Beautiful work. I love fire-even if it's dangerous when left unattended. I now own your book and the 4 DVD-set. Still, the planning a rmh for a small cabin with weird dimenssion and windowframes made from plastic appears to be more challenging than I thaught. If I knew that, I would have started with an easyer project-but it's too late now. I've been putting too much work into planning that I'm beyond quitting. This is still better than watching TV or just hanging around...
I have been awed by your work ethic, emotional intelligence, and humor for years. My observation is a-question- when you develop a theory why 'research and develop' from scratch? While there is obviously much to gain by learning from doing, as in the case of the poured core, for example, others have come before you that could give insight that would save time, materials, money, and sometimes health. Between steel, bronze, and cement, there is nothing new on earth. The internet is good for something, but also numerous treaties have been written- with all due respect.
Paul, keep up the good. Nay GREAT work!!! I agree 100% with your opinion; -millions of these should be in use around the world. You're also exactly right on the reason WHY; that they're hard to build. I DID that I built one by the book in a Friend's Greenhouse. He paid for the material. I did the labor and I told him several times that whatever he had in the thing in materials, I had MORE than that in labor I figured that I had about $1,500 labor and had spent 24 hours a day I literally worked 24 hours straight at least one night one full day and night. I came home from a trip one time and walk in the greenhouse and see that it had been completely torn down! destroyed! Disassembled! Dead! Down to the aircrete pad.I had poured and built a 6 by 9 Aircrete foundation for it. I screamed when I saw that it was gone, and I literally felt like someone had stabbed me or killed one of my children. I put my heart and soul into it and it was one of the greatest things I had built my life. it was perfectly designed it was done by the book and I was going to use water for the thermal mass at steel bucket so light out above the pipe and we would have had about 300 gallons of hot water. I liked nay, LOVED your idea in the video where you rode bikes into town and put up a rocket stove within an hour or something like that. I built a wooden frame like you did and was going to use SOME GRAVEL. But the gravel was just going to be extra Mass around the steel buckets, which would be full of water! I was going to go your idea one better, bc water is 5 times better than anyting else at absorbing storing and radiating heat correct? Well I can see you send in a chair and filling a 300 gallon horse tank, etc so my idea was to fill 300 gallons of water into buckets, drums and barrels. Talk about low labor right? Hey I'm lazy. I've always believed in brains over brawn. I pictured me mixing thousands of pounds of cob ...No, I couldn't see it happening and I didn't have enough help around to do that so I just figured I could sit there and use the garden hose ten feet from the hydrant to fill barrels and buckets with water!!! Plus it ready going to be fine in less than an hour!!! Then add dirt, gravel, cob etc where needed. I be never stopped try to popularize + 2 perfect rocket stoves. I built three the simplest and most ingenious rocket stoves that you can possibly come up with. Again I got to admit I don't have a lot of help and I'm lazy and I'm old I'm 68 years only had a heart attack and stroke two of each actually so I got to be careful what I'm doing with my body. Anyway why spend all that time making Cob we could dig a trench the one I made parabolic. I put waterproof membrane installation did the pipe so I wrote all the healer deflecting directly up into the Geodesic Dome. It could be a yurt it could be a teepee it could be a dome it could be a cheap Walmart tent it could be a cardboard box but you can heat it and sleep on warm ground. I'll send you a link for that stuff. I made a cheapest readily available prototype possible out of 6 cm stainless steel hot tent pipe. I will send you links for that as well as the ones that built in the Greenhouse.
I made a 4 inch system with 15cm square steel tubing and 2 cm fiber insulating material on the inside (hench a 4 inch system) I use a large propane tank as my barrel, unfortunately this didn't cool off the hot gasses enough in the first season, so now I made 6 x 60mm pipes inside that run from the bottom and exit at the top, cool air gets sucked in at the bottom and blasts hot out of the top, cooling the exhaust gasses in the process. I measured the temperature on top of the riser and often get 700+C so where the wood burns in the tunnel it must be at least 850-900C, enough to eat through bare steel in a hurry, exhaust to the chimney is often just 1/10 of the riser temperature, so it's a fairly efficient burn I would say, I can't get through 20 kilo of wood a day, burning at least 18 hours. The ceramic fiber board works as an excellent insulator, and heating the system pretty fast, from lighting the stove to riser temperature of 500C is always within 3 minutes. I only replace the first 25 cm of my insulation inside the burn tunnel every year, the riser and secondary combustion chamber where still ok after 1 season, it cost less than 10 euro per year to replace it and it's good to go for another season.
The silica (SiO2) in ceramic board can form cristobalite (a known carcinogen), at temperatures from around 900 degrees Celcius and up. It's advised to treat used ceramic board, that has been used as active fire insulation, with the same care as asbestos. Before use as such, it's considered harmless.
@@cuboloudspeakers yeah, I know, I treat ceramic fiber board as asbestos, keeping it far away from my airways and use gloves and masks while handling that stuff, gloves because it itches like crazy.
Hi Paul .. thanks for the video. Just curious, how are insurance companies reacting to a RMH? Or do people just say they are putting in a wood stove? Insurance companies get so weird when it comes to wood stoves, pellet heaters, etc. .. and whether they are in a house vs a barn.
Misrepresentation is not in your favor when the house burns down (from whatever cause) and the inspector says ‘this is not a masonry heater’ and your claim is denied. May be worth putting some effort into getting this design approved by code and insurance companies nationwide, to create a demand for millions. Obviously it heats just fine. There’s workarounds for the ugly barrel. But the hurdle is code and insurance.
I was thinking of buying a shippable core from the guys at dragon heaters, but I'm not sure how good they are? I don't know how long they have been in business.
i love this video! did i read that Uncle Mud and Bryan are building shippable cores? Also, do I understand correctly that Matt Walker sells instructions on his site for how to build a refractory cement core on his site, but doesn't offer them pre-made for sale? Is there a set of instructions somewhere that teaches each of the core building approaches? i read that donkey built a refractory core (i think?) that included wood ash, but there were questions around if he washed the ash. I searched the forums, but couldn't find instructions on how to build many of the types you review in this video - would love to see that and would put money down to see it made!
Paul I just finishing a steel build of 1/4 steel tubing. My question is does any one have experienced knowledge of how long will a build like this last. One winter two winters. before the steel burns out. Im using it as a Rocket stove not a mass heater the only insulation is on the riser.
Technically these Rocket Mass systems seem superior for wood burning systems. Watching these videos for some time, I've wondered why almost every house in Alaska does not uses one to minimize the time/effort in gathering wood. However, to be fair, and with kind criticism, most look like junk yard left overs which 99% of women don't want in a nice, clean house. IMO, this technology would take off if more systems were shown with nice exteriors which did not look unfinished.
Why aren’t there millions? Wellll... most people like having insurance on their home, and insurance companies don’t write policies on homes with heaters which aren’t UL listed. And if code is an issue, the places (Portland) that have adopted code compliance for an rmh are very limited.
i have visited many rocket mass heaters that were in cities where it was illegal and it was a rental. And now some of those rocket mass heaters are appreciated by the landlord and the city changed their codes to allow rocket mass heaters.
paul wheaton I'm not real familiar with these yet, but could these go into a small manufactured home (16x48)? It's in city limits, but we have 10 acres, just a handful of homes nearby.
how can you make something like this??? 7:11 I'm planning a mini pizza oven and instead of perlicrete I want to use either that ceramic stuff or calcium silicate.
One thing that come to mind about this stove is would home insurance approve this item ??? What about the open inlet for the wood. I would bet you that if the design was part wood stove and part rocket stove that you would really sell a lot. Most people like convenience with little messing with the stove. Also, you could use a number of alloy metals bought that would not care whatever the temperature was. Just saying.
(insurance, UL, CSA) if you have to get a loan to buy your house in Canada and there is no CSA or UL certification on the heating system you won't get the loan or insurance. If you own you're home and you don't care to ensure it you can have a nonCSA or nonUL system.
Yes. It is part of code in portland as of about six years ago. And that code has been copied to at least a dozen other cities and counties. I have heard of several insurance companies allowing the rocket mass heater to be insured as a masonry stove. More details than that would require giving google a good workout.
Willowtwisters- Except, it isn’t. There are no standards, no compliance ratings, no testing... Your cob may work great, mine may fail. My strat bench may flow well, yours may stall. And on and on. Which is why insurance and code balk at them. Why are most all other heaters less safe? Any UL listed device that is properly installed, operated and maintained is perfectly safe. The rmh is too much like a painting instead of a blueprint, and thus insurance and code say ‘no’.
Has anyone built a mass heater in the basement and enclosed it to use as s heat source for the rest of the home. Would be interesting to build one in my basement. Enclosed and insulated with duct work coming off it. I burn around 8 or more cords per year now.
Calculate price. I redid my parents home with plastic, then 2"foam insulation then recovered with drywall .. every window has a box that goes around it with plastic for nights and they have small heaters throughout the rooms. Never been warmer with less work. Cost about +$140 monthly I worth it.
