Can a fireplace heat the cabin so I can get a good nights rest (fun and educational  experiment) 

Another entertaining and educational video! Jerry you have no idea how much your videos mean to me. In the past year my health has gone south in a big way, I’m not really able to get out of the house and do the things I used to do. I watch your videos and remember the simpler times on my grandparents farm, the evenings were spent reading the Bible and talking listening to their stories. Listening to you takes me back to those days and I will forever be grateful to you for that. I look forward to seeing the next one. God bless you my dear friend.

If you look at all the old houses (pre 1850ish) in New England, they all have center chimney stacks. The larger houses would have 3-6 flue massive center chimney stacks, while the smaller 1.5 story cape style houses had 2 flue stacks. The mentality of this was to have a fireplace in every large room in order to concentrate heat in the center of the home where even if all the fires burned out the massive brick chimney would trap and slowly radiate the heat out over several hours. It was perhaps the most efficient way to heat a home with fireplaces.

Hello Jerry , I must say that the fireplace has its place in a home. My old house had a fireplace with a whole rock wall on the wall of the fireplace. Once that wall got warmed up the house heater never kicked on during the day , at night was different although it would only turn on for a short time. One year we had an ice storm and lost our electricity for 4 days and that fireplace saved us. We cooked with it and at night I'd sleep in the living room in my recliner to keep the fire going all night. I'd have to get up 3 or 4 times during the night but that beat freezing. The kids seemed to have enjoyed the experience of not having electricity. We heard reports later on that many families had to leave their homes to stay in hotels or with friends , while we were able to stay at home because the fireplace saved us. I've heard that this winter will be a real bad one and I wish our house we're in now had a fireplace.

Nothing beats the time spent in front of a fireplace.

The ambience of an open hearth fireplace cannot be beat. I totally agree. Reminds me of colonial era homes where the big ole open hearth with hanging kettles and pots was the center of the home and used for heat, cooking, warming bread to rise, boiling water for baths ...just awesome!!

Another thing some pioneers used was a bed warmer. A metal pot with a lid connected to a stick. It was filled with hot coals and you stick it under your sheets and rub it back and forth to warm your bed. We had one in our cabin and it worked great !!

Your cabin is the one of my dreams. What an amazing place, amazing life. Thank you for sharing it all with us. My grandparents lived this way and I miss it.

I just have to admire how nice of a job you did building that fireplace. It looks very well done, and very period correct.

78yr old countyboy. Unsplit wood burns slower. Save a ash bucket of ash to bed over your fire to hold the fire through the night. In the morning open the fire and add fresh kindling to get your fire back up. Save a fresh bucket of ash for your coming night fire.

I heat with a fireplace and I LOVE it ❤. I’ve also caulked the daylights out of my cabin to help retain that warmth. I don’t use a spark guard - the brick hearth extends 4’ beyond the fireplace…and I’m comfortable with that distance. I have a low-ish ceiling and no loft, so that’s a big difference right there. I think I need to get a dog though…I hear they have wonderful bed insulating properties. 😊 And maybe a night cap. 😆

I stayed in an old cabin in the Colorado mountains during a snow storm. This thing was a huge one room cabin with no insulation. The fireplace was rather large. We had to open the door because it got so hot inside.

Omgosh I loved your little nightcap!! Great experiment! We live in an 1833 farmhouse, so cool temperatures are everyday real life living for us, we try to never turn the gas furnace on, just using our pellet stove insert in our fireplace for our main heat source.

From what I remember about the Rumford fireplace the process was to burn a hot fire quickly and once it was out, shut the damper. The retained heat from the heated stones (thermal mass) was to leach heat out through the night.

I know everyone has seen the chairs with the wings on them, those wings served a purpose other than just looking cool , when you face the chair towards the fireplace and as the fireplace is pulling the draft through the house the wings on the chair diverts the cool air away from the person sitting in the chair, old people didn't have a lot of technical knowledge but they sure had a lot of common sense

The more you use the fireplace the hotter the stones you used to build it with will "warm up", similar to wrapping a hot rock in a blanket idea you had; that rock has to heat up at least a couple of times before it works. The rocks you built your fireplace/chimney with will get used to the heat should you provide the right conditions (using the fireplace).

The ambience of an open fireplace can't be beat. Sure a wood stove is going to heat better, but I still am in love with listening and watching the flames.

I believe the hardest thing for me would be sleeping without my dog. I wonder wouldn’t a barrel stove be a good second floor room warmer. I love a loft but I don’t like ladders at night half asleep (pee breaks). I love the amazing job you’ve done watched from beginning. I just would make a stair case.

I absolutely love your home !!!!@ thank you for sharing!!!!! You are so amazing !!!!!

Couldn't agree with you more about the ambience of an open fire! I live in a totally modern home, but when I was looking to buy a home, a WOOD BURNING fireplace was at the top of my 'must have' list of ammenities...in fact, I told the real estate agent to not even bother to show me a house without a wood burning fireplace. My extended family never misses an opportunity to point out the inefficiencies of an open fire place, (all that ash, soot, and inevitable smoke smell) but they all seem to gravitate toward it on Christmas when there is a nice fire burning! I also utilize my fire place to dabble in a bit of wood fire cooking, so I thoroughly enjoy it.

As a small boy I would grab a pillow and a blanket and curl up in front of the fireplace.. it was better than the bed..

I absolutely 💯 Love everything about your Cabin. It is so beautiful, cozy and it looks so comfortable. God bless you and your pets.

This video is so relaxing. I am so sleepy and its way too early for bed. I love the sound of a nice fire 😴

I’ve always wondered, if you were to add a wood stove on the opposite side, to balance. That way you can enjoy the ambiance of the fireplace majority of the time and let the wood stove take over that midnight to morning shift or just a balance of the heat

Jerry, Another great video. I remember growing up and having a wood stove in the kitchen, before bed dad would stoke the fire and make sure and put an uncut chunk of oak on the top of the fire, it would burn all night long, by 5am dad was already in the kitchen putting more wood in. Thank you for taking time to film, edit and post this video.

I love the experiment. I spent all my holidays with my grandfather at my aunt's 1890 colonial small 2 bedroom house in the Berkshire mountains back in 1979 when it was all the rage " Colonial Homes " living etc. I was in High School and my family was living overseas but I will never forget my aunt's hard work to recreate a colonial farmhouse. The living room fireplace sent a lot of smoke throughout the house as my Cambridge educated uncle could not figure out the fireplace flu. All my clothes smelled like smoke. But it was fun spending Thanksgiving , Christmas and Easter as my aunt made everything authentic colonial and sewed the curtains and bedspreads. Get up and drink water and have the log waiting to toss in. Kitty needs a cat stair ! I give you permission to source a chain-mail fire curtain. I got one for free that someone left on their front lawn for free to take away ! It came with sturdy brass frame stand. Believe me your ancestors would get what they needed if it was available. At Mount Vernon there is a huge Doll House Model of George Washington's home in Northern ,VA They had Water Closets for Fire Prevention ! In each room that had a fireplace filled with thick handmade leather water pails that were always maintained filled to be prepared in the event of a a fire spilling out of the fire place- cause a house fire. So maybe you should have water buckets on hand for safety reasons at night. In Germany and Austria to this day they sleep under very warm and toasty down comforters and they can keep you very warm . Be sure kitty has fresh water and food on the loft as they love to eat whenever they feel like it. Make yourself comfortable at home. Reading the Bible at night puts anyone to sleep quickly. Very interesting with Time and Temperature.

Howdy brother- great experiment with your fireplace. When I built our house a fireplace is the one thing I absolutely had to have. We have cooked in it when the power was out and actually got a lot of heat from it. It’s enjoyable to cook in it on a cold, dreary kind of day. A fireplace is very comforting to sit in front of. Take care and God’s blessings to you

Great job!!! I really would like to test myself and my skills at building a cabin and possibly a fireplace for it. Thanks for sharing this video with us!🤗😁

I so enjoyed this video Jerry! Thank you for thinking with so much creativity.

Always a informative and interesting video coming from you. Nice to see that you are making videos more frequently. Thanks for sharing, stay warm!

Dude, I am so jealous of you for the beautiful cabin you have built! Great job!😊

10:30 awwwweee! Cute cat! 🐈🪜

Totally agree. If I can build my own log cabin that fireplace will be my first choice. Thanks and God bless.

I just discovered your channel tonight by searching cabins. Love this! We're in the process of building a small hunting cabin on our 5 acres, just a basic one-room cabin with no loft or anything, and no fireplace. I do love your fireplace...even though it's not practical for us to add one, we will have a wood stove at least. We have a fire pit outside - gotta have that!! LOL

You have a really nice house and have done such a nice job. I would like to have something similar. I like the old timey feeling your house has, you have done well making it a reality.

Just as the wool blanket boar hides were used in Europe to prevent stray embers and sparks from burning the house down. You can easily do the same with domestic pig hides if boar populations aren't high enough in your area. Plus: boar hides are bristly and tough; they are easy to clean and last forever. Downside; wool is infinitely more cosy and soft

Loved your video and your log cabin. Thank you for sharing.

It went down to 9 degrees I sleep like a baby with multiple layers of clothing and about 3 blankets...no tent or any other shelter... just love 🥰

Get a fireback for that fireplace. It's a cast iron piece that will hold the heat a bit longer and help to direct a lot of it into the house instead of up the chimney. Also. The reason so many old homes had fireplaces on the outside was because of chimney fires. It was significantly easier to pull a burning chimney down when it was an external addon instead of built into the home itself.

You have a great week as well and a safe and happy holiday with good food and fellowship!!

Thank you great vid and I never get tired of looking at your beautiful cabin

You have got a really cozy place there and the open fireplace is the heart of it all!

Yeah, fireplace friendship, I like that.

awesome prefect cabin, love the past time setting and accessories and setup

Another awesome video, thanks for the cozy feeling your video brings.

Found your channel within the last week and spent a couple of days watching most of your video's. I love everything about it. I hope to catch one of your party's one day because I'd love to see it first hand. Also found you on facebook and sent you a friends request thank you for accepting. I am enjoying your video's and find your lifestyle not just intriguing but wholesome. The way our society functions today we've lost that sense of how to be self sufficient and self reliant. As well as our sense of innocents and purity. In my humble opinion I don't think the "progress" we have made over the years has really helped us a society in whole. I say that knowing I've never had to live your lifestyle so what do I know. Looking forward to your next video.

You are so so lucky to be able to live this way. Dad used to chop fire wood all summer long so we could live the same way you are now. We had a small house though not a cabbin. Keep on doing it brother. Thanks for the memories 👍👍

Very nice fireplace! I thought stone had some heat retention but to keep the cabin near 60 all night, that is great! I'm ready to fire up my wood stove for the winter. I have one with a glass door, as you mentioned, it is so nice to see the fire.

Love the fireplace just so perfect rustic and yes it heats very well thank you for the video Glenn from Massachusetts

Perfect video for a sick day!

Just found this channel. Very interesting and informative. Thank you for sharing. Hope you enjoy your Sunday dinner with your family. Be well and warm

This place is so awesome and your stories makes it all come alive.

Nice video man - loving the cabin!

The fire looks so nice and warm thank you for sharing

Rumsford fireplaces are actually about 30% efficient. They throw a lot of radiant heat due to the angled designs.

So very homey.. the warmth the ambien feels so good! I wish I was as talented as you.. thank you

Sometime of the old building built all the way around a central masornary stack to increase the heating abilty. Neat exsperiment. Curtains do help to con serve heat longer in small areas.

2 sets of Grandparents relied solely on fire place heat well into the 90s. A few differences though, they used coal in combination with wood. Coal is essential in my opinion.

One of the big turning points in the transition from the medieval period to the early modern age was the invention of the chimney. Before that, a home's fire would simply be on the dirt floor and it would have made the house really smokey and the fires were very small. The smoke would go out through openings at the end of each gable and filter through the thatched roofs. It was messy and stinky from so much smoke but that's how houses in Europe were for thousands of years before the invention of the chimney. The earliest example of a fireplace with a chimney in England dates to the late 12th century, but they didn't become common until the 16th century. It's a hallmark of the beginning of the early modern era.

Enjoyed the video. I thought for sure your dog would be laying in front of the fire all night. Mine always did. I’ve seen her wake up in the morning steaming and immediately start panting. 😅

Surprised how your house stayed around 60degf. That's what I keep my house in the winter, and for me that's perfect sleeping temp because I like a big pile of blankets including an old down comforter. Beautiful. I would definitely get a nice big screen however. That's just me..

I love the cabin and the fireplace beautiful

Such a beautiful cabin, very cozy

What amazing life style. Love from Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Most cabins back in the day with families, everyone took turns on fire detail during cold nights. Us kids used to takes turns filling the Ben Franklin when we all lived in a one room cabin.

Mentally I would have to get used to the idea that there is a fire still going when I tried to go to sleep. I might have a few sleepless nights. Do you have a fire alarm and CO detector in the cabin? Great experiment!

Russian / German Mass thermal stoves are the most efficient house heaters before the introduction of Gas. Thermal mas gives off a steady slow release of heat.

wonderful cozy

vraiment une belle place ^^

That draft is nice actually. Like fresh hot tea over ice and that first drink is a mix of hot and cold. Or the first cold breeze going outside.

.... Years ago, I had a woodburning Fireplace at a home I rented, it was in a step down den area of the house and I actually moved my bed to that area, ( it was a decent sized room ) for the fall and winter , so I could have the fire on all night. It was sooool warm, and I slept great, I don't sleep well when I'm cold, lol. I had gas ( central heating) but I only used it in the winter , if it was under 48 at night, along with the Fireplace. It cycled very little, because the house was kept quite warm with the Fireplace.

Very nice!

What a great channel, subscribed.

This cabin is perfect. I like the age and the look so comfy.

I recently found your videos and I dream of a place just like this some day. To live alone and lead a simple life. Thank you for sharing and inspiring me to follow my dream!

He also belived as you do , that a fire place belongs in the middle of the house ( or theirs about ) as he would put it . I really wish I would have tried this on an inside fire , because I don't have access to a fireplace now , and I haven't thought about it a very long time . Your video made me remember this encounter with a really interesting old man , who loved a good fire ! He obviously knew what he was talking about , it works outside . Thank you so much! Oh and you got a new subscriber .

Great to find this channel. I live in Lisbon Ohio too and yes it’s getting cold!

GREAT VIDEO!!!!!!!!!!

First time seeing your videos, I'd like to congratulate you on a fantastic job of building the fireplace. Im next door but on Lake Erie. So you know how cold it gets. My 1859 farm house had originally been built with a fireplace that had a bread oven in the kitchen with the hearth on the opposite side in the living room. I removed the "updates" and restored it to original. I was shocked to see how well it heated the house with the stone exposed again. They also added fireproof insulation over the steel on cement board. Then 2x2's drywalled over them. Literally robbed 80% of the radiant heat it produced. I moved a few years ago and now I'm using Parlor stoves mainly for heating. Two in a two story home is fine even if dips into the teens for a while. Adding insulation really improved things. Still looking for the cook stove. But until then the Parlor stoves have a good cook surface and it is rather nice to put a pot of coffee on upstairs. I just need to work on lowering device so when I get up it's just about ready. There's nothing wrong with utilizing what we have, look at like an automatic timer we're so accustomed to now. Simple living has many terms. Thanks for the video it was very well done.

Great video!!!

I appreciate your stories with the history interwoven. In particular the mentioning of using a rock heated by the fire. It triggered a memory of my grandfather bringing in a hot rock from the earlier campsite fire in a wool sock at some point in the night. He didn't wake me up and give me the sock to hold it my chest. He put it outside the sleeping bag in my lower back area. His theory was the kidneys have the blood filter through them continuously doing there thing. Warm the area, warm the body. It worked. I heat my place with a wood stove. I grew up in NJ currently in N. CA. Keto may cat and myself also enjoy a cooler sleeping climate. Cold to me is 2 degrees F for the high. Thanks for making these videos

I’ve been trying to find a cabin builder for 4.5 yrs, it’s hard. I’ve got land galore just wish I was out of the city! I love your channel. 😊

Very nice cabin.

Your pajamas are adorable!

New sub here - Love the channel and your outlook on life in general. I live about 90 minutes south of you in Belmont county - home of the Barnesville Pumpkin Festival. Take care.

Rumsford,, a contemporary of Ben Franklin, designed a fairly efficient configuration of a fireplace, firebox, throat, smoke shelf. A proper Rumsford fireplace is about 20% efficient. You are absolutely correct,, fireplaces should be inside the insulated structure. A proper saltbox or colonial home, the fireplaces were in the center of the home. Multiple hearths and flues all within a single large masonry core,,, again, you are correct,, once the masonry core is warm the house tends to stay warm. Worked on the old houses,, built modern equals, lived in them. One a large home, 3,000 plus square feet, one fireplace, one wood stove (separate flues, common chimney) ,,, the convention gas fired furnace died one winter,, it required 3 months to get the parts for repair. The fireplace worked fine for those three months in Michigan

Poor Mans TV! Love a fire !

It’s a beautiful fireplace and I agree it belongs inside. Nothing like cozying up by a open fire..

Overstuffed rocking chair in front of a fireplace. Best seat in the house! I can’t live without one and I live in Louisiana!

perfect sleeping temp

This content is gold! Thank you for sharing this! What cameras do you have set up? The ones that shot the porch and different points around the cabin?

Just wondering, have you seen or installed a heat exchanger on heat a lator (not sure of the correct name) in stone fireplace? Wonder if that would give a little more heat. You've done an awesome job on everything. I'm about to build a cabin similar to yours and can't imagine it without a stone fireplace.

I agree, the fireplace has its place. Yours is stunning! Many of the houses in New Hampshire have Count Rumpford fireplaces in varied sizes. At one point they were deemed illegal, I believe because of the small slit flu design, but they are extremely efficient. My neighbor some years ago built a fireplace similar to yours with a bee hive oven in his kitchen. He had a central chimney. There was a large soap stone stove in the dining toom, a small Rumpford fireplace in the living room and a kitchen wood stove at the far end of the kitchen. He copied his Cape Cod house from a colonial design. All the rooms opened into each other. There were two bedrooms upstairs. We blew off an anvil when he had the house raising in the late 1970s. You are well on your way to producing a piece of living history.

Yes, me too!

They work great if you don't mind getting up around 2am and loading it up again!

This is exactly how I imagine my cosy house would look like ❤ perfect I could sit and watch that fire all day long 😁 nice pyjamas by the way 😉

That's a beautiful cabin

This fireplace produce enough heat for some small medieval castle :)))

Love this. I bet their homemade pajamas and clothes were a lot thicker and warmer also.

I have a hunting cabin on our farm. It has no electricity, or water. We had a cast iron stove which worked well, but had to be read fed in the early hours. We replaced it with a rocket mass heater. It burns a fifth of the wood and provides steady heat all night.

There's a gardening channel on YT called "Garden Answer" and they live in an older home with a really cool 3-way fireplace!! It's in the center of the house and heat filters into all 3 main rooms. It's really neat.