential for resolving several concerns—warmth, pasteurized water and meat, even some defense against wild intruders. But let me start with warmth, assuming you can ignite a candle or oil lamp at the least. (Fire starting is subject for later posting.)

First problem with a flame, large or small, is that the heat escapes upward right readily. Attempting to contain the heat inside a cozy enclosure creates a worse problem: toxic fumes. Never use a gas, wood or charcoal grill inside without generous ventilation (which also carries out the heat); else Mr. Sandman—wielding heavy doses of CO (carbon monoxide)—will be lulling your family to a permanent sleep. This is one reason I advocate burning olive oil… very little of smoke or fume. Even paraffin candles require an open window.

How your fireplace chimney works

Your living room fireplace is actually one giant heat sink (pulls warmth away) whether burning or not. Net result of firing a hearth for an hour is a colder, never a warmer house. Sure, it feels nice sitting round the crackling Yule log. But walk down the hall and actually measure temperature difference, or try sitting tight in a frigid back room from whence the chimney draws its ventilation. (This is probably why the pioneer family cabin was a single room, with beds made close to the cooking hearth.) Even inserts and reflectors never help much. And no, they don’t recommend hooking your fireplace into the forced air system to carry heat back to bedrooms… Why?

You guessed it: First it’s that tell-tale headache; then parents hardly care to watch as the insidious Mr. Carbon-O sneaks in upon safely sleeping babes. So how might a household benefit, heat-wise, from a flame… at least until the sun rises? In other words, how do you insure against a certain, though comfortable, death?

  

There is a way to use fireplace heat more efficiently.* Make a fast and very hot blaze of dry, relatively smokeless fuel. (Pieces of that cast-off end table outside would be perfect.) Soon as it all burns out, leaving few coals and less smoke—shut the flu tight. This flash fire enables firebox bricks (stone or metal) to absorb maximum heat. Closing the chimney stops it from sucking away precious warmth from the house where it is wanted; also cuts the draft through windows and door cracks. Then your family can sleep safe and warm, in the living room at least.

Lower heating bills…

Bedrooms? For that you need some method to carry the heat (and only heat) to the bed or bathroom space. Interestingly, many solutions found online are based upon the very same principle as your super-heated firebox. If only one could detach the fireplace from its chimney and wheel it elsewhere.  With a little advance planning, you can do something like that. Secret is the material composing said firebox.  Ceramic, stone and iron are especially good at storing and dispensing heat… Nature’s energy battery.

If your patio barbeque is already on wheels, you could super-charge bricks or rocks outside on the grill, shut off the gas and drag the whole thing into your bedroom. (Again, one should never use a grill fire to actively heat inside space.)

Another answer is the cast-iron Dutch oven; you know, that heavy thing stored unused with your camping equipment. Actually any covered iron pot will do. Grab some bricks, stones or ceramic tiles. Set some down on your bedroom floor as a base.  Cook the others thoroughly on all sides in a fast hot fire (outside or in your fireplace). Warm up the pot as well. Then use tongs or thick asbestos mittens to pack your pot with hot rocks.

Then it’s simply the same idea as that Swedish sauna you always dreamed about building. Except these rocks are carried to the bedroom in their pot to set down safely upon the base prepared. One small bucket of scalding stone will keep a small room from freezing overnight. 

Want more heat? Lift the pot’s lid. 

Need moister heat? Splash some water on the rocks.

Just make certain that Baby can’t crawl too close—but that goes for any heat source after all. You know… Insurance.

One more warning: Make sure your rocks or bricks were not soaked through before heating, as water trapped in hidden cracks turns to steam with great combustive potential. (That would be your inner insurance analyst speaking yet again.)

For warming bed sheets or chilly hands, drop a rock (not too hot) into a woolen sock for easy carrying:

Happy Rock

And next for your enrichment, further methods of harvesting heat from inert material: Stay tuned for more McGyver-styled space heaters constructed of stuff scrounged from about the house. 

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*Of course, a wood stove can be an efficient though less romantic home heater. But it must be installed away from walls so that air is heated all around. Then the house forced-air system needs intake vents in the main room, in order to deliver heated air throughout.