Kiva Geometry

Our Kiva-Rumfords are based on our standard Rumfords. They use all the same components that our regular Rumfords do. The difference is that the Kiva-Rumford involves a rounded firebox and an arched opening.
The picture of the Small Kiva-Rumford on our website is based on our 24" Rumford. You could base you Kiva-Rumford on our 30", 36", 42" or 48" Rumford plans just as well. The sketch below shows how you might lay out the firebox and arched opening for a Kiva based on our 42" Rumford.

One day a few years ago while I was leading a sparsely attended fireplace workshop in New Mexico, Fred Rodrigues, a man who built most of the kivas around Santa Fe (and who's family had been building them for 400 years) told me his "secrets" for building a good kiva. The relationships were remarkably similar to our Rumford - the firebox only miss-matched our 30" throat by about 1/2". From then on we've promoted the Kiva-Rumford as combining the best in 18th century English fireplaces and even older Mexican fireplaces.
Because most kivas are small, we have promoted the small Kiva-Rumford based in the plan on our "plans" page. But you could scale up and base the kiva on any of our sizes as seen above.