OUR STORY
We live in the far south of New South Wales and are off the power grid. We began building our rammed earth, pole and straw-bale home at Dignams Creek in 2006. We wanted our home to be ecologically sound. Our heating options were solar power, bottled gas or wood.
With a constant supply of firewood falling down around us, a wood-burning heater was inevitable. But we were not happy with slow combustion heaters. They produce a lot of heat when going, and none the rest of the time. They send most of the heat up the chimney which is a waste and they are prone to creating pollution and deposits. So we spent a long time looking at other options.
While on holiday in Europe we were stranded in a mountain chalet during a blizzard. In the morning they lit a masonry heater. The fire lasted for about one hour. The masonry heater absorbed the warmth and then radiated it all day. We curled up against the heater reading books with damp clothes draped over it to dry. The heat was beautiful, not too hot. We had found what we wanted for our home. Then we researched it further and discovered that they weren’t available in Australia.
With all the experts being half a world away we toyed with trying to design and build our own. We looked at bringing someone out to Australia to build one for us. Then we discovered these kits and included one in our home. It was straightforward to build and we loved the end result.
Our heater met and even exceeded all our expectations – a single burn kept our home warm for 24 hours and we loved learning against it. Friends who visited were equally impressed.
We now knew that masonry heaters were the answer to the problems of the slow-combustion heaters that were getting wood-burning a bad name.
This led us to start Heavenly Heat. We now have highly satisfied customers in across Australia.
LINKS & ARTICLES
Below are a number of sites related to masonry heaters and some other general sites that you may find useful.
Masonry Heaters
Featured articles for further reading
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YouTube Channel
The masonry heater industry in USA Website.
It has a number of useful links and articles.
The Book of Masonry Stoves
Discusses the different types of masonry heaters and their history.
BUILDING OUR HOME
Strawbale Building: We built a straw bale home and concluded that straw bale buildings and thermal mass heaters work really well together.
Three articles we wrote on raising and rendering our strawbale home.
