I place here for survival reasons the heating structure in Archangel Russia which the peoples there survived 45 plus zero weather. This knowledge is most important to comprehend as the Israelite German "Russians" who fled the Czar for North Dakota in the 1880's built earth packed wall homes, plastered inside and out, as no lumber was available there, and those homes were warm in winter of 50 below and cool in summer at 100 degrees.
This is the makings of the Russian masonry stove.
The central object, and the most curious to an American, in the whole house is the huge Russian stove. In the larger houses there are several.
These stoves are constructed of masonry and are built before the partitions of the house are put in and before the walls are completed.
In the main stove there are three fire-boxes and a maze of surrounding air-spaces and smoke-passages, and surmounting all a great chimney which in two-story houses is itself made into a heating-stove with one fire-box for the upper rooms.
When the house is to be heated a little door is opened near the base of the chimney and a damper-plate is removed, so that the draft will be direct and the smoke escape freely into the chimney after quite a circuitous passage through the body of the stove.
Lewis E. Jahns; Joel R. Moore; Harry H. Mead. The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki / Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 (Kindle Location 3412-3417).
Then the heating fire-box is furnished with blazing pine splinters and an armful of pine stove-wood and left alone for about an hour or until all the wood is burnt to a smokeless and gasless mass of hot coals and fine ash.
The damper plate is then replaced, which stops all escape of heat up the chimney, and the whole structure of the stove soon begins to radiate a gentle heat.
Except in the coldest of weather it is not necessary to renew the fire in such a stove more than once daily, and one armful of wood is the standard fuel consumption at each firing.
Lewis E. Jahns; Joel R. Moore; Harry H. Mead. The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki / Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 (Kindle Locations 3420-3424).
"Another of the fire-boxes in the main stove is a large smooth-floored and vaulted opening with a little front porch roofed by a hood leading into the chimney. This is the oven, and here on baking days is built a fire which is raked out when the walls and floor are heated and is followed by the loaves and pastry put in place with a flat wooden paddle with a long handle.
The third fire-box is often in a low section of the stove covered by an iron plate, and is used only for boiling, broiling and frying.
As there is not much food broiled or fried, and as soup and other boiled food is often allowed to simmer in stone jars in the oven"
Lewis E. Jahns; Joel R. Moore; Harry H. Mead. The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki / Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 (Kindle Locations 3424-3429).
"The stove-structure itself is variously contrived as to outward architecture so as to leave one or more alcoves, the warm floors of which form comfortable bed-spaces.
The outer surface of the stove is smoothly cemented or enameled.
So large are these stoves that partition-logs are set in grooves left in the outer stove-wall, and a portion of the wall of each of four or five rooms is often formed by a side or corner of the same stove. And radiation from the warm bricks heats the rooms."
Lewis E. Jahns; Joel R. Moore; Harry H. Mead. The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki / Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 (Kindle Locations 3430-3433).
Now the existential knowledge of Mother Russia has afforded you a way cheap and simple way to keep you warm and alive.
agtG
See the picture of the stove and the pie coming out of the oven in the American convalescent hospital in Archangel.
Lewis E. Jahns; Joel R. Moore; Harry H. Mead. The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki / Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 (Kindle Locations 3426-3427).
