Our Grate Press


Raves from the media including TIME magazine helped put the Texas Fireframe®grate on the map. (See excerpts below.) Dr. Cranberg’s breakthrough invention even made the news – at CBS and the BBC.
logo
Survivalists take note: The Texas Fireframe grate is the only fire grate featured in the Handbook to Practical Disaster Preparedness for the Family, written by NASA robotics engineer Arthur T. Bradley. It was also featured in “Cool Tools” – the blog associated with the Amazon bestseller.

CBS News “He designed a revolutionary grate… It enables Cranberg to build a fire that puts heat out into the room more efficiently….The logs burn their full length and need no poking to revive the flames.”

Money magazine — “I call your attention to one of the greatest finds of my personal energy-saving crusade – the Texas Fireframe [grate]. This specially designed grate turns a fireplace into a real heating plant…I was so excited I ordered another [Texas Fireframe grate] for my other fireplace. Result: furnace on only an hour or hour and a half on the coldest days.”

The New York Times — “Easy lighting is only a side benefit of this grate arrangement; the big advantage is the slow burning, steady fire that results and the way the fire burns. The arrangement of logs creates a cavity that keeps the fire confined to the inside of the slot and, as well, forces the fire to radiate a very high percentage of its heat out into the room. Thus it is insured that more B.T.U.’s will be used to heat people in front of the fire, rather than heating masonry or flowing up the chimney.”

TIME magazine — “Dr Lawrence Cranberg…has designed a fireplace grate that forces a fire not only to burn better, but to send more of its heat out into the room.”

Scientific American — “Cranberg’s conception of the radiation pattern from his log holder is correct…little of the radiated heat was lost upward to the overhang or the chimney…nearly all of it must have been coming out into the room. The burning was slower with this arrangement…and required no rotation or stirring of the logs.”

USA Today — “With a ‘physicist fire’ under the hood,” Cranberg says, ‘the fireplace delivers about five kilowatts of radiant power. Multiply that by all of America’s fireplaces,’ he says ‘and you have more power output than all its nuclear power plants combined.’”

Better Homes and Gardens — “It channels an amazing amount of heat from afireplace directly into the room, without using any moving parts.”

Dallas Morning News — “An Austin physicist, Dr. Lawrence Cranberg, has received sudden national and international attention…for achieving a scientific breakthrough…Throughout the world, scientists are at work trying to get more heat from solar, thermal, nuclear and other energy sources. They are sophisticated and long-range sources. Dr. Cranberg took a more direct route. He learned how to get more room heat from a log fireplace. In so doing, he seems to have achieved what has eluded man almost since the discovery of fire.”

Austin American-Statesman — “As described in the newspaper Sunday (and on national television, no less, Monday), the Cranberg device creates a slot for the hottest part of the fire to escape out into the room rather than up the chimney, thereby increasing the efficiency of the primitive heater.”

Dayton Daily News –  “The most dramatic discovery was the amount of heat produced. ”

TIME magazine dubbed it “The Physicist’s Fire,” comparing the Texas Fireframe grate to conventional fireplace grates. Dr. Cranberg has made two modifications to the fire grate since it was illustrated in the TIME article: the steel bars are straight, not curved as shown, and the bars are now heavier in weight.

Click Below to Enlarge
Time Magazine Story - Efficient Fireplace Grate

footer