Word: stove
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...Pond Gap, W.Va., a miner's wife walked into the general store, passed the potbellied, coal-burning stove and went to the back, where she opened a nervous conversation with Proprietor Virgil Huddleston. Finally, she got to the point. Her mother-in-law was coughing up blood and needed to go to the hospital, but the family could not afford to send her. Would Huddleston advance her a loan? He dug $50 out of his pocket. "As long as I've got it," he said, "I'm happy to help...
...near the fire, you have that cold draft of uncomfortable air nipping your back and heels ... by which many catch cold, being scorched before, and, as it were, froze behind." Which is why he devised "the New-Invented Pennsylvanian Fire-Place"-better-known as the Franklin stove-which, he boasted, made his room twice as warm with a quarter as much wood as a conventional hearth. Franklin never patented his promethean invention, wishing to share its back-to-front benefits with the world, and a variety of stoves modeled on his old reliable are manufactured...
What the Franklin stove accomplished was a long, slow burn, achieved by limiting the amount of oxygen reaching the wood; it also trapped the heat inside the combustion chamber so that it radiated more evenly throughout the room. Modern stoves have become even more efficient through airtight construction, the use of baffles that pass the hot air back over the flame to improve combustion (and heat) and in some cases thermostats and blowers that circulate the warm air. Although some heat is thereby lost, in many stoves the doors can be temporarily folded back, leaving a clear view...
...Both national and state forests encourage homeowners to cut down and remove deadwood from specified areas, and many private owners encourage the same practice, since it helps clear the way for new growth. Geri Harrington, a lively Connecticut woman who has written an excellent new guide, The Wood-Burning Stove Book (Macmillan; $12.95), lists many other sources of free wood, such as utility companies, which constantly saw down limbs that endanger their lines, and town dumps and landfills, where fallen trees are taken after a big storm. As the oldtimers say, the wood "heats you twice"-once when...
Experts differ on the actual efficiency of various models, but most good wood-burners deliver at least 60% of the fuel's potential in terms of heat-which is comparable to an oil burner. In terms of heating capacity, however, a cord of hardwood burned in a sound stove will deliver as much heat as 166 gal. of #2 fuel oil (Massachusetts price: about 48? per gal.), or 6,290 kilowatt hours of electricity (about $330 worth), or 264 therms of natural gas ($97). No wonder Americans are returning to their old flame...