Marie Laure has two new stoves in Peuch Tournez.
One, a traditional solid stove, which has been installed in the living room, the other, the Pyramid fire, having a low pyramid like shape, which is in the cave (basement) waiting installation.
Lighting the fire in the living room I found that the logs generally don't fit in the hearth. Naturally I investigated and I found that all of the logs are between 40 and 50 cm, whereas the fire really cannot take a log greater than 35 cm.
I anyway needed to take the dimensions of both fires so as that a good idea could be formed of what they would look like installed in different locations.
The initial problem was that Marie Laure had originally asked for the one that was newly installed in the living room to be installed in the kitchen and the uninstalled one in the living room. There was now a question whether to do this since the larger fire was installed mistakenly into the living room.
I measured both fires, taking the height, width and depth as well as the size of the aperture to the hearth which seemed to determine an approximate maximum size of log.
I also measured the size of the logs, determining their size range.
I concluded that both fires could not take logs of that size.
Marie Laure was very surprised as she said she had looked for the size of log the fires could take before ordering the wood, and checked this dimension with someone else.
Had I checked the depth of the hearth, since a log would not have to enter laterally?
I realized I had not but only had the opportunity to make this check to the one in the living room at that point. The internal dimension was indeed very much less than the external dimension (35cm, 50cm).
I said that I thought the logs would not fit in either fire and came to the conclusion that someone had taken the external dimension rather than the internal dimension to indicate log size.
Marie Laure said again that she had seen the dimension for the size of log used by the fires. I said that then they had made that mistake. This exchange was good natured enough, but it shows the potential for tempers to be frayed.
I realised that I had not measured the internal dimension of the stove in the cave which I did when could. In fact, the internal dimension of that stove was far larger, I little bigger than the largest log I could find, perhaps 54cm (with and external dimension of 62cm).
The initial conclusion I came to was incorrect, the Pyramid fire loses less in its internal dimension and is able to take all the logs.
But my further conclusion was that the large stove cannot and that the mistake was in assuming both fires take the same log size.
But, writing this, another possibility occurs to me, which is that it may be possible to feed in large logs to the big stove and burn them near upright. I believe this would be possible and, I suppose, there is no reason not to burn a log close to the vertical, a possibility I had never previously entertained.
I'm not sure about this last. How would this work? Would a log catch fire and burn standing upright?
This is not something I can check at a distance, anyway.