Post by orchardyhenry on Jan 2, 2017 11:25:13 GMT -8
I'm not an expert at all, but I now live with these stoves and I'm impressed. They are apparently like the German Kachelofen but I don't know and I see there's not so many details on this forum about the kachelofen either.
Pronounced 'pietz', these are clay ovens. They have an outside skin of clay tiles. Here's my little example:
(Google photos link or Dropbox link)
The clay tiles are filled with clay, plus some stones, pieces of brick, etc. They are hollow and shaped to accommodate the clay:
(Google photos link or Dropbox link)
The top tile is a standard wall tile and the bottom one is a corner. The corner tile is as long as a wall tile and half as long round the corner for easy building. Note the small hole in the corner tile. This is to insert a wire which is bent into an L and runs along the length and width of the piec on each level (so two wires go into each hole, one that runs the width and one that runs the length of the piec). This helps hold the whole structure together.
Also note the standard rounded top tiles that finish off the wall neatly. Robert posted a thread where he was involved in building a beautiful example with the top tiles on the bottom too... In that build they used fancy square tiles. There used to be loads around. I'm in the far East of Poland, one of the poorer regions, and things are generally not so fancy here from what I've seen, but I have seen tiles with various decorative elements.
Quite often the piec is built in a big square with high walls on one or two sides backing into other rooms. This example backs into our bathroom and provides a handy place for drying clothes and towels:
(Google photos link or Dropbox link)
So what does the flue do in here? Above the deep ash pit the fire goes all the way to the back of the piec, then it turns right under the wall and goes up to the top, before bending back down to the bottom and then back up to the top and out through the chimney.
In our other home example the chimney was at the other end. When the flue entered the wall, instead of going up it turned back on itself and returned all the way to the front. Then it went up to the top of the wall, down to the bottom, and up again to the chimney exit.
These photos are from our little straw bale cottage, and although it's obviously well insulated we were very pleased with the performance of the piec. With very little wood it kept us very warm last winter and this. It was -18C last January and +18C inside even though we only lit the fire once or twice a day for less than an hour each time.
Sorry these photos don't seem to be displaying, just wanted to write this post and document the Polish piec for people. I'll try to put them somewhere else where they will work better... (Edit: Tried Facebook (link) and Dropbox as well as Google for photo links but still doesn't seem to work
Pronounced 'pietz', these are clay ovens. They have an outside skin of clay tiles. Here's my little example:
The clay tiles are filled with clay, plus some stones, pieces of brick, etc. They are hollow and shaped to accommodate the clay:
The top tile is a standard wall tile and the bottom one is a corner. The corner tile is as long as a wall tile and half as long round the corner for easy building. Note the small hole in the corner tile. This is to insert a wire which is bent into an L and runs along the length and width of the piec on each level (so two wires go into each hole, one that runs the width and one that runs the length of the piec). This helps hold the whole structure together.
Also note the standard rounded top tiles that finish off the wall neatly. Robert posted a thread where he was involved in building a beautiful example with the top tiles on the bottom too... In that build they used fancy square tiles. There used to be loads around. I'm in the far East of Poland, one of the poorer regions, and things are generally not so fancy here from what I've seen, but I have seen tiles with various decorative elements.
Quite often the piec is built in a big square with high walls on one or two sides backing into other rooms. This example backs into our bathroom and provides a handy place for drying clothes and towels:
So what does the flue do in here? Above the deep ash pit the fire goes all the way to the back of the piec, then it turns right under the wall and goes up to the top, before bending back down to the bottom and then back up to the top and out through the chimney.
In our other home example the chimney was at the other end. When the flue entered the wall, instead of going up it turned back on itself and returned all the way to the front. Then it went up to the top of the wall, down to the bottom, and up again to the chimney exit.
These photos are from our little straw bale cottage, and although it's obviously well insulated we were very pleased with the performance of the piec. With very little wood it kept us very warm last winter and this. It was -18C last January and +18C inside even though we only lit the fire once or twice a day for less than an hour each time.
Sorry these photos don't seem to be displaying, just wanted to write this post and document the Polish piec for people. I'll try to put them somewhere else where they will work better... (Edit: Tried Facebook (link) and Dropbox as well as Google for photo links but still doesn't seem to work
