Reprinted from the Billings Gazette Stone from the bedrock of Finland warms the hearth By JIM GRANSBERY LIVINGSTON - Stone is a metaphor for all things cold. At first glance then, Ron Pihl's WarmStone Fireplaces and Designs is a contradiction. But Pihl's stone stoves invite one to cuddle up to a solid material that radiates heat like an electric blanket. The stone comes from the frosted earth of Finland, and its heat efficiency and comfort have the Park County mason's business "just going nuts." "It has been crazy lately" said Pihl. "They have seen the one at Chico and are like moths drawn to the flame." They are customers for his stoves and fireplaces built from Finnish soapstone, the densest stone in the world, he said. The material is about 3 billion years old and consists of 50 percent talc and 50 percent magnesite. A wood fire within the stove for three to four hours will release heat for up to 24, he said. 'It burns wood the most efficiently. End of story;" Pihl said. The technology is old, but has been revived by a family-owned company called Tulikivi, which is firestone in Finnish. The stone, combined with the clean line of Finnish design, is a combination hard to resist, Pihl said. He noted that his company's new showroom in Livingston will include some stoves designed by Eliel Sarrinen, a noted Finnish architect, who worked in Helsinki and the United States in the first half of the 20th century. Pihl's journey is a stone mason began in West Yellowstone in 1974. He migrated to Alaska and back and in 1980 he was living in the Paradise Valley south of here, working as a masonry contractor. "I started reading about masonry heaters back then, and I talked people into- letting me build them." Tulikivi began marketing in the United States in 1991, and Pihl became a dealer for the Finnish group that year; in 1995, a distributor for it in the Rocky Mountain region. He has been to Finland five times, he said, and will return again this spring for "tribal day," a gathering of the firm's representatives.
Demand for the creations have taken off in the past couple years, Pihl said, and it has become economical for the dealers to handle the stoves that come by ship and rail from Finland. The stoves come in 43,000- pound shipments via ocean containers that arrive on the East Coast and are transferred to rail cars. For the past three or four years, the containers were unloaded in Billings and trucked to Livingston. Beginning in May 2005, the containers went to Seattle and the stove components were trucked back to Billings. Shipping costs are a source of consternation for him as the price of fuel has doubled the transportation bill. Time for orders to come from Finland now take about nine weeks instead of six. That is because of the increased demand for the stoves, Pihl said. A rerouting of the containers to Denver will knock a couple thousand dollars off the transportation cost, he said. "That helps, but does not solve the problem," he said. "I'm not totally discouraged yet". Pihl actually is optimistic, as his staff of six, including himself, will have one or two more employees this year to keep up with the demand. |
