Help me with my Colonial Masonry Oven/Stove/Heater ... please?

[sullis3]

Here’s what I hope is an interesting and fun example of colonial stonework. I have lots of questions, but I’m optimistic someone will be interested enough to endure my descriptions and offer some thoughts or feedback. I recently bought a home in NH that was built in 1742. One intriguing feature is a massive brick edifice built into the kitchen, containing a brick oven and two other locations for either cooking or heating. I love to cook and want to fully understand what we have here and what's needed to do to bring it into full working condition.

Here's an image showing multiple views and close-ups of the features. I’ve labeled them for ease of discussion, and provided full descriptions as best I can.

A. The Brick Oven seems to be in perfect condition. Behind the cast iron door is a cavernous dome-ceilinged oven at least 4 feet deep. The door is in great shape and the oven is clean
B. Directly below the brick oven is a solid cast iron door. Opening the door reveals a plain rectangular cutout in the brick face that opens into a square vertical chimney shaft. I’m not sure what the function of this door is – it doesn’t seem to be ash cleaning, as there’s no flat surface anywhere for debris to collect. This would also preclude building any fire there either. The door itself is in good shape except for one corner which is broken off. We have the broken piece, but it doesn’t affect the functionality of the door at all.
C. A 24.5†diameter round cutout on the flat top of the construct. There is a slight chamfer/taper at the edge of the brick circumference, so I’m wondering if this was sized for a large pot that would be used to heat water. There is a fairly rough cutout in the face of the adjacent wall that is one brick width deep– maybe added after the fact to allow the pot to be removed and replaced easily? It’s hard to see in the photo so I added black rectangles to indicate where there is a channel in the brick that connects this recess through to the chimney. A close-up is shown in Image 5.
D. This appears to be a wood-loading cutout to allow a fire heating feature C to be fed and maintained. Image 6 is a close-up of this feature. There is no door to this cutout, though. There is easy access to a rectangular slot at the bottom of the cavity (which can be seen in Image 5).
E. This appears to be a woodstove pipe connection into the chimney. It is closed off at the moment, but appears fully functional.
F. This feature (shown in close-up in Image 8) is a 14†x 21.5†rectangular cutout on the top surface. Unlike the round cutout C, there is no exhaust channel leading out of the cavity, which leads me to believe it housed a cover (cast iron flat cooking surface, perhaps?) that vented via a chimney to the connection E.
G. Another rectangular cutout (shown in Image 7) similar to D is located beneath feature F. This likewise appears to be feed door for adding wood to a fire.
H. Lastly, the opposite side of the whole thing houses a brick fireplace, which can be seen in the inset Image 4. Presumably all of the chimney lines (B, the channel in C, and E) connect into this main chimney.

Inspections were recently completed, and confirmed that all of the chimneys have recently be relined and are in pristine condition. I also grew up with woodstoves and have been heating with them through New England winters for my entire adult life, so the prospect of maintaining some good cooking/heating fires isn’t frightening me off. But now what do we do? It’s challenging for a neophyte to this old-style construction to identify what is needed to get everything up and running, or even to feel confident that we have figured everything out. Here are some questions (in no particular order):

1. Do I have anything grossly wrong in my descriptions above, or my conclusions about the function and use of each element?
2. Feel free to correct/educate me on terminology! I suspect I’m sounding like a fool with the names I’m using for the various features - luckily it’s comfortable territory for me
3. What is the purpose of the door B?
4. Are there supposed to be cast iron doors, akin to the one on the brick oven A or the access port B, on the feed boxes D and G? It seems to me that you’d want something like that?
5. In the view shown in Image 5, what is the purpose of the rectangular cutout at the bottom of the cavity? Would that contain the actual fire, with the pot setting on the corner blocks shown? That would allow smoke and heat to escape from the channel through the angled chamfers. That would make for one huge pot though - where does one go to find/commission such a thing? Could we alternatively commission a large cast iron deep skillet to provide a flat cooking surface?
6. Can anybody point me to a reference describing the piece that would sit on F and connect to E? As before, where does one go to find/commission such a thing?
7. What should I be asking that I’m not, and don’t realize I should be thinking about?
8. Can anybody point me to some good references or resource material? I’ve been eyeing David Lyle’s “The Book of Masonry Stoves: Rediscovering an Old Way of Warming†and would love some feedback as to if that might suit my needs. Also, online references, liks, or images are happily accepted

Any help/insight would be GREATLY appreciated. Let me know if any more information is needed and I’ll be happy to measure or examine to find an answer! Thanks! - Shaun

 

[daleeper]

About all I can say is

WOW

That is one massive masonry heater.

Hopefully someone will come along that actually knows something about that round "c" and "f" and help you with them.

About all I can do is point you to a web site that might lead you to some folks that work with masonry heaters.

This is an association of builders, and has a large library of information on masonry heaters:

http://mha-net.org/

Good luck and keep us posted as you discover more information about this beast.

By the way, I think I have Lyle's book around here somewhere, I will try to find it, and if it has something relevent about your particular heater, I will let you know. I can't say that I recall seeing anything like this of the top of my head.

 

[cmonSTART]

Welcome to the forum!

That is a really great old brick structure! If you don't mind, where are you located in Southern NH? If you want to find more information I would suggest trying your local historical society to see if they can tell you anything, or some local masons or sweeps who tend to specialize in older fireplaces. I may be able to give you some references depending on where you are.

 

[sullis3]

Hi again,


daleeper: that was pretty much my reaction too. I fell in love with this thing right away! Thanks for the masonry heater link … I’ve been there and found some really good information about the heating applications, but hadn’t found much about cooking applications beyond this interesting article:

http://mha-net.org/docs/v8n2/wildac08d.htm

I may end up pinging some of the contacts from their membership list though, and there are some members in New Hampshire that might be willing to lend a thought or two. And thanks for offering to look at the Lyle book – if you find it I’d love to know if it’s worth getting. Eventually I’ll have to find some suitable reference to have on hand for showing dinner guests how it all works.


cmonSTART: thanks for the welcome! I’m in Deerfield (about 30 minutes from Manchester, 40 from Portsmouth, 40 from Concord). If you have any references or know of anybody that I might be able to hire or bribe with a beer to come out and look this over with me I’d be very grateful!


-Sean

 

[btuser]

What the hell you waiting for? Fire it up!

Seriously, keep us posted. That's really cool.

 

[HollowHill]

Man, that is really something. I'm somewhat familiar with old center chimneys as I lived in a 1790s house for a number of years. However, I'm no expert and it's hard to make out details with the pics, but here are my guesses. First off, that doesn't look to be 1700s vintage to me. Cast iron doors don't look to be 18th century to me, but I could be wrong, hard to tell with the pics. May have been a 19th century improvement! The bake oven (B) is like the one I had in my center chimney. the bake oven was on top and mine had a square opening into another chamber below. From what I've read, I believe you started a hot fire in the bake oven and when it died down, raked out the ashes and then used the oven with its retained heat. I never did figure out what the chamber below was for - kinda thought maybe for storing kindling.??? The round chamber looks to me like it might have been for heating water and for laundry use??? I know I've seen similar setups in English homes and that's what it was used for - laundry and hot water supply. I'd sure as heck find out a lot more about it before I used it, not sure I would ever use it, but what fun that will be! I second the suggestion of contacting historical societies and museums for further help and reference. Good luck!

 

[jimbom]

What a beautiful structure. One simple test may help you determine the approximate age of the brick. Find a few representative horizontal brick surfaces and put a drop of water on each with an eye dropper. If the water is absorbed quickly, the brick is soft, absorbent, and likely to be older. In the seventeen hundreds, local brick making operations often produced soft brick. If the brick does not absorb the water quickly, it may be of more modern manufacture. That may help you determine which era to search for information.

Another check would be to go to the foundation of the structure. If it is founded on large rubble type stones - likely to be old. If Portland cement concrete - more recent construction.

The age does not detract from the beauty or unique nature of this structure, just gives you time frames to help finding information.

 

[fishingpol]

I'm with Hollowhill on this one. It seems to be later, possibly victorian era. I think the round part (c) and (f) was a wash area as previously mentioned. The wall below the stove outlet (f) looks to be re-pointed or was walled in at some time.

It still is a fascinating set-up. There are quite a few colonial era houses in NH. and Ma. that are museums that you could possible visit and see period brick work up close and compare to yours.

 

[sauer]

It looks like you might have 3 chimneys comming out of that thing? "E" looks like a plugged flue

 

[DexterDay]

Wow............. Yep................. Wow............... Welcome to the Furm. Very beautiful set-up you have. I hope you can get the info you are searching for. Aagin, Welcome and ............. Wow.

 

[branchburner]

Pretty neat. I would definitely try to find someone local who knows about masonry heaters and/or antique brickwork to take a look. Give Goodrich Masonry in Epping a call, maybe they can help.

The big question I would have is whether this was well-designed to be an efficient masonry heater, or if it is just a massive heat sink that is not going to re-radiate much heat back to the living area. Of course, it would still be great fun to cook with it.

With original brick center-chimney structures (I have an early 1700s Cape myself) it seems you need all the fireplaces going for many days to get that mass really warm. Even then, the open fires are sucking in cool outside air. So they really have poor efficiency. Hopefully, your structure was designed with heat retention in mind. Imagine the difference in traditional home heating if New England had instead been New Finland or New Russia!

I would agree with others that this is a much later addition and not the more standard, traditional beehive-type design. If you can't contact a previous owner of the house, maybe ask around town to find someone at least familiar with the house, and maybe they can give some info.

 

[Fsappo]

Welcome to the forums. That is awesome. I would be dreaming about cold weather coming so I could heat like they did centuries ago. Please please when the cold weather arrives, use every orifice in that thing and give us some photos and a play by play.

Not much to offer in the way of help from me, but I am excited for you.

 

[sullis3]

It's been awhile, but we have a lot of new information about this piece now.

It turns out that everything was as beautifully built as we could have hoped for. The pit under the large circular cutout - which would house the kettle containing the day's warm water - is cleanly connected into the chimney. The pit under the rectangular cutout - which probably housed another basin for water, or for cleaning dishes, or whatever - is also cleanly connected into the chimney. Most exciting of all, the Brick Oven is connected cleanly into the chimney - all of the courseways are clear and continuous. Needless to say, we were extremely excited to find this out!

And now the bad news ... to test the system, we stoked a small fire in the Brick Oven. The chimney drafted wonderfully - as did all of the brickwork. It looks like the brick/mortar is old enough that it is no longer a tight seal, and acts porous. Smoke literally came through the brickwork itself and filled the kitchen in minutes.

Is this a typical issue with masonry that is 150 years old (we've also come to the conclusion that this part of the house was built well after the original 1742 section)? Is there anything one can do about it?

I'm hoping against hope that someone is going to suggest a product that we'll be able to burn in the Brick Oven which will outgas some material that seeps back into the brick and mortar and seals it back up. We can't pay to have the entire smokeway repointed/sealed by hand right now (maybe in a few years, if that's the only option), but are still hoping that there's some creative solution to treating old brick that acts more like new cheesecloth when it comes to acting as a gas barrier.

Any thoughts or ideas? And thanks in advance - it's been fun learning about this piece and having a talented mason work with us to refurbish parts of the house!

- Shaun

 

[firefighterjake]

I somehow missed this thread the first time it was posted . . . no answers to your questions . . . but a very neat heater. I hope you are able to get it in working order.

 

[ScotO]

I am a BIG fan of this style of colonial masonry and I would venture to say that you have an 18th century (AKA 1700's) setup here, although it looks to have been possibly repointed/bricked/doored at some time in the past......I think for the most part you nailed it as far as describing what you have and what this "at one time modern" appliance was used for....this would have been pretty much state-of-the-art for a home in that era...you need to get a quailified mason, preferably with historical knoweledg and experience with these types of fireplaces......that large circle shaped opening is most definately for a kettle, be it for heating water or washing the laundry, or for cooking large meals, even maple-sugaring which was once a must-do if you wanted sugar in that era.....the stone oven usually was set up as this: you built a fire in the one back corner, got it good and hot, and as the flames died off you baked your bread, etc........those old ovens were well designed and could easily achieve a 500 to 600 degree core temperature!...anyway, keep us posted and get that thing back in working condition, wish I lived closer I would help you, I love doing that masonry restoration!!