April, 1919 
39 
The 
STONE FIREPLACE 
Hozv to Build and 
Make It Smokeless 
T he life of the camp in the woods or the 
summer cottage naturally centers around 
the fireplace. It is the great source of hos¬ 
pitality at night-time and in inclement weather. 
In fact, one can scarcely imagine a camp or 
cottage without a big, generous hearth on which 
the logs crackle while the storm beats without. 
There is something distinctive about this sort 
of fireplace—it is rough and hand-hewn, with 
none of the delicacies of the finer types one 
meets with in town houses. Field stones piled 
one on another up to the ridge pole, jagged 
rocks heaped like a cairn, with a slab for man¬ 
tel—such crudities only give it charm and make 
it harmonize with the rough and ready sur¬ 
roundings of Nature. 
How to Build It 
No special rules can be laid down for the 
building of these stone fireplaces, because one 
can lay the stone any way he chooses so long 
as the chimney construction is right. And in 
the building of chimneys to make them smoke¬ 
less, the rules are very simple and few. 
Every fireplace has the following parts—the 
fire chamber, where the logs burn, the throat, 
the damper, the smoke shelf and the smoke 
chamber. Each of these plays a part in the 
perfect functioning of the chimney. In the 
construction of a chimney there are two essen¬ 
tials to remember—the flue area should be 
one-tenth the area of the opening into the 
room; and the smoke chamber must be properly 
placed so that it can take up the inequalities 
of the up and down draughts and keep the 
smoke going steadily up the chimney. 
The chimney is built in the following fash¬ 
ion: First there are the hearth and opening 
and fire chamber. At the top, the fire chamber 
is built forward to form the throat or opening 
into the smoke chamber. The throat is 3" or 
4" deep and is closed at the bottom by an ad¬ 
justable damper. The narrowness of the throat 
makes the smoke and gases rush upward into 
the smoke chamber above. 
When the fire is lighted the warm air rises 
to the front of this flue and into the smoke 
chamber, driving the cold air down the back. 
Something must stop this cold air circulation 
from getting down into the fire chamber. Hence 
there is placed at the bottom of the smoke 
chamber, close by the upper edge of the throat, 
a little partition or smoke shelf that swirls the 
cold air around until it is carried into the path 
of the rapidly ascending warm column and on 
up the chimney. 
Fire Chambers and Hearths 
The depth of the fire chamber should be one- 
half the width. The sides and back should 
slope so that the heat is thrown out into the 
room. To secure the proper slope for the sides, 
make the width of the back two-thirds of the 
front, letting the sides first run straight back 
for the width of a brick. Allow the back to 
rise perpendicularly for about a foot before 
it begins to slope forward toward the throat. 
The kind of hearth is decided by taste. It 
may be brick, stone or cement. The only pre¬ 
caution to follow—and this applies to the entire 
fireplace and chimney—is not to have any tim¬ 
bers in close proximity lest they catch fire. 
The field stone fire¬ 
place with a broad 
hearth is best jor sum¬ 
mer camps and cot¬ 
tages 
A camp fireplace 
should extend into the 
living room and be its 
dominating feature of 
hospitality 
For a city home a 
fireplace of dressed 
stone is possible where 
the furnishings are in 
harmony 
