proteas vryssas

For me spiraling isn't the correct method. You can use straight pipes with u-turns or 2 x 90 degrees turns. You can also easily replace damaged pipes which is not the case for spiraling. You can place straight pipes vertically or horizontal, water always find a way.

Glenn Herbert wrote:Unless you have a constant wind direction for the whole heating season, "lee/downwind" is not so important for you, as you really need to make your chimney to work well in any kind of wind. This means running it up to at least a meter above the peak of your roof, even if the peak is 3 or 4 meters away from the chimney.

It will be easier to support this chimney if it goes up inside the house and exits near the peak. This will also keep the chimney warmer and improve your draft, and lose less heat to outdoors.
There is no drawback to having a chimney inside a house except the space it takes. An internal chimney will pull no more heat out of the house than an insulated external chimney, and it will draw better in nearly all conditions.

If I go straight up and make an internal chimney right near the barrel as it should be, then the chimney on the roof may distract the path of the drain which is 5-10cm near that internal chimney on the floor of the roof. Anyway I'll think your exhortation because it seem to me logical.

Glenn Herbert wrote:If you have any issue with losing room air while not burning, you can do what is a common practice and cover the feed tube with two bricks when the fire is out.

My feed tube and the ash pit under it, is outside the house as you can see from the pictures. My intentions for this, is to have a small short 1x1 sq.m shelter around the outside wall which will contain the feed tube, the chimney (which is next to the feed tube) and some of the woods to dry out.

Thus I can completely avoid :
a) any smell/odor from ash or wood burning inside the house,
b) any possibility of any long stick to get out/fell out the feed tube,
c) any crackling noise from the fire,
d) any smoke/back-drafting inside the house,
e) any dirt or bugs from the woods to go inside the house.

So, at the end the chimney would go "inside" but not inside the room I want to warm.

In the next few days I conduct more tests because the condensation/liquefaction of steam seems due the incomplete burning/bottleneck on top of the barrel which now I had to raise.

allen lumley wrote:You on the other hand are trying to retro-fit a Rocket Mass Heater RMH into an existing structure.

No, I don't. I had tear down completely the previous structure which was an open fireplace AND its chimney made of bricks.

allen lumley wrote:Notice the Amount of wood being burned. Here two bricks have been used to partially close off the Feed tube opening. This helps our fire in more than one way.
1) By Flowing Downward past the sticks of fuel wood it cools the sticks preventing smoke back!
2) as it flows through the fire the Air warms up and keeps the Firebrick that lines the Burn Tunnel and the Heat Riser Hot. Thus the proper Wood Fuel To Air Ratio keep excess air from cooling you combustion zone !
While we start with tinder and then kindling , we can fill the Feed Tube opening with small very dry wood and within 15 minutes have the walls of the Burn Tunnel glowing Red

I have been try to minimize the air of the feed tube with the same method with tight wood and with bricks on top of the feed tube. That didn't help.

Probably you don't see my photos because from these photos it is clear that no one are able to see the burn tunnel because all of his surrounding circumference (both the top-bottom and the sides) are build and enclosed with bricks and mortar. Thus the burn tunnel (which is in my case is a mold made of refractory cement) are not visible. Only the feed tube is visible which is outside of the house to keep the room quiet from the burning cracks and roars.

allen lumley wrote:Your best Tool to operate your Rocket correctly is your ears. When your rocket is running correctly you will be able to hear its roar !

Only on start of the fire I hear the roar. After a while the roar stops and it is barely audible from time to time. The roar is almost non existing except for the few minutes when I was start the fire.

allen lumley wrote:So- tell me again exactly what happens to your horizontal chimney from its ending through how many elbows or tees

There was only one tee were vertical chimney/pipe was meeting the horizontal pipe exhaust. That tee is outside the wall. My chimney is 90 inch tall.

allen lumley wrote:
See link Below :
http://s65.photobucket.com/user/mremine/media/NYC%20Rocket%20Stove%20Build/P1030331.jpg.html?sort=3&o=6

I had already seen those photos from previous posts. They had connect dozens of barrels in series which they form the horizontal exhaust pipe until those barrels meet the chimney. I don't believe that inside of all those huge barrels no condensation ever occurs.

Please see the photo exhaust_pipes.jpg and quote one by one a specific sentence at a time if you don't understand my descriptions.

allen lumley wrote:proteas vryssas : Please answer clearly, what kind of floor do you have under your RMH,

Under and around the barrel area I have 2"+ of concrete then under it 1.2" blue dow like styrofoam then 12"+ main concrete floor.

allen lumley wrote:have you covered your piping now?

No, the weather turn to snowing condition. The cement instructions I used (which the same for houses (type 42.5N)) prohibits to work with it at temperatures below 10C.

allen lumley wrote:And was the piping covered before when you discovered the water problem ?

No never. I only remove the dow styrofoam sheets which laid under the pipes too, to clean out the water. I'll wait until the temperature going like 8-10 C (50F) to be able to work with concrete again to place the taller barrel I made (look at my previous post).

allen lumley wrote:Your Final vertical chimney should be an internal chimney exiting near the peak of your roof!

I never though that I could have an internal chimney. Would that internal chimney be drag heat continuously from the room up to roof and thus the outside air, even when the rmh is off?

allen lumley wrote:With an outside chimney it needs to be located on the Lee or Downwind side of your house and be at least 1 meter higher that the peak of your roof, or other nearby object !

I don't know anything about Lee or Downwind and I don't want to read what the wikipedia writes about it because previously I had a 3m (120 inch) tall chimney made of bricks for a fireplace at pretty much the same area.
But the fireplace had problem with the back-smoking inside the room. !@$%&# Then one professional fireplace builder come and said that it needs to be raised again and when that didn't work either then another professional fireplace builder come and place a expensive and aloud motor on top of that chimney. After a while the motor stack because of ash, creosote and harsh conditions. But the motor "solution" had some other side effects! When worked to drag the smoke from the room, it is also remove all the heat produced by the fireplace and make the room loud too. So I don't ever need to know what the Lee or Downwind or the common chimney builders technique said (no offense).

F Styles wrote:Do you have a water tank set up in this pic? if so where did you place it in your system? can you please post more pics.

No, I don't have a water tank.
As a test, I submerge the coil in a bathtub full of hot water while I connect one side of the coil to the cold water domestic supply hose/valve. When I open the cold supply faucet, from the other end of the coil (which is outside the hot water bathtub) it came out hot water the same temperature as the hot water has inside the bathtub!
The length of the coil is 30m (98.4 foot or 1181 inch) but the diameter is only 1/4". I choose that small thickness to turn around the burn tunnel and heat riser with ease by hands.
In the end I cut the coil in half to double coil's volume output because the 1/4" thickness doesn't allow me to pull me enough hot water to make a shower. That's why you see two separate coils which, based on the test, they should produce enough hot water to make a shower mixed with some cold water at the shower faucet. Of course the hot water from both coils combined is less than the 1/2" supply hose because of high viscosity of the thin coil and the high number of coil's turns.

I don't have other photos from that system because it is so simple except the 1/2" hoses at the end of this 1/4" coil which is welded in a tricky way with copper blow torch and copper solder wire. This system is designed to work only if you have two valves for hot water or a triple way valve because at the summer, when the rocket stove is off, if you continue to send your hot water warmed up by other means (like a solar water heater) to the rocket stove coils, that water will return colder and you don't need that. The 30m copper coil cost me 60 euro and the 4 hoses (two hoses at each of 15m piece of coil) cost me 20 euro.

F Styles Do you think that water coil idea is going to work?
The coil which goes wrapped around the burn tunnel is packed with sand so it should free to expand and shrink.
The second coil on the heat riser is wrapped loose for the same reason and now has around it a rock-wool blanket and a cement-perlite insulation as in my previous photo.

allen lumley wrote: It has been reported here that with a gap between the top of the Heat Riser and the underside of the barrel greater than 3'' this temperature difference reverses itself !

The distance/gap from the heat riser to the barrel's top is like 1.5 inch at the center and 3.5 inch at the outer edge of the barrel because my heat riser is something conical on its top.
Currently I had remove the barrel to increase the distance between the barrel's top and the heat riser top, believing that there is a bottleneck which slows down the gases. By using the grinder I cut the original barrel's top and left only the extra thick welded metal plate on barrel's top adding 0.9 inch.
But because of the grinder's wheel size I can't get access to the outer edge of the barrel's top living 1.7 inch "teeth" which of course travel all the circumference of the barrel.

allen lumley wrote:Being very stingy with my money is my best reason for going with cob instead of concrete; However in your case the concrete does not seem to be absorbing the water released from /and produced by the wood you are burning. Always burn the driest wood you can ! Cob is generally highly regarded for its ability to hold onto lots of Water when the moisture levels are high, and venting it when the Moisture levels are low !

I don't know how strong the cob will be and I don't know how to make it, neither anybody else, like people who build fireplaces here knows about it.
The price here for 1 cubic meter of concrete with the transportation cost is 55 to 60 euro. So that should help me because currently I don't have a car.

allen lumley wrote:Running a small fan to increase the movement of air through your RMH will help dry things out but you need to vigilantly look for other outside sources for your water problem ! Again the fan should help stop smoking at the feed tube !

I have a strong fan sitting around here, left out of RMH as my last resort.

allen lumley wrote: How tall is your final Vertical Chimney?

My chimney is 90 inch tall.
I think the only thing left to pulling gases out is the chimney's pull because the speed the gases acquire while they travel upwards inside the heat riser, should be zeroed when the gases hit the top of the barrel.

I also manage to:
a) if the increase of the barrel's gap will not solve the wood feed back smoking problem I will remove the first exhaust pipe and I will add some slope to it so the gases will gain some speed there too.
b) Add two drainage pipes each under the lower point of the two exhaust pipes.
c) trying something irrational which if worked should solve the liquefaction problem like pointing all the exhaust pipes with a downward slope and then add the chimney.

I don't place the barrel on center of the heat riser. The barrel's front side has almost all the space to the heat riser, while the barrel's back side is touching the heat riser.
Would that offset be a problem which leads to incomplete burning? The feed area is smoking, so my rocket stove doesn't have a good pull and only half of the gases and flames goes into the burn tunnel.

allen lumley wrote: While I totally do not understand the leaks and tracks at the top of the barrel ( how did you seal this location? )

The barrel has the original top which is of course something curved so the center point of the top is higher than the outside perimeter of the barrel which connects this top side with the vertical cylindrical side. The metal plate on top is welded with a common electric welding machine under the metal plate at which the metal plate meets the barrel's perimeter at 45 degrees angle and it is air tight.
Now the drum has a perfect straight top so a saucepan had no leaning while the bottom of the saucepan is in touch with the metal plate at all of the available surface.

allen lumley wrote: I am sure that most of your problem is related to drying out your Cob ! Even 3 weeks is not too long top dry out your Cob depending on the way you made it !

I don't have any cob and almost all the mass you see on the photos is build at the mid-summer.
I manage to build the whole bench which will hold these two pipes with concrete, not cob. Is that a bad decision?

allen lumley wrote:In a perfect world Your cob should act as an incredible sponge when the outside air is high humidity absorbing water vapor into its core

I don't live in a perfect world and the climate is like tropical. The humidity is always high except at the middle summer at which the rocket stove should be off.
The building has double walls, roof, floor etc. and all that mass is acting already like a sponge so when I try to heat the place the water from inside the walls, roof etc. will come to the surface of the wall, roof etc. in order to evaporate. That phenomenon in time producing moldiness as you can see at the exhaust_pipes photo at the lower right corner and under the word "stopper". There is a blackish part of the green wall just over upon the skirting board.
Everybody knows that when a place is dry is easier to warm up and more comfortable to sit.

allen lumley wrote:and when then Outside vapor is low physically pumping Water Vapor into the Atmosphere, and increasing the latent heat of evaporation - This works out to be More Free Heat on the coldest days !

When I warm up very well that place with radiators and stay there all night too, then the next day in morning I wake up in the center of a lake and l need to do mopping all around the perimeter of the floor because the water from the walls goes down to the floor! That is how much water and moisture exists here.

Any odor / smell should go away if the place is dry. I think that is well explain at Wikipedia's article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehumidifier.

allen lumley wrote: For theGood of the Crafts ! Big AL

We are Big AL too. The differences like time and purpose is for fun?!

F Styles wrote:Make sure if you have an elbow or a TEE at the up point make sure it tilts a bit down away from the house and put a drain vent/hole at the lowest part of the tilt to drain the condensation.

My problem is not outside the house yet. As you can see in my initial video the water came from the barrel side at the first TEE clean out exit.

F Styles wrote:I would like to ask are your exhaust ducts pointing down, up, or level as they go out to the up stack?

The first exhaust duct/pipe which connected to the barrel is perfect horizontal / level.
The second has a "half bubble" slope thinking that the gasses should increase their speed out to the chimney. That thinking is correct but it leads to a catch 22 point because the condensation water should traverse/tumble in the opposite direction which leads to the 190 degrees U turn which has the same level as the first pipe.

F Styles wrote:a level stack with low center point will be the worst scenario.

I'm not sure what means the "low center point". The first exhaust in the photo has 2m (= 78.7 inch) length and a large spirit level / plummet indicate that it is straight / level from side to side.

F Styles wrote:make sure inside ducts have mass around them.

If I build the bench and enclose the pipes inside it, then how I become sure that condensation / liquefaction inside those ducts/pipes will stop? As I can understand, the exterior mass of the pipe / ducts should be cold in the initial hour (or so) of burning so that hour time should produce water and this water should start dripping inside the bench mass and eventually it will absorb by that mass. From there the burned wood smell should begin to spread in the air inside the room.
A second question is about the insulation you mention. If I insulate all the ducts how the heat will spread and stored inside the bench / mass around them?

F Styles wrote:do not cool the mass or pipe down too much with a water tank

Why I will ever need to cool down the mass when I need to heat this place? I don't have a water tank.
So, I don't understand that statement either. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

F Styles wrote: make sure you put a little piece of insulation in the clean out duct lid and the condensation should stop there for the most part.

All joint positions of the ducts are shielded with fire proof silicone and I have had a sponge into the clean out lid. Eventually the water should find his way out either by penetrating / absorbing the concrete and the supporting mass under the barrel or by loosing / breaking the joints between the pipes.
I get 1 Liter of water in this 5 hour fire time excluding the water who drop in the floor which I can't measure !