Are we all doing it wrong?

Yes ,I have studied it some,is good.Europe makes some good gasification pellet boilers,and such.But,I also am a realist,live not far from him,and,you do not heat up a huge mass(rocks,water,gravel) with a 1o minute fire,fueled by pine.And he was not truthful about the weather,out here,for last winter.

 

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll........................................................................Probably not!

I am pretty frugal, but there is not budget for my wife regarding razors and pantyhose. Buy all you want Hon.

Katie


NOT Katie (Sofie Ellis Bextor)

 

As I am understanding it ....Looks like it’s air like its one of those massive heat exchangers. I’ve seen one of these that was so large, it fit in a massive fireplace. At least 3 feet high and pipes were like a truck exhaust only thicker. Anyways there must be a pipe as he said there is one in the barrel that goes to the top and then down into the mass heater then out the other stovepipe(hot air exhaust not smoke). (Sorry if I’m repeating anyone else answering this, the video is still fresh). This seems like an extremely efficient system on getting the most out of the heat as the thicker the material on the outside is still a good conductive one, it creates a blanket heat effect so a fire built in the morning is often felt later in the day. The process is just slow. However if the barrel is a hotspot as well, then it should be more than enough to heat the room quickly while the mass heater picks up the lag.

 

There should be a gov't weather site of sorts that lays out the heat degree days for that area. I find hdd fascinating, if only to compare others weather to your own, or to see how your own weather really was year to year.

 

A lot of times, it is WHAT IS NOT SAID that is as important as what is said.

Another common statement is; "Follow the Money". I have no problem with someone making money, it is a free country, but at the same time, if a person is selling DVD's, Podcasts, Books and Advertisements, it is going to influence them. Putting a Rocket Mass heater in a yurt will inevitably heat a home, and may even heat a home depending on the lifestyle of the occupant in a more standard home. But if a person is selling the idea of Rocket Mass Heaters, they are not about to say "this would not work in an old farm house or suburban setting", after all...it MIGHT work! Key word there being might. Who in their right mind would limit their marketing size?

I don't think we should say,"Oh that guy is crazy, it would never work." The guy has my respect because he has built a lot of Rocket Mass heaters and knows their design. He is an expert no doubt, and probably can heat his home on .60 cords of wood for a MT winter.

I was drawn to that site solely for Rocket Mass Heaters, but after a few years of really studying them, I concluded they are not for me. Sure I could heat my current home on 2 cords of wood if all I did was heat my pot bellied stove and sat on it all day, but that is not the LIFESTYLE I want to live. I want a warm home for my family. A lot of the people that want Rocket Mass Heaters want that sort of lifestyle...more power to them. But to draw the conclusion; warm house via a magical Rocket Mass heater is not going to be accurate, and no amount of data exists to tell how a man lives. If a man has no kids in the house, can tolerate a 40 degree room, that will severely cut down on the wood/btu requirements. We get into trouble when we make assumptions...

 

Grizzly Adam

 

He says he keeps his house at 69-70 degrees.

I'm a skinny guy with the cold tolerance of a chihuahua. I might wear a sweatshirt at 69 degrees. He is not a skinny guy and he is wearing a jacket over a sweater over his overalls over a T-shirt. Something is amiss.

 

Exactly- pulling one fact out of a barrel full of data does not mean anything.

But there are realities to consider such as what most of us are burning and how efficient our 'normal' (non- rocket, non- gassifier, etc.) stoves are. One thing that jumps to my mind is that as I am burning somewhere around 4 cord / year, and the efficiency seems to be somewhere in the 80% range, there is absolutely no way and no wood- burning device that could possibly cut my wood consumption in half, never mind to less than a cord. The max. efficiency, which cannot actually be reached, is 100% so by increasing my own wood burning efficiency to perfection (100%) would just not yield a big savings in wood consumption simply because it is now being used too close to 100% for that additional 15% or 20% to cut my wood consumption down to, say, 1/8 or anywhere near it.

Given modern stove design and materials, we can actually burn very slowly but still extremely efficiently. He mentions in that video that his flue temp. is very low compared to most wood stoves. Again, that is not meaningful without knowing how much exhaust gas is actually going through his (and our) stoves. I certainly suspect his rocket stove has a much greater volume of total flue gasses (both smoke as well as air taken in for combustion) than a tightly damped down, modern catalytic stove. His 1XX F temp. exhaust may well be less, perhaps far less efficient than my 3XX F exhaust simply because he may (and I think probably is) making much, much more of it.

There are very simple realities that we all have to follow and the efficiency of any heat- generating device is a very easy one to get a handle on pretty quickly if one is combusting hydrogen and / or carbon based fuel for heat directly.

At any rate, what this person claims in the video may well be true, I just do not believe it can be compared to what most of us actually need every year for heat output. Put another way, I do not think his results are relevant to the great majority of us and his situation, such as a small space to heat, extreme insulation, possible solar heating due to large windows or skylights, etc. and not similar to the houses most of us find ourselves living in.

Brian

 

True enough Brian. I did not go back to see If I had finished that last sentence likely was interrupted by a customer or phone call sending me off on another avenue. A correctly designed and installed rocket stove/mass heater is quite efficient. It is not something that can be easily retrofitted to most common home constructions without some serious upgrading for structural support - course a place built on a slab or a basement location negates that. But just for grins take a look at the liberator rocket stove- with the optional pellet feed ( no outside power needed) it has a pretty good shot at extended burn times. The Wise way stove ( now marketed by USS Steel) is another based on rocket stove principals. The original designer of the wiseway just wanted a pellet stove sans do dads and electronics. Course with the cost of pellets neither are going to save you much over conventional heating systems at the present time. Meanwhile I am still scrounging with an occasional purchase , splitting, and stacking since i was old enough to pick up a stick and carry it inside for the cook stove , fireplace, wood stove.

 

yep, read his stuff quite awhile back,

 

you only get so many btu's per pound of wood, i just don't see how this is possible

 

A rocket mass heater does not send 50% of it up the chimney like a conventional stove. These stoves are designed so that almost all the heat is extracted, yet can still burn. In the meantime, that heat is used to warm up what they call a "bench". Whereas you and I sit on our couch, they sit on what is essentially a masonry couch that their smoke is channeled through to stay warm. The biggest difference is, they are not heating the room; they are literally sitting on their chimneys.

Add in small buildings, and super-insulated ones at that, with massive amounts of rock or masonry, and their home stays warm.

HOWEVER, it is also a lifestyle.

While I could live like that if it was just me, I doubt Katie would want to live that way. But I don't think it would be fair to subject my children to that. I do not think its neglect, I just think there are other ways to heat a house that I have available to me (a woodlot), that are better for my family. IF I needed to be conservative, yes...it is one way to do so, but for a few cord of wood, I can live conventionally just fine.

 

Phase shift materials- the classic Water, freeze it as it melts back to a liquid state gives off cold, others are the opposite absorb heat change physical property give off heat as they change back. There is quite a list depending on the parameters involved. More of this is being incorporated into commercial buildings.

 

I do fine until I hit the sixth step from the basement then it is wheeze time. BP meds can due that to one.

 

So true, and my doctor just added another one.

 

What did the sawbones add?

 

Hydralazine 10 mg, three times daily. However, he did lower the Amlodipine to 5 mg daily. The swelling in my lower legs is really a problem and that is the # one culprit.

 

I'm at 3.75 on the Amlodipine and that appears to do the trick for me, my dizzies are mostly gone (only there when I screw up my cutting) cutting is a problem.