Sep 16, 2024 Hi Jim, I believe we corresponded last in March 2000. Glad to see you are still around. I now have white hair and a grandson. 26 years ago, or so, I flew to Tucson AZ to buy several of your Rumford fireplaces that I put in a container and shipped to the earthbrick home we were building on Waiheke Island, New Zealand. See the results. The two smaller 24" Rumfords in the bedrooms were soon sealed off because the wind noise from the chimney during gales kept us awake, but the 48" ones get regular use. What we call winter, the Irish call summer - typically 50-60 F in the winter, never below 40, but we call it 'fire TV' and burn a decent amount of dry radiata pine on dark evenings. We designed our hearths with a cooking hinge & hook and a stand-alone egg cooker that you can see in the photo below. We installed a 48" Rumford in the kitchen where we spend most of our time (we don't have a living room or dining room). Unlike the 48" we installed in the art gallery, which works fine with the hearth on the floor, we found we had to raise the floor by 7" using steel plate to get it to not smoke. The room is about 20' x 36' with a 9' ceiling and it is completely non-combustible. The floor is marble tile over concrete. The walls are 12" thick earthbrick - a type of Roman concrete. The roof above the second floor are Italian clay tiles. As such it has zero air leaks. The only way mice get in is walking through an open door or window.

This is the kitchen fireplace. You can see the steel plate we installed 7" above the bottom firebrick. And it still does smoke sometimes. In order to feed the fire, we retrofitted a 2' x 1' guillotine air intake on the opposite room with a Bristol 405 grill to keep out the mice (a Bristol is a very rare English car) My wife is a serious cook, and last year upgraded to a Lacanche stove, gas and electric combo. Last week the excessively noisy and not very effective kitchen fan died. I purchased a commercial kitchen fan and installed it outside the building to control the noise. It came with a very sophisticated controller, where top speed is 50, but I was able to dial it back to 17 to extract all the smoke from the stove. I also installed a green "on" light because it is so quiet it is easy to forget that it is on.

Even at this low speed however, when the fan is on we are getting a backdraft from the unlit Rumford fireplace. One can smell the ashes and see them floating in the air. While I will sort the air intake, it's time to update the Rumford to control air flow when not in use. We have to open a window to allow enough air in, and I plan to make a new hole in the wall that is out of the howling sou-westerlies. When I bought the fireplace kit from your Tucson dealer, I also ordered a set of ceramic glass panels that have been sitting in the garage ever since in their wooden packing crate. The panels were very expensive at the time, but a whole lot less than in NZ, and eventually I planned to make fireplace doors. Now, it is time to get serious about it. I mostly want to use them when the fireplace is not in service. This includes when it is bedtime, and there are still hot coals but no active fire. Because we have a heat-pump in the kitchen,

we now just use a bit of signboard (which is combustible) to block the airflow. I did buy a damper when we installed it, but found it did not work, so I pulled it out. It seems I have three options. Guillotine drop down design Hinged doors opening out Sliding doors to left and right Among other things, I have a brilliant welder where we manufacture tiny home trailers (see https://boxtrailers.nz/) so I have access to good workmanship. I do not intend to use the doors with a roaring fire - we do not have any emissions rules and my wife is a bit OCD when it comes to cleaning and does not want two more glass panels to clean after every fire. But I do want it to be fully sealed when the doors are closed. Do you have any recommendations, and even better any plans my welder could follow? Thanks Claude Lewenz

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Sep 21, 2024 Claude, Nice to hear from you. I do like to keep track of my old customers and old Rumfords. The problem with your kitchen fireplace, as I think you know, is lack of or lack of managing exterior make-up air. Clearly when the stove fan is on you need to provide enough makeup air for that fan to prevent it from drawing air down the chimney. You have probably already read them but refresh you memory with our smoky fireplace checklist and with our comments on main-up air. Fireplace doors are not to solution for downdrafts. First of all they leak too much. A gasketed damper is much better.

The perimeter of the door you would have to seal or gasket is many times the perimeter of a damper. Secondly, you should never have a downdraft in a chimney even the there is no fire in the fireplace. You are basically ventilating your home down the chimney because you haven’t provided a better way to make up the air lost or pumper out by other appliances like the stove fan. Also closing fireplace doors on a dying fire only blocks the radiant heat from the still hot firebox. See further comments. Tell you wife she only has to clean the glass you bought one time and then use the glass for a cold frame out in the yard. Your home is lovely and I appreciate it's construction. It should last hundreds of years. Best, Jim

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