The interior of a masonry stove is usually made of brick. The exterior tiles can be brick, stone, stucco, or a combination of these materials. Many vintage masonry stoves, like this one in Catherine Palace, St. Petersburg, are works of art. Wikipedia
Homeowners trying to cut their heating bills may be better off looking to the past for the most efficient heating technology. The tile stove (sometimes called a Hungarian, German, or masonry stove), based on a fourteenth-century design, can cut home heating bills up to 75 percent.
Unlike conventional stoves and fireplaces that send gases (and heat) directly up a chimney, the exhaust in a tile stove takes a circuitous route to the outside, traveling through interior channels that absorb its heat and transfer it to the surrounding masonry walls of the stove, which slowly radiate the heat back into the house at a lower, more comfortable temperature than a metal stove does. And, because the inside of the stove is masonry and not metal, the fire burns much hotter, which significantly reduces harmful emissions.
A tile stove warms an average size house for 12 hours on just one small bundle of wood. Hay and straw can also be used.
Peter Breuer, who lives in Essex, England, was able to turn off his central heating unit entirely after installing a tile stove. He says, “With most stoves, you put some wood in and you get a nice little fire, but as soon as the flame's gone down, the heat disappears. But a tile stove works as a storage heater because there is a great mass of masonry inside which heats up and radiates heat through the tiles.”
It’s time to phone a friend for a little math fun. Get your calculator – this works!
Is the answer your phone number? Weird, eh?
Mindarus harringtoni Photo: Rothansted Research Visual Communications Unit
A previously unknown insect has been discovered – on eBay. The bug, trapped in amber, was offered for sale on the auction site and purchased by entomologist Dr. Richard Harrington who could not identify it. An expert in Denmark confirmed that the insect was a previously unknown species of aphid. It has been named Mindarus harringtoni after Dr. Harrington.
The Wildflower Center monitors temperatures inside insulated metal boxes topped with three different roofs – green, white, and blacktop. Visit the Wildlife Center to see what the temperatures are now.
Native plants improve performance
Green roofs can keep buildings cooler in the summer and reduce rain runoff into streets and storm drains, but a great deal of variation exists among the types of green roofs available for installation today, according to researchers at The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center at the University of Texas at Austin.
The researchers installed green roofs from 24 different manufacturers atop insulated metal boxes, an experiment designed to simulate today’s popular, if ugly and spiritually demoralizing, corrugated metal buildings. They found that a green roof could reduce a structure’s air conditioning bills about 21 percent compared to traditional tar-based, blacktop roofs. But they also discovered a great deal of variation among the different types of green roofs tested – a variation they attribute largely to the types of plants used.
During one 91-degree day, a blacktopped box without air conditioning reached 129°F inside while the green roof boxes reached only 97° to 100°. “That’s a huge difference to have a 20-or-so degree temperature drop,” says Dr. Mark Simmons, the lead investigator on the study.
An even greater temperature difference was found on the roofs’ surfaces. Blacktop roofs reached 154 degrees on that 91-degree day while the soil on green roofs was between 88 and 100 degrees.
Runoff
The greatest variation was found in the amount of rainfall absorbed by the roofs. Some captured all the water during a 1/2" rainfall and a little less than half the water when two inches of rain fell. Other roofs, however, retained only about a quarter of the water in a 1/2" shower and as little as eight percent during deluges.
In both cases, researches attribute the difference in performance to the types of plants used on the roofs. Native plants outperformed sedums, a type of succulent traditionally used on most green roofs, as they were able to take in more water and release more of it into the atmosphere.