Wood Burning Mass Heating Stoves
| August 18, 2011 | Posted by The Futtock under Survival |
Recently I have been reading up on Rocket Mass Heaters, a very nice and super-efficient wood burning heater. The problem with most wood burning stoves is that a lot of the fuel and heat goes straight up the chimney. All that smoke and heat is just wasted.
According to various sources the Rocket Mass Heater burns 5 to 10 times less wood for the same amount of heat than a standard stove. It does this by re-burning the gases and then soaking up the heat into a lot of mass. The examples I have seen use cob (clay earth mixed with sand and straw) for mass. It lets off quick heat from the fire and then slow heat taken from the flu.
The Rocket Mass Heater has a rocket stove at its heart but then an oil barrel is placed over the stack forcing the gas down the outside of the stack. The stack is insulated so inside it gets super-hot, re-burning the gases. The gases then travel along horizontal pipes where the remainder of the heat is soaked up before being released into the air. What comes out is mostly warm CO2 and steam.
It looks pretty amazing and it is something I would very much like to try.
There is a book about them called: Rocket Mass Heaters: Superefficient Woodstoves YOU Can Build
There are also a few websites that talk about them. A good one is http://www.permies.com/
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