New guy here.

Hi Everyone. I live in central Ohio, US. I am also retired and have equipment to build a Rocket Mass Heater.

Back in the 70’s I built a new house with a fireplace. I soon found out the fireplace was a wood hog. Since I was heating with an electric boiler I started looking for a better wood burner. I started with making a fireplace wood boiler out of ¾” black steel pipe. This still used too much wood and since I didn’t have a big storage tank I could not control the water temperature. It was always getting too hot and blowing the pop off I had installed to dump boiler water outside.

I found a 600 gallon water tank and installed it in the system and that was what it took to control the systems temperature. I decided to make a wood burner fireplace insert. I installed the water pipes inside the stove and by the end of the season I had it working perfectly. The next year I was ready for winter with enough wood already cut and in the shop out of the weather and we ended up moving. The new owner never used this system. LOL

I have been watching several videos in YouTube about Rocket Heaters. I now have an LP gas furnace, an LP gas ventless stove that will heat the house and 3 weeks ago I installed 9 electric baseboard heaters as a backup. The reason I installed the electric heaters is LP gas here is about $4.00 a gallon US at a 200 gallon minimum fill. All the portable heaters were sold out in the big box stores, plus I don’t trust those heaters because the plugs and cords can and will over heat. Since I am a retired contractor and one of my main skills is electrical. I installed the heaters for about the same price as 4 good portable heaters. Of course there was 3-4 days of crawling around to install them. Believe it or not I am saving about 45% using electric over the LP gas. Of course that will change once the electric power plants cry enough to raise there rates. Another reason I made the decision to use electric is my hot water heater is LP gas. I needed to save enough LP gas to run the water heater until summer when the LP gas price goes back down.

I am getting too old to cut firewood, but I live on a property that has over 50 dead or dying ash trees. Many have to be cut down or they will fall over the driveway. I have the equipment to cut, split and hull wood, but I had said never to dirty smoky wood burners. Well that changed when I found out about RMH’s. I don’t mind the varying temperatures in the house, but I haven’t seen where there is a good control over running a RMH inside the house.

I have a few questions, but I am looking forward to building a RMH this summer for next years heating season.

The Best to Everyone,
DiamondMaker

Hi Diamond

Hello Diamond Maker.

You may want to check out Pekka Leskela's videos to get some design ideas. He has a lot of RMH ideas.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7ElEYxL2Q7e6rRs3xs_SMg

Welcome, your water heating system you created sounded fantastic.

Like your avatar.

Thanks MR. Heater, I saved that link. DM

Thanks Trying2Hard. The system worked great. Of course back then I didn't know much about wood gasification. The great thing about the heating system was with the 600 gallon tank. I could burn the stove hard for about 6 hours in the evening, bank the fire in the morning and get the temp of the water in the tank to 175. The house was 72 degrees 24 hours a day.

The Avatar was a picture I too out of a PPS file sent to me. I called it God's finger prints, but the smoke spiral is really a Fibonacci and can be found thru out our Earth and the Universe.

One more week of below zero, I am ready for spring. :)

DM