Fire,fire, burning bright…….
Firelighting – Mongolia style. Learned a new lesson this morning.
The firebox in a Ger is sturdy steel box, about 400mm square and 300 mm deep: a drop-down opening at the front and a series of removable rings on the top for easy ‘stoking’ access. The chimney is a 150mm pipe that goes up through the roof of the ger at its apex.
I tried lighting a fire in this box last evening. I scratched up some paper and carefully laid the kindling on top, intending to add some coal when the wood was well ablaze. Futile hope! The paper burned half-heartedly and failed to do anything to the kindling. This morning Martin’s wife called in and observed that it was a bit cold. ‘why don’t you light the fire?’ I told her that we did not have any paper to light it. ‘Paper?’ she looked puzzled. What would you need paper for? Where is the candle?’
Now what would you want a candle for – it wasn’t dark! Ah, all was shortly revealed. She broke up a few sticks of kindling – producing some pieces with splintered ends. These she stacked carefully at the mouth of the fire-box. Then she lit the candle and held the flame under the splintered ends of the kindling. Quickly the kindling was ablaze and shortly after that she added coal to the back of the fire, via the top loading access rings. The whole procedure took just a couple of minutes. To complete the lesson she then stacked the remaining kindling criss-cross fashion under the rear of the firebox to ensure a speedy drying process. It was a very educational interlude.
NZ’s OSH would have a fit if they had to inspect a Ger. A firebox sitting in the middle of the room – sometimes but not always sitting on a plinth of bricks. The flue which which gets blisteringly hot, is quite unprotected and pokes up through a hole in a wooden panel in the ‘roof’.
There is only one small door into the ger.
There is no provision for an emergency/alternate exit. A fire in one of these things would be quite catastrophic. Everything in it is tinder-dry so I imagine they would go up in flames very quickly. However, this same design has been used for centuries and no one seems worried to issue safety precautions of any kind, so I guess the safety record must be reasonable.
Tags: Digs, Observations, Oddities, Tag Index
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