15 Ways Old German Farmhouses Stayed Warm Without a Furnace — And Why New Houses Can't

15 Ways Old German Farmhouses Stayed Warm Without a Furnace — And Why New Houses Can't Before central heating, Black Forest farmhouses got through mountain winters without a furnace. Their answer was one warm room, the Stube, heated by a tiled stove fed from the kitchen, and a whole house built around it to hold the heat: cattle under the same roof, hay stacked overhead, winter windows, and stone that gives off warmth for hours after the fire dies. Konrad Fischer walks through fifteen of those old German methods, then looks at why most new American houses lose their heat the moment the power goes out, and what a modern German Passivhaus proved instead.