"An oven stove is a very efficient and robust oven that radiates heat all day. In the US it was introduced only 20 years ago, but in Europe the technology is almost one thousand years old. Especially in Russia, Scandinavia and Central Europe the oven stove has a long and rich tradition. In the 18th century, several European governments financed research to improve the technology, as a way to overcome an acute shortage of firewood: ecotech before the term existed. However, its further development and distribution was thwarted by the arrival of coal, gas and oil. Oven stoves are large, heavy and slow, but they offer so many advantages that they – again - deserve to be subsidized by the government." - April Buchheit from Bookmarklet

We used these in Romania last June (and well, I guess Tudor used them his entire childhood) and they are so efficient. The problem was (as the article states) that the room would get so unbearably hot, while adjacent rooms were still freezing. I like the method they describe where this problem is solved by routing some of the heat to the rest of the house via hoses in the walls. Very cool! (er, warm) - Jeanette Bosman

The house Clare's parents built has a wood burning stove. They wanted to do this style of stove where the smoke goes back and forth, but instead they just built a large brick chimney, which goes up through the living room. The brick in the living room stays warm for many hours after a fire goes out. - Robert Felty

This seems like it would only be useful in a place where it is predictably cold all day. I don't think I've ever been to such a place. - Gabe

@Gabe, in winter the outside temperature is predictably colder all day long than I would care it to be inside the house. Obviously you wouldn't use the stove at all in the summer. - Robert Felty

Rob, I'm pretty sure Maggie had the windows open once last week to let some of the warm air in. It's not good enough to just be colder outside because this system doesn't have a thermostat. Once you've fired it for the day, if it's not cold enough outside, you just have to take off your clothes or open the windows. I bet it's a great system for making a pizza, though! - Gabe

Steam valves: NYC, too, and probably any older city; it sucks and it's ridiculously inefficient. You can get thermostat steam valves, but they're hard to install and inaccurate. The value of an oven stove seems to be that it has a lot of thermal mass, provides radiant heat, and efficiently harvests heat from flue gases. Those can all be done with conventional heating (and often are, in modern energy-efficient buildings), with the advantage that the conventional system can be thermostatically controlled. - ⓞnor

Dan, I presume an oven stove is more efficient than a regular wood stove because it allows for complete combustion instead of lots of fuel going up the chimney. It also may not waste as much energy heating things like all the air in the room. - Gabe

Radiant heat is very common in Germany, and they have very accurate radiators. They generally only heat the rooms that they are using at the time. I think this is extremely efficient. - Robert Felty

Rob, those are probably a very different kind of radiator than the oven stove. - Gabe

@Gabe - yes, I was more replying to nor's comment that it is difficult to regulate steam valves. - Robert Felty

I can believe it. It doesn't seem technically hard, but for some reason it's not done in the US, maybe because steam radiant heat is only used in a dwindling number of older buildings in major cities. - ⓞnor

Nowadays radiant heat is done with pumped hot water, not steam. Many installations have a thermostat controlling a solenoid valve in each room (or zone), so it could be just as easily done with steam. - Gabe

Very cool, great article, but i'll never need one in Sydney. - Rob Schonberger

I've never experienced it personally, but conceptually I've always liked that thousands of people in Manhattan are warmed by about seven very large co-generation plants. - Andrew C