Combustion engineer here. This is great and awesome testament of ingenuity and an understanding of heat. Well done! Refractory brick and castable refractory works great for this. Some tech points: Wood fire temperature (flame temp without heating combustion or other air) is around 1950°C / 1065 °F. By heating the air the products of combustion cool down to ± what you measure. Your system stages the air inlets like a low Nox burner system by keeping the reaction going for longer by slightly starving air at the first combustion reaction so there is enough heat to burn clean-ish and gasify the wood, creating CO (Carbon Monoxide). This CO 'wood gas' is now looking for oxygen after the initial reaction and finds it iafter your secondary air inlet, so the reaction continues further than the initial fire box if the temperature is high enough to react (so not necessarily immediately after starting the fire), extending the reaction and heat output into the riser. The lower temperature will reduce NOx reactions as well, so a nice, clean burn overall. The secondary reaction will create CO2 from the CO created in the initial reaction. I like what you said about moving it to the center of the room. Convection and radiation of heat would improve. The flue helps shed heat into the house too, so a fair length in the house is recommended. Obviously don't insulate this or the heat flows out the flue and not into the house. If you are getting smoke, increase the flue length outside so that the air cooling of the flue will cool the flue gases, contracting them and drawing air up the flue. Faster flow = more flue heat loss outside the house, so a damper to "choke" the flow a little can be recommended but can be dangerous as too much choke will increase flue gas flow to the house and asphyxiation risk. Your notes of fibre board are valid. Stay with fire brick, but also make sure the heat after the riser can flow into the mass, perhaps by adding metal elements inside the bench area to conduct heat as all the brick, refractory and cement will resist heat flow. Well done overall!
Great comment, thank you. Three questions: 1. Is there any technical implication to using bricks with holes in them rather than solid bricks? 2. How much better do you think this stove is than it would be if it were made with rudimentary materials like mud, rocks and so forth? 3. When building thermal mass heaters in general (masonry stoves, rocket mass heaters, Russian ovens, etc), what are the most important concepts to understand for optimal performance? (and do you have any tips for quickly educating oneself in this regard?) Thanks
What do you say about the general asphyxiation risk? I have not measured it myself, but I think that rocket stove mass heaters are overpressure devices. The heat riser accelerates the gas flow, driven by the heat. When this fast air slows down in the mass heater section of the stove it's kinetic energy gets converted to pressure. This should result in the mass heater section to be slightly overpressured. Nothing relevant to blowing it up, but probably enough to let burn gasses leak through the masonry crevices. Not sure how big this effect is, but I'm sure it is there.
For hundreds of years in really cold countries, these solid stoves have been built in the centre of the house so the rooms each benefit The old stoves have beautiful tiles and all the heat goes into the house.
My dad was a genius without any degree, he never graduated from the school because of WW2. But he could build anything from nothing. Fifty years ago he came up with a great idea how to keep our house warm with only one wood burner in the kitchen. So he placed metal pipes around all rooms at the ceiling level so kids would not get burnt. At the attic, he placed a large metal reservoir filled with water. Pipes were also wrapped around the base of wood burner and filled with water being connected to a water reservoir at the attic. He also installed two water reservoirs inside the walls between rooms. The idea was brilliant. Wood burner was fed with logs and charcoal for the night keeping water in pipes and wall reservoirs hot, even boiling at times. All 3 bedrooms were warm and cozy till morning. I miss my dad so much… ❤
Fun fact, thats ish how a lot of houses in swedish were kept warm during 1800s and early 1900. With a smoke canal going through all the room and water cassettes.
Romanian here. I grew up by the stove. You did a great job-certainly better than the stove you had before. Usually, beneath the hearth, we would place a small chamber for air intake and ash collection, which would fall through a grate. In traditional houses, the "bench" would turn into a sleeping bed, loved by children and cats alike. A bit more space is usually left between the stove and the wall, but it is placed in the corner of the room, as this is important for space, since traditional wattle-and-daub houses are small. It's super interesting to see old principles applied with new materials and interpretations.
Thanks and great comment, we are building this bigger and moving the stove to the center of the house. I’m hoping to add an oven as well. Looking forward to a larger bench. A grate and catch area are great ideas and hopefully we can reincorporate those on the rebuild
Masonry mass stoves have been a thing for hundreds of years in eastern and northern Europe. Another cheap way you can increase the efficiency of this system is just to increase the overall mass of the stove. Take cob or clay and add a couple extra inches of mass around the entire thing. This does a couple things, it means that the outter surface will be slightly cooler to the touch, so instead of being 180 degrees on the surface, it might be closer to 120-150 which means you can touch it without being too hot. It also means that after you stop burning, the mass of the stove will continue to radiate heat much longer. Some people can burn wood during the day and then extinguish the flame when they go to bed, and the clay is still warm by the morning despite no fire for over 8 hours.
Yeah definitely needs more mass. We used plans for Walker stoves. We didn’t veer off from the plans. I’d make that bench twice as long and make the concrete 2x thickness
Yeah, here in Sweden it's called "kakelugn", in Germany "kachelofen", both means "tile oven", as they are often covered in ceramic tiles on the outside. In fancy homes, these tiles were elaborately molded and decorated, in peasant homes they were more plain. Stefano's stove seems more like a smaller version of the traditional Russian peasant's stove, with the integrated seating area. The Russian ones are big enough to sleep the entire family. The big difference between Northern European and American houses is that we tend to have the chimney (and therefore all fireplaces and ovens) in the center of the house, which is a lot better for heat distribution. American houses seem to often have the chimney on the outside wall, for historical reasons. Incidentally, we have a saying in Sweden, "making a fire for the crows", meaning to do something wasteful that fails to benefit yourself, and instead unintentionally benefits an unwanted third party. (Crows build nests on top of chimneys so they can take advantage of the hot air.) With a masonry stove you don't make a fire for the crows.
Thanks for sharing! My wife and I love our rocket mass batch heater & bench. When winter comes each year, she makes a nest on the bench. I sourced local stone for our bench-top and cut it to fit. The one upgrade I need to do is to install a fresh air intake duct from outside... at present, the replacement air comes in through imperfect seals in the windows and doors, creating drafts. The proper term for the exhaust duct is "flue" and not "flute". I used to work with a 50-ish year old roofer who called chimneys "chimleys". My niece thought the word "spigot" was spelled (and pronounced) "spicket." I guess some folks simply don't have a close relationship with their dictionaries. 😉
Ahah totally flue, no excuses. Thanks for watching. We are going to upgrade this in the spring and move it. I will be adding a cob bench to the design.
I've been in houses with these types of stoves but they were also covered in tile. It was amazing how much heat they got from such a small amount of wood inside of them! Some friends of mine were housesitting and there was one of these tile stoves in the house but it had a small oven built into it. My friends said, "Yeah you can make the best small pizzas with that".
Rocket heaters are so neat! 12 years ago I built a masonry heater in my house, 13,000ibs of mass. Norbert Senf from Quebec designed the core structures, technically it's called a contraflow heater. Very efficient, no creosote and only flyash, there is even a cookstove in it that works very well. Nice job and have fun!
Door Bolt Latch Handle, safety notch could be added so that the handle is kept from opening when it's pointing down. Weld a notch of metal so the bolt doesn't slide open unexpectedly. Nice work, and I like your improvements at the end.
Water heater pipes, maybe radiator pipes. Would you put pipe work in the long seat area which you could pump around in some radiators? Could also use for heating water.
That looks very nice! Where I come from a lot of old houses have bench-style ovens. But they are made of 2 tonnes or so of stone. When the filling is almost burned, you close the air inlet. The hot air does not escape though the chimney then but stays in the oven and it slowly radiates the heat into the room. On a normal winter day, one firing is enough for the whole day to heat the house. I always love when I get the opportunity to sit on one of those benches! Sadly they are insanely expensive to build new.
I don’t want to sound like the code police but as a fireman how do you clean this out? There are parts of the system that look virtually inaccessible. That’s a solid fuel application (high particulate) with basically a particulate trap. Even in the off chance you never need it I think an access door on the end of the bench would be a nice thing to have. Then you could run a soot vac thru there if you ever needed too. And btw that bench is 160f?! I trust you’re a good parent and teach your children young but that’s instant skin burn temp (158f). Build a small spacer and store your wood there to “dry it out” (actually to deter people from it) vs skin grafts.
Lots of good points. We are definitely changing this up for the rebuild. The kids know the bench gets hot, but we cover it with natural materials. This needs more mass
There is supposed to be clean outs at the end of any straight flue sections which would facilitate cleaning. Not sure how this design allows access for cleaning.
Nice! I would have fixed 1/4” concrete backer board to the OSB sub-flooring and then laid the masonry on top of that. Your idea is cool (I mean warm!) regardless! 😊
Only revision I’d make here would be add in a section of looped copper or stainless piping next to the chimney pipe back fed to a water tank of whatever kind you’d like to utilize or a water heater tank itself to use the heat from the fire in a secondary way to provide hot water to cook, clean dishes and bathing ect especially if you’re using this as a contingency plan for a shiz hits the fan moment.
It would be great to add in water heating, but the stove needs a serious upgrade first! Bob and I are going to add 3x mass, an oven, and maybe consider a water heating system. There was a learning curve for us on this, and we hope to share the new system. Definetly want a water heating system at some point if its not on the new stove.
You answered my big question: Why so close to the wall? I get the impression it had more to do with the existing chimney route than anything else. I wondered what you would do if you had to rework the drywall. I thought maybe the reason was like why have radiators always been placed so close to windows/outer walls? Circulation, right? Your confirmation that it would work better in the middle is like the transition from Tudor fireplaces to interior fireplaces. Pretty much everything that can burn does burn. Safety. No need to have the fireplace where it can be knocked out away from the house if it catches on fire. I am so impressed with how efficient this system is. Thank you very much for the diagram and explanation. Last, but most, it is really nice to see actual craftsmen/artists do their thing, and the old machine tools are lovely.
Np! When we rebuild this , we are going to place it in the middle of the house and move it further away from the wall, and add 4x the mass. The bench will be considerably larger to absorb more of that heat energy. Most of this stove can be salvaged for the next build.
I have a tulikivi wood stove. Similar principle. About 5500lbs of soap stone. They are rated at mid 80s efficiency. Uses very little wood and stays hot for 24 hours. I love it.
I have looked at Woodstock soapstone stoves for years!! 😊 It's my dream to afford one of those someday. I actually got to see someone using one in his home and it heated his whole house!! The residual heat from the heated soapstone works like the thermal mass in this stove. Both are amazing.
@suzannebinsley5940 it luckily was in the house we bought. Was installed in 2001 for 9k. When we had it cleaned this fall the company said now they are like about 30k. My jaw dropped a bit.
Very cool! I understand that it burns relatively clean, but it still seems like it would need some kind of access to clean it out. Or at least give you peace of mind that nothing really is building up that may cause a chimney fire eventually. Maybe in your redesign, consider leaving the cement tops removable so you can get inside later on?
I am 20 seconds in and already am liking this. I believe Ira was the Forged In Fire captain. Ira by the way, means "watchful" or "warrior." Interesting invention here!
The more you insulate the hotter it will get. It's a mind F.... Because you don't want to insulate. Would be strange to get heat from a insulated thing..... Just look up how Romans made pottery. Or blacksmiths swords. You don't want 1200C in your house. But without insulation you would never reach that anyways.
Seriously, check out his YT channel too. He makes raw brie cheese, hes a homestead with 30+ years of being a chef. His link is in the video description.
I thin k cement board is a good idea as a subfloor instead of osb board or at least over it. You made a nice set up. I always like to keep an eye and my nose and my ears open incase anything needs attention. Smoke and CO detectors a must. Been cookin wood for 60 years and I'm like a Yoda with simplicity and compact of these things. And when the grid goes down I don't rely on it to stay warm friends.
Good stuff Stef, all credit for just doing something and learning from the mistakes that come from jumping in. I know I won’t be the only one wondering about building code, or maybe you don’t insure your home. Either way, a comprehensive follow up on that topic would be just as valuable as this video alone. Great job pal.
most places can insure theses as a Masonry Heater, which despite the variation of design thst the Rocket Mass or Batch Box entails, it is still essentially a masonry heater. much safer than a convential steel wood stove and orders of magnitude more efficient and way less polluting to the air. no smoke when built correct and burning dry wood.
No problem, Sir. The Wisners have been making these heaters for years. Have a book on them. Refined and tweaked & and developed them over time. Thank you.
19:42 In quantum mechanics everything is reversed. Thus you spend most of your money at the beginning of the burn proces. Your chimney. Good investment. Without it, it doesn't matter what you have build or bought. Would still work horrible. Well insolated chimney with a good end-cap is more important then your riser. Thus good insulated burnchamber (door also) and a good chimney is already 90% of the efficincy. The rest is just putting energy to work.
I wish i could build one of these, it would help so much! My budget is very tight so using a heater is a no-go for me which gets pretty uncomfortable when the temps drop to freezing or below freezing. I have to stay in bed with my dogs laying with me and a hearing pad to try to keep warm!
You could salvage carpet offcuts from your carpet superstore etc and use them to insulate under rugs ,beds,behind sofas,as wall hangings(covered with a nicer fabric)as door curtains, etc ,ask the store if you can have the offcuts, good luck
DANGEROUS Unfortunately, there are some mistakes, and some dangerous ones too. Therefore, it is a bad example, which should not be replicated!!! You must first understand what you are doing. This stove can cause a fire in the long run. And no insurance is going to cover this. There is building here directly on a wooden foundation without the necessary non-combustible insulation. While perlite is placed between the bricks, there is NO insulation UNDER the bricks. If wood is subjected to high temperatures, 170ºF(77ºC) or higher, carbonisation can occur which can lead to self-ignition (no fire is needed for this). As an underlayment on the wood floor, first apply a Calcium Silicate board (or other pressure-resistant refractory substrate) over the entire footprint. Then over this entire footprint a layer of bricks (preferably two). Then you build the stove on top of that. By the way, the firebox should consist entirely of firebrick or refractory concrete parts. A damper is also missing, which is not strictly necessary but important if you do not want the heat stored in the mass to still disappear through the chimney.
Definitely not recommending anyone build this how we did it. I would hope people could learn from my mistakes and improve on this. Anyone seriously considering a build like this will read comments and see. Perlite is used as a masonry insulation, what concerns do you have on that? This stove is being rebuilt in the spring time. Going to add more mass and insulation.
Funny thing is, that you're discovering principles that your sooo old ancestors knew. Here in central Europe, it's been common already around 14th century (for royalty), later in 1800ish it was fully used by what we could call today as middle class. Shame is, that due to many circumstances, it's disappearing (mainly "ecology"). And as it was in decline for about 50 years, and as it's fairly expensive (not to build, but to pay for the build by pro's), it's nowadays again accessible only for the rich, cause the craftsman who knows how to build it property are so scarse, they charge fortune. Btw, in our lands, it was build from fire bricks top to bottom, and covered by ceramic tiles. Long centuries, kids loved to lay&sleep on those, as we've built in size covering 1/4 of "living room & bedroom" in one (medieval ages 😅), serving as stove, oven, heating, sofa and bed all-in-one 😊
Great video, thank you for sharing your experience! I cant wait to see your next design/upgrade that you have mentioned in your responses to others. Trial and error, live and learn!
I built a convoluted copper piping exterior system that went around our wood stove piped into a water heat exchanger to feed our water heater via a pump. This system worked great until one day I forgot to turn the pump on when I fired up the stove! When I turned the pump on the pipes were so hot that the initial water intake started compromising the solder joints 😢! I then put in an internal stainless steel heat exchanger in the stove and it was terrible! It made the firebox smaller and it kept the inside too cold to fire up properly. An external piping system is the way to go in my opinion.
Boy, my daughter & I could sure use your skills up in Maine! Good portion of our roof gone due to raccoons and we’ve no furnace. Lol I ll definitely be looking into trying to build one of these!👍
There are better versions of this stove to copy. We are rebuilding this in the summer and we will show the improved 2.0 stove. More mass, located center of the house, and more safety features. Sorry to hear about your situation.
Check the Terracotta Stoves from Estern Europe. We had that in Romania when I was young. 🤪 With one log, it keeps the room warm all night when it is -20°C outside. And the terracotta tiles look much, much, hotter 😍.
My uncle, an engineer who used to manage construction projects on damns all over the world, added a radiator to his fireplace and water pipes to circulate the heat all over the house
I live in a double wide and we have a wood stove. I've wanted a mass heater but was worried about the weight and considered what you've done to support it from underneath. The inspection required for installing it is what stopped me, not now I'm thinking that maybe I can just do it since I've had this chimney for a few years already. Who will know the difference from outside 😄
You may have already thought of this but you might want to consider pulling the second burn air from outside. Most heat is lost from infiltration and pulling all of the air for the fire from the house will create lower pressure compared to outside, leading to more infiltration as your house essentially pulls a vacuum. If you can pull some or all of the air for the fire directly from outside I bet your house would hold a lot more heat
I‘m always amazed by how simple House building in America is. It works nothing to say against it. We Germans just overengineer everything. It’s funny to see you build houses on a wood flooring with concrete slabs as base. Here we pour a big concrete groundation wich is about 10-30cm thick.
Yeah, construction here is funny. We got dinky houses that will last less than 100 years. I’d like to build a house from scratch with natural materials in the future
It really depends on region. The US has an incredible wide range of climates. For example, here in the North we generally don't build on slabs, because the ground freezes two meters deep. Most homes have a concrete or stone basement. Wood framing allows for significant insulation with fewer cold shunts than stone/brick/concrete walls, and can expand and contract with the weather cycle. Germany's current building code requires 0.15 W/(m²K) insulation for exterior walls, which is just under R-7. Here it's common to have R-21 or more in exterior walls, and R-60 in attic spaces. It's tough when you go from -26°C to 35°C in six months! My home was built about 1723 of wood with a stacked stone foundation, and centuries later it's still going strong. Sadly they didn't have modern insulation in the 18th century, so I get to burn about 22m^3 (about 10-13,000kg) of wood every winter.
Americans have no house. They have a cardboard replica of a real house. It's like living in a mock up of a movie set. Usually they have no basement. Usually the roof is just tar paper and the outside walls are vinyl wallpaper. The homes have no thermal mass, they get hot during a sunny day and cold every night, thats why they use a lot of energy for air conditioning. Real houses are made of brick with a basement, they keep the temperature for days and need no HVAC. Double layer brick and roof tiles above cieling cast a shadow on the insulation so it does not need to insulate a 60°C/140°F roof in the sun from the 25/77 room but only air temp 30/86 therefore working 5 times as efficient. Real homes have ceramic tiles on the roof that lasts 200+ years and do not catch fire in a wildfire because tiles and bricks do not burn. Cardboard houses have a lifespan of 50 years.
I would suggest setting up your secondary air supply pipe to run over the top of the firebox before being injected back there, rather than under, so that it is HOT when it mixes with any unburnt gases!
I love watching videos of old homes in other countries and you see these stoves in many of them. They are usually covered in tile or a stucco like covering and sometimes the have a cooking area, I would love that !!! When you started I couldn’t believe you were putting it right against Sheetrock, I would think the whole thing would need a fire retardant wall ??
Well done, guys. The big problem I see is that you appear to be taking air from inside to feed the fire when it should be pipped in from the outside. Then I would make dealing with ask better.
With enough Mass these heaters only need to be burned a short amount of time drawing fresh air in the house in the winter time is usually a good thing for small amounts of time
Tests have been done at Wheaton Labs. External Air intakes are usually a problem. Even modern homes have enough leaks in the house where it's not a problem.
There is a RUclips channel called “food around the world” that I watched just recently. The video I saw was about how a Ukrainian woman cooks and lives. She has two very old mass heaters, one that doubles as the stove. It was genuinely really interesting to see her cooking dinner on it, you should give it a view if you plan on making another heater.
QUESTION ❓ Would this Mass Heater with "secondary burn" function just as well or better being built basement? Thanks. Can the heat be directed into primary duct,vent system?
A mass heater, probably a rocket to cut down on how much wood is needed, is on the "must have" list for our new build. I like this base design since you don't have a 55 gallon barrel in the middle of the living room 🤣 I'd definitely go with fire brick in both the primary and secondary burn compartments, longer lasting and more mass to hold the heat. It would be more difficult to "throttle" but I'd also want to be drawing the secondary combustion air from either the outside or from the crawlspace, no real reason to be sending warmed interior air up the chimney!
Hiya, how do you clean the soot from under the bench or in the rest of the system? Was this an oversight? Do you have any recommendations or alterations that work better now that you've had time to test it? I live in SW France with a very big stone house in a country village and I'd like to heat it with wood and as cheaply as possible. Thank you for your ideas and any additional info would be great. Cheers my dears.. 🤔
Very little soot in this system. Buring at 1200 degrees, its a complete burn. The concrete slabs are easy to remove with this clay/sand mortar. We are rebuilding this stove, so I will film what it looks like when we pop the hood.
Awesome. Will gave you a 8 out of 10 for this. -1 for not putting a eye catcher in the middle of the room. (centrifuge design with everything against the wall) -1 for using uncovered steel inside the burn chamber.
@@ge2719 depends on which part of Europe you're talking about. In my neck of the woods (heh), only the roof structure is made out of wood, while the inner walls are almost always the same material as the outer walls. If required, insulation is added to the outside of the building envelope, and then that gets plaster on it. Stick framing, on the other hand, is treated as a fad, nothing more.
Lot of mass potential left in that bench from your exhaust temps. From what i can see from the video, it's currently just an open plenum? I would have maybe filled it with loose rock. For covering more of the house, you could even run the exhaust through the floor into the crawlspace, through more rock, and then out the side of the house. Cheers and thanks for the video!
Anytime! Thanks for watching. Lots of improvements to make for the next iteration. We used the plans of the Walker stove to a Tee and I now see many drawbacks I would change.
Had to know that was coming. To be fair, I work with a dude who wears sweat pants, a hoodie, and beanie all black in the summer....and he works outside
12:00 What would you do when you've had for several years and ceramic fiber board is all gacked up and you need to replace it? It will be such a confined enclosed space. How would you ever replace or repair the ceramic fiber board?
that is a major issue, and one of the many reasons we are rebuilding this system. Ceramic fiber board is also the most expense part of this build. I spent close to $900 on it. I will be adding kiln shelves to protect the core/.
With the ceramic fire board do you need to cover it with anything? I saw a few forges that get gooped to contain the toxic burn off or is that a different material they use? Thanks and great video. My bud in Russia has similar in his childhood home
Based on Matt Walkers Stove design we used, the answer is no. The biggest issue is durability, the wood is eating away the board. its like Styrofoam. When we rebuild it, we are going to add armor to the chamber, more mass, and hopefully and oven.
This is great system. I'm more concerned about long term maintenance and care for the unit. If someone cracks the glass on the door or something worse. I heard you say that don't have to worry about creosote in the chimney which is great.
The burn chamber is already wearing out, I will rebuild with better components. We used Walker stove design and Im glad to share my results. I would not use these plans the way they are. Needs more mass, and a few modifications. Im planning to rebuld with at least 4x mass, put it in the center of the house, and add an oven.
Similar to some Russian setups I saw. They have the little fire trap and i think they sleep on it or in it somehow. When theylook out their little town / village homes, you see dense snow covering everything.
I am talking from 40 years of personal experience. The aluminum backing is not enough, you need something behind the aluminum. In my country you can buy silicate panels that are covered with aluminum. They cost from 40 to 50 Euros. And yes, we had fire inside the walls.
Great job, it looks awesome! How do you remove the ashes after burning the wood, and how do you remove the sooth built up in the inner chambers under the flue?
With a scooper,, I have to remove the concrete tops every year or so. We are rebuilding this stove in the summer, so it will be a good time to see what it looks like in there.
or K26 firebricks for the base, they might be a little soft but man would they work... woa, we don't have a real tool worker shop here... dude you can fire pottery in this thing !!! love the spaceage ceramics being used...
11:52 If you made a double backwall with the small gap. You could have made a old fasion engine carburator using Bernoulli's principle. Thus removing the upright pipe that actifly cools your combustion with the flames. Plus your mixture ratio of oxidiser becames depended on the speed difference in the flow of the gasses going through it. Thus having a more constant mixture. Added to that, when your having a split as exit and not a round tube. The area used is bigger and thus get better mixture of the injected oxidiser. The space between the two back plates is very small, it must be a injector size with. One or 2 simple washers are alreade enough. The pipe horisontaly will feed the space between the two walls then.
Some of the similar stoves I’ve seen had the fire box at waist level or even higher, Is there room to do that in a single story house? The aesthetics and convenience are the only reason for the question.
Not an expert on this, but the juice wouldnt be worth the squeeze. I'm thinking about building another one of these in the kitchen and have it for cooking, with a water coil inside to heat domestic hot water.
@@StefanoCreatini yes great idea, you can cook on the hot flat part and build an insulated box to put on top of it to make an oven, I expect it would make a great pizza oven for stone baked pizza
@@BlueyBlueCollar You mistake the question that I asked. I don't have the time or the skillsets to build this RMH or personally know anyone that could help me....but I may be willing to purchase a prefab kit from Stefano if he made one available. My motivation? I've grown tired of feeding a wood stove 3 to 4 times a day and would very much consider a masonry or RMH alternative.
I have a wood fireplace with door and glass with air flow. I dont know the name in english. In portuguese is "recuperador de calor a lenha" (wood heat saver).
I would love to have something like this, and I'd love to have a slab I can remove to reveal a cooking surface. At least then, I can still cook food if I don't have any more gas.
If you do it again you could take the cold air for the second burn not from your living room but from the crawlspace or even better from outside. Now your taken the warmed up air
Looks wild. Fireplace over a wooden structure. You can save another 90% of firewood when you install thermal insulation in structures. For example, there is no thermal insulation in the bottom.(?)
Yeah, the perlite is a fantastic insulation matter, used for a long time in masonry. ive measured the subfloor temps during the hottest burn and it keeps the temps below 80 degrees.
@StefanoCreatini I mean thermal insulation between the wooden beams of the subfloor or below the beams. E.g. 80-100 mm of xps or pu insulation would certainly be an ok level at Montana's altitude. Ask More info your local civil engineer about insulation.
It reminded me of a traditional Russian stove, but in a small size. Such stoves are made in large sizes in order to stock up more heat, and they also make a bed on them. I assume that people who live at temperatures below -30 °F in winter are well aware of heat preservation and the construction of furnaces. In your design, I would also add more insulation from the wooden floor - with Intensive use of the furnace, it can be flammable. P.S. You can ban for the "Russian", but I'm here not for politics...
Thanks for feedback, we are definetly going to modify this stove in the spring time. Larger mass, more insulation, move the exhaust pipe into a different location, and even add an oven to it.
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Combustion engineer here. This is great and awesome testament of ingenuity and an understanding of heat. Well done! Refractory brick and castable refractory works great for this.
Some tech points: Wood fire temperature (flame temp without heating combustion or other air) is around 1950°C / 1065 °F. By heating the air the products of combustion cool down to ± what you measure. Your system stages the air inlets like a low Nox burner system by keeping the reaction going for longer by slightly starving air at the first combustion reaction so there is enough heat to burn clean-ish and gasify the wood, creating CO (Carbon Monoxide).
This CO 'wood gas' is now looking for oxygen after the initial reaction and finds it iafter your secondary air inlet, so the reaction continues further than the initial fire box if the temperature is high enough to react (so not necessarily immediately after starting the fire), extending the reaction and heat output into the riser. The lower temperature will reduce NOx reactions as well, so a nice, clean burn overall. The secondary reaction will create CO2 from the CO created in the initial reaction.
I like what you said about moving it to the center of the room. Convection and radiation of heat would improve. The flue helps shed heat into the house too, so a fair length in the house is recommended. Obviously don't insulate this or the heat flows out the flue and not into the house. If you are getting smoke, increase the flue length outside so that the air cooling of the flue will cool the flue gases, contracting them and drawing air up the flue. Faster flow = more flue heat loss outside the house, so a damper to "choke" the flow a little can be recommended but can be dangerous as too much choke will increase flue gas flow to the house and asphyxiation risk.
Your notes of fibre board are valid. Stay with fire brick, but also make sure the heat after the riser can flow into the mass, perhaps by adding metal elements inside the bench area to conduct heat as all the brick, refractory and cement will resist heat flow.
Well done overall!
Great comment, thank you.
Three questions:
1. Is there any technical implication to using bricks with holes in them rather than solid bricks?
2. How much better do you think this stove is than it would be if it were made with rudimentary materials like mud, rocks and so forth?
3. When building thermal mass heaters in general (masonry stoves, rocket mass heaters, Russian ovens, etc), what are the most important concepts to understand for optimal performance? (and do you have any tips for quickly educating oneself in this regard?)
Thanks
THANK YOU!
What do you say about the general asphyxiation risk? I have not measured it myself, but I think that rocket stove mass heaters are overpressure devices.
The heat riser accelerates the gas flow, driven by the heat. When this fast air slows down in the mass heater section of the stove it's kinetic energy gets converted to pressure. This should result in the mass heater section to be slightly overpressured. Nothing relevant to blowing it up, but probably enough to let burn gasses leak through the masonry crevices. Not sure how big this effect is, but I'm sure it is there.
For hundreds of years in really cold countries, these solid stoves have been built in the centre of the house so the rooms each benefit The old stoves have beautiful tiles and all the heat goes into the house.
curious if it would also make sense to have a couple clean out access points on the other chambers?
My dad was a genius without any degree, he never graduated from the school because of WW2. But he could build anything from nothing. Fifty years ago he came up with a great idea how to keep our house warm with only one wood burner in the kitchen. So he placed metal pipes around all rooms at the ceiling level so kids would not get burnt. At the attic, he placed a large metal reservoir filled with water. Pipes were also wrapped around the base of wood burner and filled with water being connected to a water reservoir at the attic. He also installed two water reservoirs inside the walls between rooms. The idea was brilliant. Wood burner was fed with logs and charcoal for the night keeping water in pipes and wall reservoirs hot, even boiling at times. All 3 bedrooms were warm and cozy till morning. I miss my dad so much… ❤
Sounds like your dad was a great inventor!
Fun fact, thats ish how a lot of houses in swedish were kept warm during 1800s and early 1900. With a smoke canal going through all the room and water cassettes.
Romanian here. I grew up by the stove. You did a great job-certainly better than the stove you had before. Usually, beneath the hearth, we would place a small chamber for air intake and ash collection, which would fall through a grate. In traditional houses, the "bench" would turn into a sleeping bed, loved by children and cats alike. A bit more space is usually left between the stove and the wall, but it is placed in the corner of the room, as this is important for space, since traditional wattle-and-daub houses are small. It's super interesting to see old principles applied with new materials and interpretations.
Thanks and great comment, we are building this bigger and moving the stove to the center of the house. I’m hoping to add an oven as well. Looking forward to a larger bench. A grate and catch area are great ideas and hopefully we can reincorporate those on the rebuild
Correct me if I'm wrong, but in your drawing at the start you called the vertical tube a "flute". I believe it is called a "flue"❤
Same thought.
Great catch! I was about to put my daughters flute in the fire pit to increase it's efficiency.
Ahah, totally flue, no excuses! Thanks for watching, I'll fix that up for next time.
I was wondering what type of tunes this thing put out myself.
@@WideRiverOutdoors Burning Ring of Fire
Masonry mass stoves have been a thing for hundreds of years in eastern and northern Europe. Another cheap way you can increase the efficiency of this system is just to increase the overall mass of the stove. Take cob or clay and add a couple extra inches of mass around the entire thing. This does a couple things, it means that the outter surface will be slightly cooler to the touch, so instead of being 180 degrees on the surface, it might be closer to 120-150 which means you can touch it without being too hot. It also means that after you stop burning, the mass of the stove will continue to radiate heat much longer. Some people can burn wood during the day and then extinguish the flame when they go to bed, and the clay is still warm by the morning despite no fire for over 8 hours.
Yeah definitely needs more mass. We used plans for Walker stoves. We didn’t veer off from the plans. I’d make that bench twice as long and make the concrete 2x thickness
Yeah, here in Sweden it's called "kakelugn", in Germany "kachelofen", both means "tile oven", as they are often covered in ceramic tiles on the outside. In fancy homes, these tiles were elaborately molded and decorated, in peasant homes they were more plain. Stefano's stove seems more like a smaller version of the traditional Russian peasant's stove, with the integrated seating area. The Russian ones are big enough to sleep the entire family.
The big difference between Northern European and American houses is that we tend to have the chimney (and therefore all fireplaces and ovens) in the center of the house, which is a lot better for heat distribution. American houses seem to often have the chimney on the outside wall, for historical reasons.
Incidentally, we have a saying in Sweden, "making a fire for the crows", meaning to do something wasteful that fails to benefit yourself, and instead unintentionally benefits an unwanted third party. (Crows build nests on top of chimneys so they can take advantage of the hot air.) With a masonry stove you don't make a fire for the crows.
Funny,I found a stove at the friend's house in Oregon USA and it said on the back Made in Yugoslavia.Theyir parents got that stove 40 yrs ago.❤❤❤
The Chinese were one of the first to use this principle.
@@frankkrunkThank you
Thanks for sharing! My wife and I love our rocket mass batch heater & bench. When winter comes each year, she makes a nest on the bench. I sourced local stone for our bench-top and cut it to fit. The one upgrade I need to do is to install a fresh air intake duct from outside... at present, the replacement air comes in through imperfect seals in the windows and doors, creating drafts.
The proper term for the exhaust duct is "flue" and not "flute". I used to work with a 50-ish year old roofer who called chimneys "chimleys". My niece thought the word "spigot" was spelled (and pronounced) "spicket." I guess some folks simply don't have a close relationship with their dictionaries. 😉
Ahah totally flue, no excuses. Thanks for watching. We are going to upgrade this in the spring and move it. I will be adding a cob bench to the design.
I've been in houses with these types of stoves but they were also covered in tile. It was amazing how much heat they got from such a small amount of wood inside of them! Some friends of mine were housesitting and there was one of these tile stoves in the house but it had a small oven built into it. My friends said, "Yeah you can make the best small pizzas with that".
That sounds amazing, I am looking into a stove with an oven like that.
High tech Russian chimney.
Rocket heaters are so neat! 12 years ago I built a masonry heater in my house, 13,000ibs of mass. Norbert Senf from Quebec designed the core structures, technically it's called a contraflow heater. Very efficient, no creosote and only flyash, there is even a cookstove in it that works very well. Nice job and have fun!
Door Bolt Latch Handle, safety notch could be added so that the handle is kept from opening when it's pointing down. Weld a notch of metal so the bolt doesn't slide open unexpectedly.
Nice work, and I like your improvements at the end.
Water heater pipes, maybe radiator pipes. Would you put pipe work in the long seat area which you could pump around in some radiators? Could also use for heating water.
That looks very nice! Where I come from a lot of old houses have bench-style ovens. But they are made of 2 tonnes or so of stone. When the filling is almost burned, you close the air inlet. The hot air does not escape though the chimney then but stays in the oven and it slowly radiates the heat into the room. On a normal winter day, one firing is enough for the whole day to heat the house. I always love when I get the opportunity to sit on one of those benches! Sadly they are insanely expensive to build new.
We are going to rebuild this with a lot more mass. Hopefully achieve similar results.
"Cool Beams Man" I have no doubt Bob has always been a legend!
I don’t want to sound like the code police but as a fireman how do you clean this out? There are parts of the system that look virtually inaccessible.
That’s a solid fuel application (high particulate) with basically a particulate trap. Even in the off chance you never need it I think an access door on the end of the bench would be a nice thing to have. Then you could run a soot vac thru there if you ever needed too.
And btw that bench is 160f?! I trust you’re a good parent and teach your children young but that’s instant skin burn temp (158f). Build a small spacer and store your wood there to “dry it out” (actually to deter people from it) vs skin grafts.
Lots of good points. We are definitely changing this up for the rebuild. The kids know the bench gets hot, but we cover it with natural materials. This needs more mass
You sound like the code police. The exact opposite of what you wanted
I was wondering the same thing. Complete burn means less ash, not no ash, right? How do you clean it out when it needs it?
There is supposed to be clean outs at the end of any straight flue sections which would facilitate cleaning. Not sure how this design allows access for cleaning.
Great video! What a fun project this was. I can’t wait to team up with you and Ira on a wood fired hot tub.
Thank you!!
I too can not wait for this video.
Nice! I would have fixed 1/4” concrete backer board to the OSB sub-flooring and then laid the masonry on top of that. Your idea is cool (I mean warm!) regardless! 😊
I’ll do the same on the rebuild, temps are fine and the perlite insulation works well
Only revision I’d make here would be add in a section of looped copper or stainless piping next to the chimney pipe back fed to a water tank of whatever kind you’d like to utilize or a water heater tank itself to use the heat from the fire in a secondary way to provide hot water to cook, clean dishes and bathing ect especially if you’re using this as a contingency plan for a shiz hits the fan moment.
It would be great to add in water heating, but the stove needs a serious upgrade first! Bob and I are going to add 3x mass, an oven, and maybe consider a water heating system. There was a learning curve for us on this, and we hope to share the new system. Definetly want a water heating system at some point if its not on the new stove.
You answered my big question: Why so close to the wall? I get the impression it had more to do with the existing chimney route than anything else.
I wondered what you would do if you had to rework the drywall. I thought maybe the reason was like why have radiators always been placed so close to windows/outer walls? Circulation, right?
Your confirmation that it would work better in the middle is like the transition from Tudor fireplaces to interior fireplaces. Pretty much everything that can burn does burn. Safety. No need to have the fireplace where it can be knocked out away from the house if it catches on fire.
I am so impressed with how efficient this system is. Thank you very much for the diagram and explanation.
Last, but most, it is really nice to see actual craftsmen/artists do their thing, and the old machine tools are lovely.
Np! When we rebuild this , we are going to place it in the middle of the house and move it further away from the wall, and add 4x the mass. The bench will be considerably larger to absorb more of that heat energy. Most of this stove can be salvaged for the next build.
I have a tulikivi wood stove. Similar principle. About 5500lbs of soap stone. They are rated at mid 80s efficiency. Uses very little wood and stays hot for 24 hours. I love it.
I have looked at Woodstock soapstone stoves for years!! 😊 It's my dream to afford one of those someday. I actually got to see someone using one in his home and it heated his whole house!! The residual heat from the heated soapstone works like the thermal mass in this stove. Both are amazing.
@suzannebinsley5940 it luckily was in the house we bought. Was installed in 2001 for 9k. When we had it cleaned this fall the company said now they are like about 30k. My jaw dropped a bit.
Very cool! I understand that it burns relatively clean, but it still seems like it would need some kind of access to clean it out. Or at least give you peace of mind that nothing really is building up that may cause a chimney fire eventually. Maybe in your redesign, consider leaving the cement tops removable so you can get inside later on?
They are usually built with small cast iron access doors for cleaning out fly ash and soot.
Good points, we will see what it looks like in there during the rebuild. Its easy to remove the chimney part and clean the riser and the column.
I am 20 seconds in and already am liking this. I believe Ira was the Forged In Fire captain. Ira by the way, means "watchful" or "warrior." Interesting invention here!
Ira is a legend and he beat the best on Forged in Fire, Ben Abbot! Hes the reincarnate of Hephaestus himself.
Thanks for getting me involved in this project! And great video! Now I want to upgrade my old steel stove!
Thanks 🙏
The more you insulate the hotter it will get. It's a mind F.... Because you don't want to insulate. Would be strange to get heat from a insulated thing.....
Just look up how Romans made pottery. Or blacksmiths swords. You don't want 1200C in your house. But without insulation you would never reach that anyways.
Everyone needs a Bob! 😀
Seriously, check out his YT channel too. He makes raw brie cheese, hes a homestead with 30+ years of being a chef. His link is in the video description.
I thin k cement board is a good idea as a subfloor instead of osb board or at least over it. You made a nice set up. I always like to keep an eye and my nose and my ears open incase anything needs attention. Smoke and CO detectors a must. Been cookin wood for 60 years and I'm like a Yoda with simplicity and compact of these things. And when the grid goes down I don't rely on it to stay warm friends.
Good stuff Stef, all credit for just doing something and learning from the mistakes that come from jumping in. I know I won’t be the only one wondering about building code, or maybe you don’t insure your home. Either way, a comprehensive follow up on that topic would be just as valuable as this video alone. Great job pal.
This can’t be done everywhere, we have no building codes in my county so that helps and for insurance, this is a masonry heater
most places can insure theses as a Masonry Heater, which despite the variation of design thst the Rocket Mass or Batch Box entails, it is still essentially a masonry heater. much safer than a convential steel wood stove and orders of magnitude more efficient and way less polluting to the air. no smoke when built correct and burning dry wood.
No problem, Sir. The Wisners have been making these heaters for years. Have a book on them. Refined and tweaked & and developed them over time. Thank you.
I’m sure they have! I’ll have to check out their book, thanks for the recommendation.
I know, you're expressing brilliance. I once made a firepit, swirl. Amazing
Yes in Siberia they’re in the middle of the house including the pizza oven section
What blows my mind is, you did the research, bought the materials, worked with people who know what they're doing, and you STILL call it a flute.
The T is silent 🤫
@StefanoCreatini lmao. At least you have a sense of humor
@@M.L.Knottshe has more than a sense of humor. He has a warm house. You have a life that isn’t as interesting. 😂
@Sweendogization an insult. What an interesting way to continue the conversation. Thanks for that.
19:42 In quantum mechanics everything is reversed. Thus you spend most of your money at the beginning of the burn proces. Your chimney. Good investment. Without it, it doesn't matter what you have build or bought. Would still work horrible. Well insolated chimney with a good end-cap is more important then your riser. Thus good insulated burnchamber (door also) and a good chimney is already 90% of the efficincy. The rest is just putting energy to work.
I wish i could build one of these, it would help so much! My budget is very tight so using a heater is a no-go for me which gets pretty uncomfortable when the temps drop to freezing or below freezing. I have to stay in bed with my dogs laying with me and a hearing pad to try to keep warm!
Sorry to hear about your situation. There are more economical ways to build a rocket mass heater. Using cob, the build can be more affordable.
You could salvage carpet offcuts from your carpet superstore etc and use them to insulate under rugs ,beds,behind sofas,as wall hangings(covered with a nicer fabric)as door curtains, etc ,ask the store if you can have the offcuts, good luck
Great project and movie - and an honest really helpful explanation of some of the dos and don'ts, excellent well done! 👍👏👏👏👏👏
Thanks, stay tuned for the rebuild . We are making it bigger and safer
DANGEROUS
Unfortunately, there are some mistakes, and some dangerous ones too. Therefore, it is a bad example, which should not be replicated!!! You must first understand what you are doing. This stove can cause a fire in the long run. And no insurance is going to cover this.
There is building here directly on a wooden foundation without the necessary non-combustible insulation. While perlite is placed between the bricks, there is NO insulation UNDER the bricks. If wood is subjected to high temperatures, 170ºF(77ºC) or higher, carbonisation can occur which can lead to self-ignition (no fire is needed for this).
As an underlayment on the wood floor, first apply a Calcium Silicate board (or other pressure-resistant refractory substrate) over the entire footprint. Then over this entire footprint a layer of bricks (preferably two). Then you build the stove on top of that. By the way, the firebox should consist entirely of firebrick or refractory concrete parts. A damper is also missing, which is not strictly necessary but important if you do not want the heat stored in the mass to still disappear through the chimney.
Definitely not recommending anyone build this how we did it. I would hope people could learn from my mistakes and improve on this. Anyone seriously considering a build like this will read comments and see. Perlite is used as a masonry insulation, what concerns do you have on that? This stove is being rebuilt in the spring time. Going to add more mass and insulation.
He's talking about the perimeter being just bricks, the perlite is only in the middle.
Funny thing is, that you're discovering principles that your sooo old ancestors knew. Here in central Europe, it's been common already around 14th century (for royalty), later in 1800ish it was fully used by what we could call today as middle class. Shame is, that due to many circumstances, it's disappearing (mainly "ecology"). And as it was in decline for about 50 years, and as it's fairly expensive (not to build, but to pay for the build by pro's), it's nowadays again accessible only for the rich, cause the craftsman who knows how to build it property are so scarse, they charge fortune. Btw, in our lands, it was build from fire bricks top to bottom, and covered by ceramic tiles. Long centuries, kids loved to lay&sleep on those, as we've built in size covering 1/4 of "living room & bedroom" in one (medieval ages 😅), serving as stove, oven, heating, sofa and bed all-in-one 😊
What you describe is the goal. This was a simple version, I feel confident we can build a much better stove on the rebuild this summer.
10:35 “the dust is very toxic, make sure to have the right protections. Cool-ass shades and a hat”
lol, just missing sandals
To be up to code you need a layer of wonder board on top of the osb.
There are no building codes in my county, but we are rebuilding this soon. Ill post a new video. More Mass, oven, and way bigger bench.
@@StefanoCreatiniwhat range of square footage would this be good for?
Id say, if it one floor house, 1500 max. If you have two floors, more sq ft
The OSB floor is moisture sensitive. A concrete board/wonderboard underlay would solve that problem.
Thanks for documenting, explaining and sharing what you've learned
Anytime! I appreciate the comment, and we are working on an improved version of this stove. Lots of lessons
This is awesome. I wonder though how much you could shrink this design for more compact situations.
Great video, thank you for sharing your experience! I cant wait to see your next design/upgrade that you have mentioned in your responses to others. Trial and error, live and learn!
Thanks! , im excited for the rebuild. We will do in in the heat of the summer when staying indoors makes sense.
I built a convoluted copper piping exterior system that went around our wood stove piped into a water heat exchanger to feed our water heater via a pump.
This system worked great until one day I forgot to turn the pump on when I fired up the stove! When I turned the pump on the pipes were so hot that the initial water intake started compromising the solder joints 😢!
I then put in an internal stainless steel heat exchanger in the stove and it was terrible! It made the firebox smaller and it kept the inside too cold to fire up properly.
An external piping system is the way to go in my opinion.
Interesting, Id love to add a water heating component soon. Need to upgrade this stove before I tackle that.
Boy, my daughter & I could sure use your skills up in Maine! Good portion of our roof gone due to raccoons and we’ve no furnace. Lol I ll definitely be looking into trying to build one of these!👍
There are better versions of this stove to copy. We are rebuilding this in the summer and we will show the improved 2.0 stove. More mass, located center of the house, and more safety features. Sorry to hear about your situation.
Thanks for sharing Stefano, good vid with some good information.👍
Thank you for watching, glad you got some useful info!
Check the Terracotta Stoves from Estern Europe. We had that in Romania when I was young. 🤪 With one log, it keeps the room warm all night when it is -20°C outside. And the terracotta tiles look much, much, hotter 😍.
Will do!
My uncle, an engineer who used to manage construction projects on damns all over the world, added a radiator to his fireplace and water pipes to circulate the heat all over the house
I like that idea, im just concerned if I lose power, how to keep the steam from blowing up the system.
I live in a double wide and we have a wood stove.
I've wanted a mass heater but was worried about the weight and considered what you've done to support it from underneath.
The inspection required for installing it is what stopped me, not now I'm thinking that maybe I can just do it since I've had this chimney for a few years already.
Who will know the difference from outside 😄
"The dust is very toxic, so make sure to have the right protection."
The guy: 😎
Awesome!!!
I would have installed temp probes to ensure I was getting heat and its fun to watch em
You may have already thought of this but you might want to consider pulling the second burn air from outside. Most heat is lost from infiltration and pulling all of the air for the fire from the house will create lower pressure compared to outside, leading to more infiltration as your house essentially pulls a vacuum. If you can pull some or all of the air for the fire directly from outside I bet your house would hold a lot more heat
Usually covered in tile for more thermal mass, and to prevent co2 from killing you.
I‘m always amazed by how simple House building in America is. It works nothing to say against it. We Germans just overengineer everything.
It’s funny to see you build houses on a wood flooring with concrete slabs as base. Here we pour a big concrete groundation wich is about 10-30cm thick.
Yeah, construction here is funny. We got dinky houses that will last less than 100 years. I’d like to build a house from scratch with natural materials in the future
It really depends on region. The US has an incredible wide range of climates.
For example, here in the North we generally don't build on slabs, because the ground freezes two meters deep. Most homes have a concrete or stone basement.
Wood framing allows for significant insulation with fewer cold shunts than stone/brick/concrete walls, and can expand and contract with the weather cycle. Germany's current building code requires 0.15 W/(m²K) insulation for exterior walls, which is just under R-7. Here it's common to have R-21 or more in exterior walls, and R-60 in attic spaces. It's tough when you go from -26°C to 35°C in six months!
My home was built about 1723 of wood with a stacked stone foundation, and centuries later it's still going strong. Sadly they didn't have modern insulation in the 18th century, so I get to burn about 22m^3 (about 10-13,000kg) of wood every winter.
Americans have no house. They have a cardboard replica of a real house. It's like living in a mock up of a movie set. Usually they have no basement. Usually the roof is just tar paper and the outside walls are vinyl wallpaper. The homes have no thermal mass, they get hot during a sunny day and cold every night, thats why they use a lot of energy for air conditioning. Real houses are made of brick with a basement, they keep the temperature for days and need no HVAC. Double layer brick and roof tiles above cieling cast a shadow on the insulation so it does not need to insulate a 60°C/140°F roof in the sun from the 25/77 room but only air temp 30/86 therefore working 5 times as efficient. Real homes have ceramic tiles on the roof that lasts 200+ years and do not catch fire in a wildfire because tiles and bricks do not burn. Cardboard houses have a lifespan of 50 years.
@ Your ability to be so confidently wrong is astounding.
You need to get out more. Most homes in my city are brick and all have basements. @@flexiblebirdchannel
I would suggest setting up your secondary air supply pipe to run over the top of the firebox before being injected back there, rather than under, so that it is HOT when it mixes with any unburnt gases!
We are playing around with a different angle air pipe for the rebuild. good suggestion!
Excellent. Thanks for sharing!
Anytime, thanks for watching and commenting!
I love watching videos of old homes in other countries and you see these stoves in many of them. They are usually covered in tile or a stucco like covering and sometimes the have a cooking area, I would love that !!!
When you started I couldn’t believe you were putting it right against Sheetrock, I would think the whole thing would need a fire retardant wall ??
We are changing this stove up and rebuilding it, definitely need to make changes around the wall
Well done, guys. The big problem I see is that you appear to be taking air from inside to feed the fire when it should be pipped in from the outside. Then I would make dealing with ask better.
Yes, that was a big issue, we will be adding external air intake in the rebuild, we are going to be moving it too, so we will have more options.
With enough Mass these heaters only need to be burned a short amount of time drawing fresh air in the house in the winter time is usually a good thing for small amounts of time
Tests have been done at Wheaton Labs. External Air intakes are usually a problem. Even modern homes have enough leaks in the house where it's not a problem.
Then maybe we dont need an air intake, so much to learn from here.
In alaska and poorly insulated home they will have about a 45 min burn twice a day then you shut it off
I saw some Russian videos which nearly all had those type of heating systems but had incorporated an oven. Great idea I think.
There is a RUclips channel called “food around the world” that I watched just recently. The video I saw was about how a Ukrainian woman cooks and lives. She has two very old mass heaters, one that doubles as the stove. It was genuinely really interesting to see her cooking dinner on it, you should give it a view if you plan on making another heater.
Thanks for the tip, I’ll check it out!
You are a Paisano. You are Paisano. I love you brother. You are Paisano.
I see you brother
The wall near the stove is completely fine, the best way to keep a lot of heat is to heat up more mass.
Definitely need more mass. We are going to rebuild this guy in the spring with more mass and move it to the center of the house.
Top shelf work gentlemen 🙌
Appreciate that!
QUESTION ❓ Would this Mass Heater with "secondary burn" function just as well or better being built basement? Thanks. Can the heat be directed into primary duct,vent system?
Im no expert, so take what I saw with a grain of sand. It would work well in a basement, because the heat rises.
Hell yeah!! 💥
thanks!
Brilliant
A mass heater, probably a rocket to cut down on how much wood is needed, is on the "must have" list for our new build. I like this base design since you don't have a 55 gallon barrel in the middle of the living room 🤣 I'd definitely go with fire brick in both the primary and secondary burn compartments, longer lasting and more mass to hold the heat. It would be more difficult to "throttle" but I'd also want to be drawing the secondary combustion air from either the outside or from the crawlspace, no real reason to be sending warmed interior air up the chimney!
These are all good points, we are rebuilding this guy in the spring. Going to do fire brick in the chamber as well as stainless steel metal.
Alberta understands and thanks you!
Thanks
Does it have a clean-out? Excellent video.
No clean out, you have to remove the concrete slaps which are relatively simple to do.
Hiya, how do you clean the soot from under the bench or in the rest of the system? Was this an oversight? Do you have any recommendations or alterations that work better now that you've had time to test it? I live in SW France with a very big stone house in a country village and I'd like to heat it with wood and as cheaply as possible. Thank you for your ideas and any additional info would be great. Cheers my dears.. 🤔
Very little soot in this system. Buring at 1200 degrees, its a complete burn. The concrete slabs are easy to remove with this clay/sand mortar. We are rebuilding this stove, so I will film what it looks like when we pop the hood.
Awesome. Will gave you a 8 out of 10 for this.
-1 for not putting a eye catcher in the middle of the room. (centrifuge design with everything against the wall)
-1 for using uncovered steel inside the burn chamber.
And yes, you should be proud of that. Most are just garbadge. Some even dangerous.
I’ll take it! We def have some improvements for the next one.
-1 saying use eye protection without using eye protection
What's wrong with uncovered Steel in the burn chamber?
Its so hot, it erodes normal steel. You need stainless steel, or alloy mixes
now imagine how much safer and more energy efficient this system would be if it was in the middle of a *brick* house, like you'd find in Europe.
Totally, we are rebuilding this guy in the summer time. Adding more mass, moving to the center, and hopefully an oven.
Or a rammed earth house.
Even european brick houses typically have a stud framed plasterboard lined interior wall and wood floor/ceiling. Joists
@@ge2719 depends on which part of Europe you're talking about. In my neck of the woods (heh), only the roof structure is made out of wood, while the inner walls are almost always the same material as the outer walls. If required, insulation is added to the outside of the building envelope, and then that gets plaster on it. Stick framing, on the other hand, is treated as a fad, nothing more.
Lot of mass potential left in that bench from your exhaust temps. From what i can see from the video, it's currently just an open plenum? I would have maybe filled it with loose rock.
For covering more of the house, you could even run the exhaust through the floor into the crawlspace, through more rock, and then out the side of the house. Cheers and thanks for the video!
Anytime! Thanks for watching. Lots of improvements to make for the next iteration. We used the plans of the Walker stove to a Tee and I now see many drawbacks I would change.
keeps our house warm. (has a sweater and beanie on)
🤣, it depends when you start the fire, it takes two hours for this beast to get radiating heat, and then it gets hot.
Had to know that was coming.
To be fair, I work with a dude who wears sweat pants, a hoodie, and beanie all black in the summer....and he works outside
@ lol 😆
Depends on what cool is to him and what warm is....
Outstanding
Thanks
12:00 What would you do when you've had for several years and ceramic fiber board is all gacked up and you need to replace it? It will be such a confined enclosed space. How would you ever replace or repair the ceramic fiber board?
that is a major issue, and one of the many reasons we are rebuilding this system. Ceramic fiber board is also the most expense part of this build. I spent close to $900 on it. I will be adding kiln shelves to protect the core/.
Would it be better to bring the cold air from outside like a wood stove?
Next build we might do that as to not used warmed house air. It currently sucks in from the lowest level which is generally the coldest
With the ceramic fire board do you need to cover it with anything? I saw a few forges that get gooped to contain the toxic burn off or is that a different material they use? Thanks and great video. My bud in Russia has similar in his childhood home
Based on Matt Walkers Stove design we used, the answer is no. The biggest issue is durability, the wood is eating away the board. its like Styrofoam. When we rebuild it, we are going to add armor to the chamber, more mass, and hopefully and oven.
This is great system. I'm more concerned about long term maintenance and care for the unit. If someone cracks the glass on the door or something worse. I heard you say that don't have to worry about creosote in the chimney which is great.
The burn chamber is already wearing out, I will rebuild with better components. We used Walker stove design and Im glad to share my results. I would not use these plans the way they are. Needs more mass, and a few modifications. Im planning to rebuld with at least 4x mass, put it in the center of the house, and add an oven.
@StefanoCreatini Wow! That's good to know. I'm so happy I asked that question. Thank you for your feedback and for sharing your knowledge.
Best place to build it is between two rooms, like kitchen and living room or living room and bedrooms.
Yes, we are going to try that in our next build!
Similar to some Russian setups I saw. They have the little fire trap and i think they sleep on it or in it somehow. When theylook out their little town / village homes, you see dense snow covering everything.
If you drill some holes in the flute does it make beautiful music?
lol, 😂, only if I try to save a princess
I get you, but he's young.... Public school doesn't care about spelling anymore
public school?
I am talking from 40 years of personal experience. The aluminum backing is not enough, you need something behind the aluminum. In my country you can buy silicate panels that are covered with aluminum. They cost from 40 to 50 Euros. And yes, we had fire inside the walls.
I appreciate the feedback. The fan keeps the wall cool for now. I’m rebuilding this stove entirely and going to add the proper safety measures.
Great job, it looks awesome! How do you remove the ashes after burning the wood, and how do you remove the sooth built up in the inner chambers under the flue?
With a scooper,, I have to remove the concrete tops every year or so. We are rebuilding this stove in the summer, so it will be a good time to see what it looks like in there.
If they can prefab similar it make $$$ just build n setup 😮
You could put a radiator in the bench and circulate heat thru the rest of the house.
Nice work lads
Much appreciated
Nice idea, may give it a whirl
or K26 firebricks for the base, they might be a little soft but man would they work... woa, we don't have a real tool worker shop here... dude you can fire pottery in this thing !!! love the spaceage ceramics being used...
11:52 If you made a double backwall with the small gap. You could have made a old fasion engine carburator using Bernoulli's principle. Thus removing the upright pipe that actifly cools your combustion with the flames. Plus your mixture ratio of oxidiser becames depended on the speed difference in the flow of the gasses going through it. Thus having a more constant mixture. Added to that, when your having a split as exit and not a round tube. The area used is bigger and thus get better mixture of the injected oxidiser. The space between the two back plates is very small, it must be a injector size with. One or 2 simple washers are alreade enough. The pipe horisontaly will feed the space between the two walls then.
Solid info!
Some of the similar stoves I’ve seen had the fire box at waist level or even higher, Is there room to do that in a single story house? The aesthetics and convenience are the only reason for the question.
what if you wrapped copper pipe around the flue to capture more heat, have the tank upstairs and do a thermal syphon
Not an expert on this, but the juice wouldnt be worth the squeeze. I'm thinking about building another one of these in the kitchen and have it for cooking, with a water coil inside to heat domestic hot water.
@@StefanoCreatini yes great idea, you can cook on the hot flat part and build an insulated box to put on top of it to make an oven, I expect it would make a great pizza oven for stone baked pizza
Very interesting. ...now can you prefab and sell kits to the public that don't have the skillset or tradesmen to help with build?
Maybe 🤔
Why don’t you do it @northidahodreaming5657 Your comment reads very snarky and condescending
@@BlueyBlueCollar You mistake the question that I asked. I don't have the time or the skillsets to build this RMH or personally know anyone that could help me....but I may be willing to purchase a prefab kit from Stefano if he made one available.
My motivation? I've grown tired of feeding a wood stove 3 to 4 times a day and would very much consider a masonry or RMH alternative.
@@northidahodreaming5657 my apologies for misreading your comment. Thank you for taking the time to respond
We are taking about building a Core out of stainless steel with Ira, we will play around with it. Thats something that can be shipped
Bobs a great guy.
1000%
Curious what type of compensation he received?
He has is own RUclips channel, so it was more of a hand shake and we collabed. Check out his video of the same build, its on my video description.
How do you clean the chambers from build up? If you put it in the centre of the room, how would design the chimney?
The chimney will be moved from the main column, and it will look similar, We maybe even try to move if on the far side of the bench. TBD
I have a wood fireplace with door and glass with air flow. I dont know the name in english. In portuguese is "recuperador de calor a lenha" (wood heat saver).
I would love to have something like this, and I'd love to have a slab I can remove to reveal a cooking surface. At least then, I can still cook food if I don't have any more gas.
A cook in g surface would ideal, total resilience
Would this system create biochar for use in the garden?
Not really, I could quench the coals as they are burning.
Interesting when you said you would move it to the centre of the house - that is a similar design to pechkas which are everywhere in eastern Europe
It’s definitely the way to go
Good! Now you build same for me. Tanks!
That’s what my next project is!
If you do it again you could take the cold air for the second burn not from your living room but from the crawlspace or even better from outside. Now your taken the warmed up air
We are considering it, there are schools of thought on what is better for a rocket mass heater.
Looks wild. Fireplace over a wooden structure. You can save another 90% of firewood when you install thermal insulation in structures. For example, there is no thermal insulation in the bottom.(?)
Yeah, the perlite is a fantastic insulation matter, used for a long time in masonry. ive measured the subfloor temps during the hottest burn and it keeps the temps below 80 degrees.
@StefanoCreatini
I mean thermal insulation between the wooden beams of the subfloor or below the beams. E.g. 80-100 mm of xps or pu insulation would certainly be an ok level at Montana's altitude. Ask More info your local civil engineer about insulation.
It reminded me of a traditional Russian stove, but in a small size. Such stoves are made in large sizes in order to stock up more heat, and they also make a bed on them. I assume that people who live at temperatures below -30 °F in winter are well aware of heat preservation and the construction of furnaces.
In your design, I would also add more insulation from the wooden floor - with Intensive use of the furnace, it can be flammable.
P.S. You can ban for the "Russian", but I'm here not for politics...
Thanks for feedback, we are definetly going to modify this stove in the spring time. Larger mass, more insulation, move the exhaust pipe into a different location, and even add an oven to it.
I love stuff like this, it looks so cozy. Don't they use heaters like this in Siberia?
Yes, they do, I think they are called "pech" stoves.
id say you will need more insulation on the floor aswell, for future reference.