Preparing For The Cold

To build a good fire you must the right ingredients just like any recipe. We start with a little newspaper and small kindling. The small kindling is waste from making oak shingles. (See earlier blog on shingle making). The pieces of kindling are about the side of a pencil. As I split the shingles I  put them in peach baskets and keep them in the dry until needed. If I don't have any shingle scraps, I use a hatchet to split red cedar in splits. 

After the kindling begins to burn, we add small limb wood or split wood no bigger than two to three inches in diameter. After this fire is burning well, you can add your regular size logs. When we have a really good bed of coals, we add a backlog (large log) to burn through the night. All of our wood is cut in the spring so it is well seasoned by winter. 

We have two fireplaces in our house, but this fireplace produces much more heat than the first one we built. It was built by a master rock mason by the name of Larry Bain. Larry built over twenty fireplaces for me in the different houses I have built over the years . He wasn't just a rock mason but an artist in stone. Unfortunately, Larry passed away a few years while in his 50's.

 The hearth of this fireplace is about 12 inches off the floor with a 36 inch damper. The damper allows us to control how much heat escapes up the chimney. If you keep a fire burning for several days, the sandstone rock will heat up and radiate a great deal of energy into our thirty-two foot sunroom. The stone in this fireplace was reused from a family homesite built in the 1830's. In our home we incorporated stone from over forty house places from here in Yucca Valley. With the temperatures dipping down into the single digits, we will keep a roaring fire for several days. In a couple of days you can warm yourself in front of it, but you won't stand there long. There is no warmth in this world like the warmth from a good fireplace, or the peace that the flicking flames bring you on a cold and dark night.