Hi Jim, Thank you for the reply. I have been reading and coming back to your website for so many years it's a pleasure to speak to you! I attach the photos I could find of the Rumford I built in Bhutan. I built other fireplaces in the past but it was the first time I tried a Rumford. Bhutanese have absolutely no clue how to build fireplaces. They use 2mm thick iron stoves (super hot then super cold). The fireplace is still in use today and works very well. As Bhutan is a Buddhist country, the house where the Rumford stands was meant to be used as a retreat cabin. It was indeed used for a long 3 years strict retreat. Just last year I met the man who spent three years in it. He said "the fireplace ('bukari' as they call it) works fantastic". It's not really as good as it should have been. Bhutan is remote. I managed to find some kind of lime, some so called 'portland cement', some cast iron, some firebricks, etc... I poured a mixture of lime, cement and some tar strange looking material (they use it for laying bricks in kilns) into a frame to create the rounded throat (I had to guess the curvature based on what I saw on the website). The floor and the back of the hearth are made of a thick plate of cast iron. Everything else is built out of bricks. I built a hot air ventilation system. The air arrives under the cast iron floor then flows up behind the cast iron back and comes out above the fireplace.The surround of the fireplace is made of local stones and of a clay/cow dung plaster. There should have been more space between the surround and the hearth but I chickened out a bit. Next one should be bolder. I'm sorry I didn't take photos during the construction. I'm also sending you the other fireplace I built in Bhutan for a hotel, it's not a Rumford, way too deep, no rounded throat. It follows a 3,4,5 rule, 3 depth, 4 height and 5 width. It has hot air ventilation. It took a year to build. All the stone blocks arrived as boulders from the quarry, I had to cut them into shape with my 9" angle grinder. The main mantle piece weighs 1320lbs. The face is carved in the mantel stone. The brick flue liner is 40 feet tall and had to avoid a bathroom on the 1st floor and a bedroom on the 2nd floor. I made friends with the Indian muslim masons and hindus carpenters. The fireplace worked great for the show which is what they wanted, but the heat wasn't that great. The hall was extremely drafty, very big with no insulation, and the tall chimney combined with a deep hearth saw a lot of calories wasted in my opinion. Anyway, sorry about all this blabla. Ok, thanks Jim, Yann Devorsine

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