Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 13:47:02 -0500
From: GHART <ghart@inlink.com>
To: info@firespaces.com
Subject: Re: Manufacturer's Report on Heater Dispute
Walter,
I've been present at the MHA meeting for
the last few years when these
standards and wording and definitions of what is a masonry
heater have been
hashed out. Other manufactors have been there giving input. I'm
really curious
as to why you have not been in attendance to provide input as
well as Tulikivi.
These meetings are not secret and are open to builders and
manufactors. I
personally contacted Sackett Brick and Tulikivi US.
It seems to me that everything would
have been much more productive if
feedback were provided at the time of these meetings instead of
shaking the tree
after everything had been submitted.
Sincerely,
Gary Hart
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Walter Moberg wrote:
> Hello Everyone:
>
> On Tuesday you received a "report" from Norbert
Senf presenting his
> description of the building code dispute over masonry
heaters. I offer
> another perspective. Attached is my "report" based
on the same meeting held
> last week in DC to resolve the issues. As a manufacturer of
masonry heaters
> I resent the accusations that we are demanding unreasonable
solutions and
> "spoiling the pot". I invite your reactions and
comments and challenge
> Norbert to post this report on the MHA website as well, so
we can have a
> fair hearing of the issues. Note that we have
proposed, and are still
> negotiating new language solutions that have not yet been
placed in front of
> the group at large. Everyone's input is still welcome.
>
> Walter Moberg, President
> FireSpaces, Inc.
> info@firespaces.com
> www.firespaces.com
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Subject:
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 17:00:01 PDT
From: "Walter Moberg" <firespaces@hotmail.com>
Reply-To:info@firespaces.com
To: ghart@inlink.com
Dear Gary,
I work with Walter as well as having been a founder of the
MHA,Vice President of the MHA, Chairperson for the ASTM E06.54.07
(which I followed through from its inception to its completion
around 8 years later), Chairperson for the HPA Masonry Heater
Caucus and President of the MHA a post from which I sadly had to
resign. Since resigning from my post I was able to spend
less and less time with the association due to the enormous
amount of time it takes to try to run an extensive masonry heater
manufacturing business (I am partial owner of EnviroTech Radiant
Fireplaces and former partner in Dietmeyer, Ward & Stroud,
Inc.) I have personally been involved in either the
construction or sale of over 800 masonry heaters. I trained
for 3 years with a German Stove master. I say this not to
brag but to qualify my level of knowledge.
What I saw happening to the MHA was an increasing propensity to close ranks and become very guild-ish. This was the exact problem that was happening in Europe. The guild acted as if they knew everything and that no one else knew anything. Before long (around 1988) the suppliers for handbuilt heater products (Roschmann & Schmid, which had been in business since 1903) went under. The reason that they went under was the fact that they were losing their business to Modular units for their do-it-yourself market. This did not happen because the average person wanted to build their own unit, but because they did not want to deal with the guild and their standards. They limited their ranks so much that they had very few builders and the customer typically had to wait for 6 months to a year to have a heater built.
The MHA started a training program about the time Walter and I
left the association. From what we could see it was a very
limited training program, largely based on hand
construction. Our company and Walters saw that we
were going in different directions than the MHA. We fought
numerous verbal battles over many of the same things we are still
battling over and in the end decided it was time to devote our
energies to our own companies. Many
of the battles I fought as Chairperson for the ASTM committee was
getting people to think outside their perspective boxes i.e.
Finnish contraflow builder, Grundofen builder, TESS manufacturer,
Einsatz manufacturer etc.
This the exact issue at hand right now. People who dont know how to build stoves at high altitudes or how to build very large masonry heaters think we hould limit flue sizes, people who dont know how to insulate flues running outside a house want to disallow putting flues on the outside of are people who have not successfully built thick wall heaters want to disallow thick wall heaters and at the same time disallow thin walled heaters. What Walter and I are trying to do right now is help people see a bigger picture, because with a little less fighting there is a very big picture out there.
In terms of our participation, knowing that these things were
being done, you are right we could have been more involved.
I was out of the loop because of internal changes in DWS, Walter
was deep into development on some new products. On the
other hand, those out there who know both of us and our positions
well did not contact us and ask for input. Jim Buckley and
I were speaking to each other at least several times a
month. Jerry F. had called on several issues over the six
months preceding the inception of this code vote. Norbert
has long known of our stands and positions and did not once try
to get input from us. We did not know that the MHA was
going to make their positions into code! I dont know
if the fact that they knew so well how we would react to this was
a driving factor or not, but I choose to believe not. The
only reason we happened to find out that this was even going on
was that an engineer whom we knew well, was on one of these
committees. He saw that masonry heaters were on the docket
and recognized that they did not represent masonry heaters as we
know them. He
contacted us and got us going on this path.
If the MHA had continued to act truly as an association like
it did when
Ric Crooks was President and the ASTM Document and the Colorado
Regulations were written, then wed all be working off the
same page. But the MHA has
become a guild, representing virtually only the interests of the
custom
heater builders and that is OK. The larger manufacturers
have naturally
been drawn to their own caucus and begun to pursue things from a
broader perspective.
We dont see that we are shaking some sacred tree, rather
that
we are planting new seeds on fallow ground. Tulikivi is
producing and
installing more heaters than probably the whole MHA
combined. Clearly,
they dont want to rely on one vote in an
association dominated by masons.
If MHA can see itself as part of a larger picture and not the
center of a
smaller universe it would go a long way towards cooperation.
Walter has also been responding to comments today and we have
been
splitting the load. He asked me to respond to you so that
it was done in a
timely manner. We would be glad to discuss things further
and hope that you
can perhaps help bridge our dispute.
Sincerely,
Thomas Stroud