Why ?

When I was little , we lived in an old , uninsulated house with heating provided during the day by the cooking Mum did on the wood-fired cookstove . At night , a little coal oil heater by the front door kept the house a little above freezing . The stovepipe from each of the stoves rose through a pipehole in the ceiling , on up through a bedroom and into the main chimney flu . The hotair that circulated in these pipes warmed the bedrooms.

Once the woodfire in the cookstove...