Why were some cabins built with the fireplace to one side?

[Herbert West]

I was watching this Townsends video, and it clicked to me that in most representations of US colonial housing, and the general "early modern house" popular concept, the fireplace is built to one side of the house.

But, why? Exposing at least one of the walls of the fireplace to the outside wastes a heck of a lot of heat. By comparison, most Hungarian rural housing has the fireplace/cooking area in a central location, usually heating two rooms.

So why are colonial houses built/depicted with such a wasteful arrangement? I doubt fire protection was the issue, the Hungarian house on this picture uses the exact same materials (wood, earth, straw) as the one in the video.

PS: I wholeheartedly recommend that youtube channel.

 

[Gordy]

English homes are the same. The fireplace is on the wall. I think it's to do with smoke. If you keep the fire to one side, you don't get as much smoke coming into the rest of the room.

 

[pithorr]

Maybe the Americans use those chimneys mostly for outside barbecue purposes as and the heating is only their secondary task

 

[Pyoro]

Mh, from what I've seen in reconstructions and such ye olde German buildings hat the chimney in the middle of the room as in the picture often, but also not always. My impression is that the cheaper it got the more likely that it was somewhere on the outside, just kinda attached to the building. I think it was a problem of construction; this probably was the safest way without having to do anything complicated to any of the walls or the roof, especially if it was multi-store.

Or maybe it's as simple as people not really having a clue of what they were doing? Generally people seemed to try to do their best to keep everything warm, no matter what (like combining stables and living space so the heat from the animals below kept the people living above slightly warmer ^^), so, yeah, this is a weird oddity.

 

[pithorr]

The British apparently never cared so much about proper heating of their dwellings. They don't even today. I never freezed so much like on February in London few years ago...
But in America, where winters can be pretty harsh...

 

[Gordy]

Ancient Britons / Anglo-Saxons had a central fire in their round houses but as I said I imagine smoke was a huge problem and the location posed a danger. It's probably just easier to have a chimney going up the side of the room. In Victorian England, the norm is to have it on the side but it's not lost heat so much as heat given freely to your neighbour since terraced houses were the norm for working class people. (And even today mid-row terraced houses are the cheapest to heat).

 

[Gordy]

The British apparently never cared so much about proper heating of their dwellings. They don't even today. I never freezed so much like on February in London few years ago...

You wouldn't be far wrong there. The cultural norm is not to complain about the cold particularly the further north you go. It is considered "unmanly". I say that but then women don't complain about the cold either.

 

[Herbert West]

Ancient Britons / Anglo-Saxons had a central fire in their round houses but as I said I imagine smoke was a huge problem and the location posed a danger.

There is pretty much no relation, in terms of smoke, between a central open hearth in 800, and a proper fireplace with a good chimney in 1800.

 

[Gordy]

There is pretty much no relation, in terms of smoke, between a central open hearth in 800, and a proper fireplace with a good chimney in 1800.

What you call a "proper fireplace" I have seen in Austria / Hungary / Romania but never in England. We just didn't have them for whatever reason. To me, it seems that the ceramic walls of the fire insulate the heat inside the system rather than dispersing it throughout the room.

 

[Pyoro]

To me, it seems that the ceramic walls of the fire insulate the heat inside the system rather than dispersing it throughout the room.

That's the idea. They heat up and then radiate at a fairly consistent temperature for a long time. They are "better" than many other systems as those are more prone to "alright, throw in some wood now" - then it's fiendishly hot for 5 minutes and basically immediately gets cold again afterwards.

Also, the idea pre-dates the Roman Empire. I very much doubt there is any single place in the world - where there's a need for heating - that hasn't come up with a form of it at some point ^^;

 

[Gordy]

That's the idea. They heat up and then radiate at a fairly consistent temperature for a long time. They are "better" than many other systems as those are more prone to "alright, throw in some wood now" - then it's fiendishly hot for 5 minutes and basically immediately gets cold again afterwards.

Also, the idea pre-dates the Roman Empire. I very much doubt there is any single place in the world - where there's a need for heating - that hasn't come up with a form of it at some point ^^;

Well we had farmhouse kitchens which had wood stoves (later replaced by oil based systems) that heat up the whole house as they work as radiators as well as cookers but aside from that I don't think anything similar was widespread in the UK.

From experience, they are lovely things until they run out of oil and then you have a major problem.

 

[Andre Bolkonsky]

The cabins of which you speak are built by frontiersmen with limited construction skills and even less labor, not architects using existing plans. They built what they could using the simplest methods possible, usually split trees packed with mud to keep out the wind with stone chimneys using rocks collected from nearby. And when they were done they would burn down the house to recover the precious, precious nails.

the house you show has a complicated chimney covered in some form of (Plaster/adobe) that would not be practical in a VERY TINY frontier house because where would you get the building materials?

Now, as the frontier was established and permanent homes began to be built, there is a delightful array to pick from.

 

[Ming]

But, why? Exposing at least one of the walls of the fireplace to the outside wastes a heck of a lot of heat. By comparison, most Hungarian rural housing has the fireplace/cooking area in a central location, usually heating two rooms.


So why are colonial houses built/depicted with such a wasteful arrangement? I doubt fire protection was the issue, the Hungarian house on this picture uses the exact same materials (wood, earth, straw) as the one in the video.

Fireplaces waste a lot of heat, up to 90%. But is that Hungarian stove only made of earth and straw or does it have tile/masonry elements? It looks like an Ovenstove. Such arrangements can retain up to 90% if well made.

The cabins of which you speak are built by frontiersmen with limited construction skills and even less labor, not architects using existing plans. They built what they could using the simplest methods possible, usually split trees packed with mud to keep out the wind with stone chimneys using rocks collected from nearby. And when they were done they would burn down the house to recover the precious, precious nails.

the house you show has a complicated chimney covered in some form of (Plaster/adobe) that would not be practical in a VERY TINY frontier house because where would you get the building materials?

Even 'settled' areas back east still retained the traditional fireplace and chimney and as Gordy says:

English homes are the same. The fireplace is on the wall. I think it's to do with smoke. If you keep the fire to one side, you don't get as much smoke coming into the rest of the room.

I think it's partly tradition, and partly that they used *other* strategies to stay warm because Firewood wasn't scarce in North America.

https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/02/heating-people-not-spaces.html

Although why England never developed it further seems odd.

 

[Antediluvian Monster]

I'm curious about the prevalence of chimneys. In Finland there were still plenty of tenant farmer's cabins without any in early 20th century. For example the father of the future president Urho Kekkonen modernized his cabin with a new fireplace with a chimney the year his son was born in 1900.

 

[Pyoro]

Yeah, I have just been thinking about this. I've basically never seen a historical Japanese building with a chimney - except for forges. Now, I've also never really gone into that topic; just casual observations of period drama and such ... but was their only source of heat really basically a small coal-filled pit (later covered with their kotatsu when appropriate)? They had some stoves (no chimney I don't think) and some pots you heated up with coal for local heating but again that's not exactly heating up your entire room for long periods of time ...

 

[Herbert West]

I'm curious about the prevalence of chimneys. In Finland there were still plenty of tenant farmer's cabins without any in early 20th century. For example the father of the future president Urho Kekkonen modernized his cabin with a new fireplace with a chimney the year his son was born in 1900.

Do you mean they had no place to vent the smoke at all, or that they did not have a dedicated chimney? Can you show a picture?

 

[HuzzButt]

Fascinating subject with some clear limitations.

A log cabin as the one in the video has a very simple roof construction with through going ridges carried on the walls. A log cabin consisted of a single room which means that you will have two loadbearing walls, one in each end:

Moving the fireplace to one end of the wall and placing the chimney on the outside is a sound solution. That has the added benefit of not taking up a lot of floor space or creating a problematic through in the roof.

In post and beam constructions a chimney could be located centrally without interfering with the roof. Especially if one foregoes the kingpost in favor of a ständerhouse solution (similar to what we see in Japanese framing).

Regardless of the framing technique one of the most common reasons why old houses have centrally positioned chimneys today is because they were extended around the chimney.

 

[Xeorm]

Also, consider how much space is wasted with a central heating bit. You pay for it in needing more heating supplies, but you save on initial housing costs by a lot. Which is important when you're building the first home of the area, because this is something you're putting up yourself. Housing materials are expensive, and the initial settlers aren't architects. If you're surrounded by easily accessible heating fuel, why wouldn't you do it that way? You can make/buy a better house later when fuels get more expensive, you've got more money, and additional people nearby brings down house construction costs.

 

[Antediluvian Monster]

Do you mean they had no place to vent the smoke at all, or that they did not have a dedicated chimney? Can you show a picture?

You can find picture of one with old stone oven/stove here (apparently last fired 180 years ago): https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-8106468

Couple of other pictures here: http://www.ennenjanyt.net/2016/05/muuttoon-savupirtista-takkatupaan-tarvittiin-tiiliteollisuutta/

There was a heat retaining oven/stove, the smoke from which was simply exhausted into the living room. While the oven was fired the inhabitants either kept low or went outside. There were closable opening(s) near the roof from which the smoke could be vented, as well as doors and windows.

You can still find active saunas with similar principle here. You have a heat retaining stove which you fire up for several hours, then let the fire die and ventilate the room. The stove can retain enough warmth to be used for sauna the following morning.

 

[Gordy]

Although why England never developed it further seems odd.

England has mild winters by comparison with central Europe and New England.