The Story Of Unforgettable Fire, LLC & Our Kimberly® Wood Stove

In 2008, my 25-year-old brick and mortar wood stove shop was an early casulty of The Great Recession. When we could not pay the rent on our house, my family of three, which included our then 9-year-old-daughter, ended up living on a 28-foot boat moored in Puget Sound off the coast of Vashon, an island west of Seattle.

Life in general seemed very bleak. We were cold and no small or tiny wood stove would fit in the tiny space that I carved out of the cabinetry. I had to figure a way to keep my family warm.

Moored next to million-dollar yachts required that I develop a highly efficient wood stove with a clean burn and smokeless chimney. A daiinty appetite was necessary because there was little room on our boat to store firewood. It occurred to me that the best way to meet all of our requirements was to vaporize the wood and burn the wood gases in a two-step combustion.

Divinely inspired, the little wood stove that I created would become the heartbeat of our lives. By October 2012, Unforgettable Fire, LLC was a newly minuted entity and my Kimberly® stove had successfully completed her EPA-CSA emissions and UL safety testing protocols for the United States and Canada.

Our Kimberly® wood stove was named after the local woman who inspired me to go public with my personal project. As our Kimberly® gained notoriety, Kimberly® would become the darling of the Tiny House Movement, which was beginning to gain momentum at the time. Kimberly® gained a loyal following in short order and unsolicited client videos begain to appear on YouTube. Other individuals saw the value of my project and showed up on my doorstep to help.

The Kimberly® wood stove is manufactured from domestic feedstock, and Windex is the only chemical used in manufacturing. Kimberly® has the ability to squeeze more heat from less wood and release less smoke into the atmosphere than any stove I had ever seen, that is until I developed our Katydid® stove, which was one of the very first wood stoves to meet the 2020 EPA emissions standards.

Kimberly® was born out of our need as a family to survive. My vision has always been that with optional add-ons (such as a Dutch oven and a thermo-electric generator) our Kimberly® stove would allow you to heat, cook, bake, produce electricity, and heat water. Kimberly® stands 25.5-inches tall with a 10-inch diameter and a weight of only 56 pounds, so that she takes up very little space, and is fully portable .As such, our Kimberly® stove is an on-grid, off-grid living solution® and has given many people the freedom to live out their dreams in remote locations, as well as those who simply wanted a backup heat source for their surburban residential home.

In 2013, my team and I were honored to showcase our Kimberly® stove on The National Mall in Washington, D.C. at the first ever Wood Stove Design Challenge (originally called the Wood Stove Decathlon). This event was organized by The Alliance for Green Heat and sponsored in part by Popular Mechanics magazine. In 2014, we introduced our Katydid™ wood stove, which features our patented gasifier technology, but was designed to heat a bigger home.

In 2018, my team and I returned to the National Mall in Washington, D.C. as one of approximately 12 wood stove design teams from around the globe. There, we debuted our KD3™  wood burner prototype in the 2018 Wood Stove Design Challenge, thanks in part to a $10,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to further our work in creating electricity from the heat of a wood stove and heating water for domestic use.

The Kimberly® stove is a story about the power of faith, hope, hard work, and perseverance–the very essence of what this country was built upon. Kimberly® is hand-welded from 116 individual parts precision laser cut from domestic stainless steel. In response to the feedback from our clients, we released our new and improved Kimberly® 2.0 in early 2024. This is the same our original Kimberly® stove but a slight modification to the bottom of the combustion chamber facilitates easier ash removal. This change follows our improved combustor design. We have improved upon our already longer burn time and low emissions output.

We remain a family-owned and operated boutique wood stove manufacturer, with a very loyal following. It is my intent that our wood burning stoves will always be manufactured from American materials, from the raw steel to the glass, down to the very last nut and bolt. Your purchase keeps jobs in this country and enables American production workers to make their mortgage payments and provide dance lessons and soccear gear for their children. Thank you for your support!

~ Roger Lehet
Inventor & Chief Executive Pyromaniac