building a stove

this woman was cooking when we arrived

in many maya households around the lake, women still cook with a “three stone fire.”  this is simply an open fire with three stones placed to hold the pot over it.  while simple, it has many drawbacks:  safety, health, efficiency/cost among them.  the fact of the matter is that this method of cooking is used in many impoverished areas around the world.  I’ll provide some scary stats in a couple weeks when I get to one of my future planned posts, but for now, just know that it is a problem.



how the room started



so when we got to the school in san marcos and saw them cooking on a semi-indoor three stone fire, we were thrilled to hear they’d be interested in a more contained stove.  two people outside of our group, Christina and Monika, happened to be in the area volunteering with Charlie for natural building.  they had also seen some other types of stoves through their travels in mexico, so Christina and I got to work designing the stove we would build.

plans...

first, of course, we needed to get input from the woman doing the cooking, to make sure we were making something that would actually be useful and welcome by her.  after examining the pots they used and talking over a couple options with her, we came up with a basic type of stove to build.  after consulting a couple of natural building books from Charlie, we had a good idea of our design.  we measured, drew out the plans, and ordered what we needed, all on the first day.

the design utilized an adobe brick base, topped with “fire bricks” made into a compartment for the fire, a “plancha” (metal griddle) for the cooking surface, and a flue to direct the smoke out of the room.  adobe bricks arrived the next day and we began work, using the mud mixture from our natural building for the mortar.

laying out the bricks

and that’s when it got interesting.  we had failed to account for cultural differences in our planning.  the two local experts we were working with stepped in as we were laying out the bricks.  despite the plans we had drawn out, they had their own ideas about how to build a stove, something they’ve done before, no doubt.  they listened to us politely, but then continued laying out the bricks the way they thought was best.  they let us help, showing us how much room to leave for the mortar and how to apply it, but it was clear the design so far was not going to be ours.  to be fair, their layout was really not much different from what we had planned, so we let it go, appreciative of their expertise and help.

mortaring the fire bricks

by the time it came to laying the firebricks, it was clear that we were merely being allowed to help, rather than being the designers or even builders of the stove.  our sketched-out plan was abandoned and we continued along in the way the men determined.  in retrospect, we should have been able to foresee this cultural difference.  and we may have been able to head it off by explaining that we needed to learn for ourselves, but I doubt it.  I think it was a little naïve of us to think we could design and build something our own way in a place where people with experience and deep cultural roots were already involved.

cutting the bricks with a machete

anyhow, in the end it did look like what we had envisioned.  we used machetes to cut the adobe and fire bricks to needed sizes.  (again, me with a machete!)  we used the mud mixture for adobe mortar and the lime mixture for fire brick mortar.  the plancha was set on top, with a small space for building a fire, and the flue came out the back, exhausting to the air outside the school.  finally, plaster was applied to the base of the stove for aesthetics.  as far as I know, the people at the school were pleased with it.  I sure would have loved to see them use it!

the stove building crew and finished product, photo by Craig Harvey