A Glimpse of Fire

We got our first estimate for the wood stove, including the six-meter high exterior chimney and installation. It came in about 120,000 yen less than we expected, which is a thrill when everything else seems to be going up every time you turn around. It’s a very small stove—even with the warming shelves on either side it’s only 810 centimeters across. But it should easily do the job of heating the house except, very likely, M’s salon at the opposite side of the house down the hall. We don’t expect to be using the stove much on sunny days, even on the coldest days of winter, considering the huge windows. I heard from a friend nearby that they use theirs for a few hours in the morning, then let it go cold until the sun goes down.

The stove’s a Vermont Castings Intrepid II, which features a catalytic combustion system that burns the residue in the smoke from the first burn, so it’s very clean. I not sure about the name; it sounds like we’re going to war with the elements, and it makes me wonder what happened to Intrepid I. (I guess it’s a rugged New England thing: the Vermong Castings company’s other stoves include the Defiant, the Vigilant, the Resolute Acclaim. )

We’ve had all kinds of advice about the stove placement. The architect first had it in the middle of the dining room—the first thing you saw when you entered the house. M’s mom, without seeing the design, had the same idea. But we know how little we’ll probably be using it, and this is a beach house, not a mountain house, so it’s going in a corner—a prominent corner, but a corner all the same. I just can’t see making a heating system, no matter how appealing, the center of this place. I can appreciate the romance of a hearth but I’m more interested in its function. After all, we've got the sunset, all 6000C degrees of it, setting just out the window.