Otoharo!
Sitting in front of the fireplace this morning, I mulled over this nebulous of thought that keeps nagging at me that triangles have something to do with how a fire burns.
Back in the 1970's, I attended an IPM retreat which met in a very large estate house. In the room we used for meetings, was a large fireplace, I could have stood in it, it was that large. There was a set of irons that held longs which lay across the fireplace. The logs were cut from trees of a size that did not have to be split. They were about four feet in length. Someone had layed the fire, just before I entered the room. The kindling was working at it from underneath the irons. It was all new to me at that time, as my only experience had been growing up in the country with a small wood heater in the front room. The sticks we burned were more like two or three inches. So I was very interested in watching this big fireplace of logs begin to put out heat.
As if I knew what I was doing (which I didn't) I picked up a longish stick lying in the wood stack nearby, and placed this stick across the logs. Instantly, it seemed to me, the fire increased. I mused at it and wondered to myself if this had something to do with triangles.
This morning, I laid my own fire. The firebox is 20 inches in all three dimensions. Our logs have to be split. I brought in five sticks.
Before starting the fire, I found that coals remained from last night, so I put on some cedar house shingle I am using for kidling. On this kindling, I lay three stick parallel to each other and to the sides of the firebox. The ends were facing me. When the kindling burned down some, there was room for another layer of sticks on top. (I am calling spit logs sticks). I put one over two , then one over one but parallel. The three which were touching each other was burning more than the others. So I turned the last stick so that it was diagonal over two lower sticks. Then they burned better also.
Again, I thought, it must have to do with triangles. When each stick was touching two other sticks they all burned better.
Does anyone know anything about this!
finality
