by CALEB NICKERSON

Deep in the woods north of Shawville, Norbert Senf lives with his wife Leila. Having met the couple during an event in the summer, I was intrigued when Norbert said he built masonry heaters for a living and promised to return at a later date to further investigate.
The Senfs moved to the area in the 1970s and originally lived off the grid in a cabin before settling at their current location on the property. Norbert had three years of mechanical engineering schooling from the University of Toronto, along with experience working with his father, who was a mason.
Though there was no fire burning when I finally visited the Senfs in late October, their home was warmed by a large, centrally-located brick feature built around what looked like a conventional wood stove.

The heaters work by trapping warm air in a series of flue channels built into the exterior masonry. Unlike a conventional woodstove, wood in a masonry heater is burned fast and hot, as the brick or tile portions of the heater can store and radiate warmth for periods of more than 24 hours.
Norbert added that faster burning at high temperatures reduces the amount of carbon released in the air, making them cleaner than conventional wood stoves as well.
“When you talk about emissions, how you operate the wood stove is [probably] the biggest determining factor,” he said.
He said he stumbled across the technology rather serendipitously.
“We were heating with wood, but I found out about masonry heaters by accident,” he said. “We had a friend who was a potter, who went to Austria and brought back a bunch of brochures and stuff.”
Since Norbert was born in Germany, he could read the text and was intrigued by the idea. He explained that the masonry heaters were very popular throughout parts of Europe prior to the increased availability of cheap petroleum.
“The only country that has an uninterrupted tradition is Austria and that’s wherethe state of the art stuff is these days,” he said. “Other countries like Finland and other Nordic countries … they stopped doing these and tore them all out when they had oil, they just switched over to oil heat. I know a guy who harvested like hundreds of antique tile stoves in Sweden, because they were just throwing them in the trash.”
When a neighbour was replacing his oil furnace in the late 70s, Norbert helped build a heater, based on what he had read about them.
“I had no idea if it would work or not, when I built it,” he said with a laugh.
In 1981, the Senfs attended a workshop in Maine where North American novices learned the ins and outs of the heaters from a Finnish architect.
Following that first meeting, Norbert and his new comrades would collaborate to create a common set of building standards for the heaters, which were virtually unknown to homeowners and building inspectors on this continent. Their organization is now known as the Masonry Heater Association of North America (MHA).
“That’s actually how we got started many years ago,” he said. “We wrote an [American Society for Testing and Materials] ASTM standard – took us about 10 years – for masonry heaters.”
Norbert eventually designed a core unit that could be cast in his workshop to scale up production.  The substance used for the cores is known as castable refractory, a substance similar to cement.
With the arrival of the internet, he found a suitable way to market his niche product, through his website heatkit.com.
“It was online for a few hours and I got an email or phone call from someone in Montana,” he said, recalling with fondness the days when basic dial-up was a novelty.
The kits could either be installed by Norbert or shipped with pre-cut fire bricks to be assembled by someone on site.
“Because I’m a mason myself, I designed it to be friendly for a mason,” he explained.
At the peak of his business, Norbert employed five people and was producing as many as 25 heaters a year. Currently, he said he’s “semi-retired” and has a seasonal employee help him out in the winter months.
“What I do now is just support,” he said. “Clients will send me the floor plans, I’ll help them with the layout. If the mason has any questions I’ll help them out.”
He also conducts emissions research on behalf of the MHA, and part of his shop is devoted to a test stove wired up to a plethora of sensors and computer equipment. One of the projects he’s currently working on with a researcher from France is an open-source program to help builders calculate optimal dimensions and setups. Sensors measure everything from the weight of the wood box (to calculate burn rate), to the amount and type of emissions released.
Norbert said that the bulk of the heaters mean that they’re mainly installed in newly constructed homes, as retrofits can be tricky logistically. He said many of the people interested in the heaters are attracted to a using a sustainable fuel source and shedding reliance on the power grid.
Recent discussions about climate change and the cost of carbon have prodded folks to seek alternatives, he explained.
“If there’s something like the ice storm [in ‘98] and the power goes out, something like this would make all the difference in the world,” he said.