Indoor Rocket Stove

I posted this on a rocket mass heater yahoo group but that group is so dead This was only the second post of 2014.
Are any of you folks knowledgeable concerning rocket mass heaters?

Rocket stoves really are great.
I need to build a shed out back and I want to put a rocket mass heater in it.
I am thinking about an enclosed porch where the feed part is and the fire will be like under the wall into the building. The enclosed porch will be on the South side of the building and it will be a dry place to store bundles of firewood.

That way the air that is feeding the fire will not be coming from inside the building. Just a short distance inside the wall will be the fire loop then the exhaust into the bench that will be on the West side then on the North wall before exiting out through the East wall.

This will just be a testing mass heater. The idea is to head back there on a cold winter day and see what the mass heater will do. If I keep a fire going for 24 hours or until it is warm in there then just let the fire die down to see how long the warmth lasts. Ultimately what I want is to build a greenhouse with one in it.
If I could just feed it several times a day and the mass would carry it through the night I would be so happy.

Also I must ask if anyone thinks water can be the mass.
Originally I was planning to use an old cast iron wood stove I have that has a water jacket around it and two threaded holes to plumb it up with 3/4" pipe. I was going to place 12 plastic 55 gallon drums around the greenhouse with the grow beds on top of them. Insulation wrapped around all of the barrels would make almost all of the heat go up through the grow beds. I was going to push water through the stove then through all of the barrels. The cast iron stove would have been radiating heat into the whole greenhouse.

I know the rocket stove will burn a lot cleaner and get more heat out of the wood. If I can wrap enough copper line around it do any of you think the water barrels would be okay to use?

I have insulated double pane sliding glass door panels to use for the glass parts of the greenhouse. If I had row covers on the grow beds just think about all of the heat that would be stored in those barrels radiating up through the grow beds then is trapped under the row covers.

You should go to permies.com. They have an entire section dedicated to rocket stoves. I know many have done the pipe around it to heat water so I think it'd work just fine. We decided to do a test stove out in our barn since we had a peacock freeze to death. If it goes well out there (venting shouldn't be an issue since it has lots of air flow) we'll consider doing it inside. I like the thought of heating green houses with them too.

Yes I know about Permies.
My idea would be a 3/4" Galvanized pipe to the rocket heater then to a header pipe with a lot of smaller 3/8" copper lines going around and around the rocket stove before heading them all back into a header pipe of Galvanized 3/4" then around to all of the barrels. I do have 100' of 1977 3/8 copper that has never been out of the cardboard boxes. I also have an old pressure tank that I will use upside down as an expansion tank in the system.
I probably would just drill holes in the header pipes and tap them to fit 3/8" pipe to flare adapters.
http://www.tractorsupply.com/en/stor...e-x-male-flare
I wouldn't buy them from Tractor Supply because I could get them cheaper right at a plumbing supply store.

To me the problem with using a rocket stove to heat is it burns fuel at full speed. You would have to keep feeding it wood regularly and you would not have good control over the amount of heat generated. So you could have it up to 90 degrees without a way to cut down the fire without letting it go out. My idea that I have thought of doing is to get a large thermal mass (like a large block of concrete) burn the stove to heat the thermal mass, let the stove go out and the mass of stone will radiate heat for hours afterward. The design I have seen for the stove is the rocket stove covered completely with a hood with a hole to put wood in and and exhaust pipe out of the covering hood through a dryer vent like port to the outside. I have thought of experimenting with this type of design and placing the block of stone on top to be heated, maybe even pouring cement and putting metal fins into the concrete to fit inside the cover to help transfer heat into the cement. It is still rolling around in my mind yet on how I would exactly want to do it.

you need to come down to S&EP and talk to Elkhound and see the one he build outside. It's permanent and I could see it being used inside. I'd say he knows the most about those as anyone I've seen on the site.

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"Live your life, and forget your age." Norman Vincent Peale

I think there is some confusion here between rocket stoves and rocket mass heaters. I know there are a lot of youtube videos showing how to build rocket stoves, so I can see how the confusion has come about.

A rocket stove is generally used for cooking and heating water in a camping/outdoor situation. It would indeed be unsafe to use one of these indoors, and it would also use a lot of wood if you tried to heat your house with it, because, as BlackFeather said, it would have to run all the time. There is no mass to one of these, or at least not much, even in the ones built out of something other than metal cans or barrels.

A rocket mass heater, on the other hand, has a flue running through a bench (or wall, or floor, or....) built of mass material, often cob. This flue is exhausted outside of the building, so there is no danger of lethal fumes indoors (as long as it's well-constructed and has no leaks, but that's an issue with just about any open-flame device used indoors). Because of the huge amount of mass, which is heated by the flue running through it, a rocket mass heater only needs to be fired off for an hour or two, usually once a day. In a poorly insulated structure and very cold weather it might need to be fired twice a day. So it uses much less wood than a standard stove, and while it does need to be fed while being fired off, it's certainly not a 24-hour-a-day job. It's probably not for everyone, but as a person who currently heats with a regular wood stove, which has to be fed at regular intervals all day during cold weather, I would happily trade that for a rocket mass heater that only needed to be fed for an hour or two!

Also, due to the extreme heat at which the wood burns, the stove only smokes for a few minutes at the beginning of a burn until the insides and the flue warm up, so it's much less polluting than a regular wood stove.

If anyone still has questions, look up rocket mass heaters on-line, or go to permies.com and read the forum about rocket mass heaters. Ernie and Erika Wisner, who have probably built more rocket mass heaters than anyone else, post there fairly often and are happy to answer questions.

Kathleen

Yes BlackFeather you are describing trying to heat a house with a Rocket Stove when they are best used for cooking meals and not inside either.

Rocket Mass Heaters are like a Rocket Stove in their center but the exhaust gasses are trapped and pulled back down then piped through a mass that saves the heat for later.
Once up to temp they burn very clean and the exhaust gases are rather cool compared to most plain wood stoves. It still must be sent outside.
Here two fires per day would keep the mass nice and warm. I will use the vertical feed tube so as the sticks burn they drop down to feed the fire.

The one in the shed out back will be good because I need that shed to hang solar panels on the roof then put the charge controller, batteries and inverter in the shed. An electric fence will be put around my crop land out there so I can feed the crop to pigs and chickens instead of the wild deer and coons.

Even though I will not need the electric fence as much in the winter it still would be so cool to go out there and fire up the mass heater and relax and read in solitude. The warmth would be great for the batteries too. I must make the roof steep to help keep snow off the panels. I would have electric heaters plugged into the charge controller to shunt the power to them if the batteries were full.

maybe an outside wood furnace ?? Remember many insurance companies will not insure home made stoves..........

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www.outsidewoodheater.com

Listen to your Dad, he wants you all to be safe, First. Ask and maybe he will help, tell him and you will lose valuable experience at the very least.

new idea to make your own logs
http://youtu.be/hFSVtJbpHF8

http://www.offgridquest.com/homes-dw...heaters-stoves