In the beginning, Tom Stroud, Bruce Dietmeyer and Richard Ward of Vashon Island, Washington, wanted to build fireplaces for their houses in the community they and their friends had established. So they learned how to build with masonry, how to design the highly efficient fireplaces of Germany we call masonry heaters here. They learned well and they were innovative.
They formed Dietmeyer, Ward & Stroud, Inc. (DWS) to build their masonry heaters, Rumford fireplaces, and other designs the old fashioned way, brick by brick. They were very successful. Almost overwhelmingly so! Along the way they had to master the building code process because masonry heaters were not in the codes, they had to learn emissions testing because the EPA got involved with wood smoke. They had to figure out how to do what they did more easily and quickly.
Their answer was the “Envirotech Radiant Fireplace,” a cast interlocking core system of tongue and groove blocks which could be assemble in hours instead of days and faced (veneered) with any hard, dense masonry or ceramic material the owner desired. It could be assembled by other masons or even skilled non masons. And the result would be the same beautiful, efficient and clean burning masonry heaters DWS was building (still at the top of the EPA tested lists).
When the dust had all settled and the three moved on to other things, DWS had built over a thousand of their masonry heaters and provided several hundred more cores for others to build (the experts think this was out of a total of only about 20,000 masonry heaters built in all of North America to that date!).
Timely Construction carries on that legacy by building and maintaining Envirotech and DWS products.