Pretorius Rumford in South Africa

Buckley Rumford Fireplaces
Pretorius Rumford in South Africa
7/11/21

Jim,
Hope you are well. Just want to show you the finalized project. We built the house and most part of the Rumford using poured earth, stabilized with lime. The chimney with clay bricks. We made the throat with cob (clay, sand and straw)
Have a great day
Jannie Pretorius
Earthworm Farmer
0783343867
www.erdwurmboer.co.za
Permaculture begins at home
Jannie,
Thank you for the report and the pictures. Great job. I like the poured or rammed earth look. A question and a request: Why didn’t you use poured earth or cob instead of clay brick for the chimney? And please let me know, after your heating season, how the poured earth firebox holds up.
Best,
Jim

On Jun 29, 2020, at 6:36 AM, Jannie Pretorius wrote:
Jim,
I am from South Africa and I've also asked for help on your Facebook page. We are busy building a house and we would like to install a Rumford fireplace. I googled about Rumfords in South Africa and saw that two others from here asked about components. On one of the comments you made mention that you would like to get distributors in South Africa. Are you still looking to expand your business? If so, please talk to me?
One of my problems at building my own Rumford is the lack of metric measurements. Do you maybe have plans for the 5 Foot Rumford in Metric? I would appreciate if you could help with that.
Hope to hear from you?
Regards
Jannie Pretorius
On 29 Jun 2020, at 7:34 PM, Jim Buckley wrote: Jannie, The problem in building our Rumfords in South Africa is that the cost of our components, with shipping, is high and labor there, I’m told is cheap. That’s why the guy featured at http://www.rumford.com/Fischer.html built his own Rumford which took a couple of weeks but didn’t cost much in labor or materials.
If you do want to build your own Rumford I will be happy to help. And there are other examples linked from http://www.rumford.com/doityourself.html On the other hand, if you want it built correctly the first time in a few days we will be happy to give you a quote for our components.
Our dimensions are, as you say, all imperial rather than metric but conversion tables are readily available. We could start with the five foot Rumford plan at http://www.rumford.com/R6054plan.gif and change the dimensions to metric dimensions:
The width would be 1524 mm (each throat tile is 304.8 mm wide)
Height of opening about 1,400 mm give or take 100 mm
Throat tile depth 12” or 304.8 mm
Throat height 13.5” or 343 mm (or three firebrick laid on edge)
Smoke chamber 762 mm high with top to fit a 20”x20” clay flue (about 18” square inside with rounded corners for an area of 298 sq.in. or about 0.2 square meters)
Flues maybe you can get locally or build with firebrick with an area ten percent of the fireplacce opening or about 0.2 square meters.
Best,
Jim Buckley