Wood stove heat

Love cherry! I have more to harvest from the destruction pile behind the farm. Next year might be the last running pure cherry.
 
I don't like to burn cherry except in the smoker.

I stopped using white pine for now, and switched to hedge and red oak. Pine can burn hot, but the charcoal doesn't. I do like how little ash pine left. I could go a week or 2 so it seemed without scooping ashes, now it is every 2 days.
 
Round here cherry is a little round fruit you buy at the store...

Ponderosa and Douglas Fir typically, shagbark cedar or alligator juniper in a pinch.

Last year I dropped what I believe was an elm, never saw the tree in leaf. Surprisingly good firewood. Fairly hot with a long burn time compared to our local evergreens. Very little ash.
 
Superfluity of wondrous firewood species, Rajan. Envy, have I.

Here it's mostly Doug fir, with a much smaller percentage being a mix of bigleaf maple, red alder, bitter cherry, and some smaller hardwoods like cascara and old growth ninebark. Now and then I'll burn some Western hemlock just because we have it on site and it offers itself, but it's not a favorite.
 
Came across this today. It's called a Rocket Mass Heater. It's allegedly one of the most, if not the most, efficient and effective heating systems which relies on wood. Instead of having all of the heat simply dissipate out of a standard chimney, this system, which starts with a high efficiency rocket stove, send all of the heat through 20 feet or more of ductwork that has been encapsulated in an insulator. This works similarly to how old fashioned water heaters function, but with heat instead of hot water.



Here's a quick time lapse of the entire build....

 
Last edited:
Knotorious said:
Came across this today. It's called a Rocket Mass Heater. It's allegedly one of the most, if not the most, efficient and effective heating systems which relies on wood. Instead of having all of the heat simply dissipate out of a standard chimney, this system, which starts with a high efficiency rocket stove, send all of the heat through 20 feet or more of ductwork that has been encapsulated in an insulator. This works similarly to how old fashioned water heaters function, but with heat instead of hot water.



Here's a quick time lapse of the entire build....

Click to expand...

Know why they aren't more popular?
Number 1 is safety. Things burning that hot don't belong in a house. Home owners insurance won't touch em.
2 nobody who heats their home with wood, wants to turn every piece of wood into kindling. The third part is cleaning, and when the smoke is cooled that much, you're going to have a lot of creosote to deal with.

Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door. The rocket stove is not a better mousetrap.
 
Kaveman said:
Know why they aren't more popular?
Number 1 is safety. Things burning that hot don't belong in a house. Home owners insurance won't touch em.
2 nobody who heats their home with wood, wants to turn every piece of wood into kindling. The third part is cleaning, and when the smoke is cooled that much, you're going to have a lot of creosote to deal with.

Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door. The rocket stove is not a better mousetrap.
Click to expand...
I realize that such a setup is a far greater fire hazard than a standard wood burning stove, and my point wasn't to say that it is better in every way. From my understanding, it simply is more fuel efficient. You made some good points regarding the convenience of a standard wood burning stove. Also, as someone who already finds normal wood stoves to be oppressively and excessively hot, I'm not convinced that there is any real need for this second type. It also clearly would take exponentially longer to build a Rocket Mass Heater and, if the time ever comes where one has to clean out the duct work, all of it would almost certainly have to be ripped out and replaced. And to your point about getting insured with one of these in your house, my guess is that's why this guy built his outside, far removed from his home...which appears to defeat the purpose of building one to begin with since he's simply heating the outdoors.
 
Efficiency doesn't stop at how much wood is burned. Like I said, rocket stoves require very small wood to work effectively, they can't handle big stuff because they blow themselves out. So you have to process everything down smaller, and that is a hell of a lot of work. The hardest part of doing firewood at scale is how much you have to touch the wood. For a rocket stove, you have to grope and fondle every piece, until it's a bunch of splinters.
 
Kaveman said:
Efficiency doesn't stop at how much wood is burned.
Click to expand...
I understood what you were saying about having to break down logs into small pieces for this other stove type. I also said "fuel" efficiency, meant to highlight that its only real benefit is that it requires less fuel to output the same amount of heat as a standard wood stove. But, as you just pointed out, this same benefit can also be viewed as a downside/inconvenience. While the fuel may be used more efficiently, preparation of this fuel is not very efficient.
 
Wouldn't one need to nearly constantly be adding those small bits of wood to the fire? It has always seemed to me that keeping a rocket stove of any variety running would be a near full time job. Is this correct?
 
Burnham said:
Wouldn't one need to nearly constantly be adding those small bits of wood to the fire? It has always seemed to me that keeping a rocket stove of any variety running would be a near full time job. Is this correct?
Click to expand...
That would be my interpretation of the situation. Just because you can produce greater amounts of heat with less fuel doesn't mean that the fuel is magically going to burn at a slower rate. Especially since rocket stoves are designed to maximize airflow through the wood, likely causing it to burn even faster.
 
Fuel efficiency in woodstoves is a different thing, and how often you're stoking, poking or otherwise phukin about with the fire is part of it. It's not about how cleanly it burns or how much heat is extracted from an individual piece of wood.

Here's another way to look at fuel efficiency too, how much gas you burn to process your wood fuel. @flushcut can huck a foot length in his boiler as mentioned above. That's three 16 inch pieces. He doesn't have to make those two cuts, and don't have to split it either. That's a lot of gas saved. That said, chucking wood that size isn't a little boys game, gotta have yer big girl panties on for that.

My first wife got snookered by the rocket-stove snake-oil. She was trying to do something nice, make my life easier. I was out of town on a big concrete job, and I came home to her in tears. She had run the stove and realized how much extra work she had made for me, on top of spending a LOT of money. A local guy had sold her on this lovely bill of goods, on his newly designed miracle stove. Meanwhile she was waking up to a cold house every morning. She even found ice in the dogs water bowl.

She said she felt oddly better after shooting the it with the Barrett, but .50 BMG has an eerie soothing effect, at least in my experience.
 
There's a place for everything. I could imagine a location where fuel is extremely scarce, and you have to extract every btu you can from the fuel available. A rocket stove with a some kind of heatsink would make a lot of sense. This isn't that place. I'm drowning in wood, and I have my choice of just about anything I want. Makes me twitchy seeing all the good resources go to waste, but I can't bring it all home with me. I'd have to buy an old cornfield and a log truck to transport and store it all, and that's only the stuff I'm more or less directly involved with. If I actually looked around, I could have a major industry with tons of employees just hoarding wood.
 
flushcut said:
If money weren’t an issue I’d have a boiler that can take four foot by 20” logs.🪵 🔥 :D under floor heat every thing.
Click to expand...
I'm sure there's a cheap way to do it, depending on what you think affordable is. Time spent exploring options and designing it could be a lot.
 
I have a free old circulator stove with an automatic intake air adjustment. It will take a 24 inch log 10 inches in diameter. If I split a monster piece in half I can shove it in. I made an add on that clips on the bottom of the door opening. It had a folded out raw edge that would snag logs I was trying to slide in. i had another stove that was the same design we burned for over 20 years. Not the most efficient I'm sure, but cheap and effective and a big chunk will burn for a good long time. Also have a newer Avalon with secondary burn. Pretty stove and nice to see the fire. More efficient but lots more work with smaller pieces, shoveling out ashes, and much shorter burn time. I keep them both burning when it gets real cold out. Fire up an oil boiler in basement when it gets even colder and windy to keep the pipes from freezing. Gotta love big old farm houses.
 
Our Hearthstone claims to take 20 inch wood, but that is too tight for convenience. I cut to 17-18 inches. I could put a 10 inch diameter piece in if there was nothing but a good bed of coals left, but I can pack it tighter, more wood all together, if I split it to 5-7 inches.
 
Nutball said:
I'm sure there's a cheap way to do it, depending on what you think affordable is. Time spent exploring options and designing it could be a lot.
Click to expand...
Even the cheap options would still be in the tens of thousands to refit my house for under floor heat. I priced a boiler unit when we bought and that was $16k ten years ago. Just to tap into the forced air system and not under floor heat. Now we would be looking at no less than $40k. Considering we are paying $300 a month for gas and electric during the winter 40 thousand is a very long return on investment.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top