Just like to wish you, Bish, a very Happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year. Let us hope that 2017 sees the return of one of the quality blogs out there. KBO!

And all best wishes to all who still comment here: let's hope we see a fracking good 2017.

golf charlie
I agree with you, most replica Iron age houses with open fires and thatched rooves work in the way you describe. The two I've visited The Crannog and Coriobona suggest smoke wouldn't have been a major problem.

Even areas where slate and other materials were used for roofing there were enough gaps to let significant amounts of smoke out. I have experimental experience to know that to be the case.

SandyS, interesting article about smoke from cooking!

This is a subject that has always niggled me. A chimney did not become a standard bit of construction in houses in the UK until brick and stone were readily available and used to build houses. An open fire, with a chimney is good for cooking, but most of the heat goes up the chimney. The Romans knew this, and provide flue ducts beneath floors to heat a house.

Traditional UK houses were thatched, with reed if available, but straw if not. An open fire without a chimney, would have fumigated the thatch and timbers, and reduced the flora, fauna and fungi that caused decay. Smoke would have risen up, and through the roof covering. Villagers would have known the best typs of wood to burn, and how to store it. A dwelling with a fairly open arrangement of rooms/accommodation would have smelled of woodsmoke, but visibility would not have been reduced.

Open fires in a house with a modern roof, plus ceilings all designed to be impermeable to smoke would be different. Similarly, in Africa, and elsewhere, the availability of corrugated iron sheeting and polythene tarpaulins etc has changed the natural design of traditional dwellings. A chimney to allow smoke AND heat out would be an advantage, and may simply consist of a metal tube, or a few metal buckets with their bases cut out.

With increased populations, living in expanding settlements, available firewood from within walking distance would have decreased. Other fuels, such as dried cattle dung would be burnt, rather than allowed to fertilise the soil. Fewer trees, more people, more animals grazing on poorer unfertilised soil, equals barren desert, with less food and little appropriate to burn, to cook the food. It is then blamed on Global Warming.

In a predominantly warm and dry country like Malawi, it is not logical to contain an excess of smoke and heat within a dwelling.

Burning local material to produce heat for cooking, is not good for a densely occupied, farmed and grazed area of land.

The Green Blob oppose the provision of electrical generation from power stations.

Perhaps previous reports had over exaggerated cooking smoke problems, without realising that a case was being made for coal fired power stations, that the population are now angry at being denied.

I may have missed an earlier reference to this item on the BBC website (and elsewhere)

A big clinical trial in Malawi was expected to show children are less likely to die of pneumonia if they live in a home where food is cooked on a smoke-free stove rather than an open fire. Instead it suggests the stove makes no difference. Where does this leave a huge UN-backed project to get 100 million clean cookstoves into homes in the developing world by 2020?

A long article with these two final paragraphs

And while he admits to "bracing himself" for criticism from advocates of clean cookstove technology , he says he and they share one crucial focus - they all want to clean up the air that the world's poorest children breathe in their own homes.

"We all share the fight against this major global inequality," he says, "and the vision and desire to see truly effective solutions."

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-38160671