Albie’s Corner

Sampsa Kiuru decided to install a Finnish masonry heater in his national eco design award winning home in New Zealand. Four features set Sampsa’s heater apart from other heaters that we commonly build, although all of our masonry heaters by Maine Wood Heat tend to be special and custom made.

First, he chose for his heater a large beautiful cast ...

Every indigenous culture has its origin and fire legends. At the Auckland, N.Z. museum, I caught a glimpse of the Maori fire legends in a tape loop being shown there. A native speaker explains that in Maori legend fire is a gift of the sun.

The sun sent a fiery comet crashing to the earth. The comet married the Earth Goddess of ...

Albie is completing a brick cookstove and see-through masonry heater on North Haven Island, twelve miles off of Rockland, Maine, just before he leaves for New Zealand to build a heater there. The job site is on the Turner Farm which overlooks the “thoroughfare” between North Haven and Vinalhaven Islands.

The “thoroughfare” is only a few hundred yards wide. Famous archeological digs at the Turner Farm site indicate, that like the ancient village of Norridgewock, the site seems to ...

One day after posting the Woodchuck Firekeeper blog, I knew I had to find an answer to the birch tinder fungus question and mystery, so on a Blue Moon, the day before New Year’s Eve, I called my friend Ray Reitze who has taught wilderness ways and skills at the Earthways School of Wilderness Living for decades. Ray lives with his wife Nancy in a handmade, off the grid, wood heated log cabin “hogan” in Canaan, ...

Donna Lee, at the end of each round of the Sweat Lodge, would cry out, “Firekeeper, Open the Door Please.” And the outside person, the man or woman entrusted for the evening with the sacred tasks of carrying rocks, keeping the fire hot and all matters of protection and ceremony outside the lodge, would throw open the flap and all the sweat covered participants inside would gulp in huge amounts of the cooling fresh air.

The Sweat Lodge is a sacred ...

New Zealand is on the other side and “bottom” of the world relative to Finland, but there is still a winter season and measurable cold even though their February can be considered our “August.”

Sampsa Kiru, a native Finn, is a young doctor in Queenstown, New Zealand, in the middle of building an energy efficient house. Sampsa wants a Finnish Fireplace in his home. He wants the same incredible efficiency and warmth of the masonry heaters that he knew as a ...

One of our greatest pleasures here at Maine Wood Heat is seeing a new house become a home. Being invited to take part in that transformation is why we chose masonry heating as our life’s work.

This spring, we met a couple that recently purchased their first log home together. They were looking for a wood burning soapstone masonry heater – it was right down our ally…

A few years ago, we hContinue Reading →

In September of 2008, Maine Wood Heat promised to install a Castleton soapstone masonry fireplace in a Brunswick, Maine home before Christmas after selling the stove at the 08 Common Ground Fair.

Our client was Jeff Clapp, artist, wood turner, designer, environmentalist, and entrepreneur. He handed me a little three-inch square box and a brochure with his order. The plain brown card box held a clear plastic Christmas tree ornament. The ornament was ...

How a Maine Wood Heat mason apprentice designed and built a masonry cooker/heater in a 30 year old yurt in our own backwoods.

Inspiration for innovative masonry heater design can happen just about anywhere… in the heart of a home, or even a portable yurt.

During the summer and fall of 08, we were joined by a fine young mason from Pennsylvania and Colorado named Matt Helike. After a month or two of Matt tenting in our woods, we reacquired a twenty-foot ...

Oct. 26, 08

Hard frosts did not come to our little farm in Norridgewock this year until mid-October. Dave Luce took time to bank the house with hay bales and plastic and also split and stacked about six cords of wood in new half pallet cribs that he built on hardwood pallets. I dug the potatoes from the garden and the calla lily bulbs in the half barrels lining the front drive and put them away in the ...