Wood consumption of J channel vs Berg DSR2-3

Hi there - I'm starting the construction of a RMH, have the brick, fire and clay, wool, etc.  The impetus for the project is a. greater heat reclamation through mass and b.  reduction in wood consumption.   Been doing wood for 40+ plus years, and all things considered have gotten a great deal of satisfaction from gleaning, thinning, and harvesting wood from our own land, 10 plus cords per year through 4 stoves, only one going constantly. The J channel initially drew my attention because of the high burn temp to remove creosote/pollutants/smoke, we've been getting somewhat like results with CDW catalytic stoves.  With the proliferation of the wooly adelgid and resultant hemlock kill off, we're going to have lots of hemlock to burn, I've taken to bandsaw milling the afflicted trees to at least get some useful lumber at least. The question after all this is do the Vander Berg designs equal the j channel in both complete fuel consumption and reduction in fuel volume?

The J tube designs are really good, easy to build and completely reliable but they dont get as hot as a batch box of the same system size (chimney size) Basically a J tube burns the ends of the fuel and batch designs burn the whole length of the fuel, so the batch designs are more powerful beasts!
However the main advantage of a batch box revolves around ‘less time feeding the fire’
An 8” J tube can go 20-40mins on one load a 6” batch can go 60-90mins.

I've measured both J-tubes and batchrockets, namely what is coming out in terms of power, efficiency and unwanted gases. The diverse batchrocket versions literally hundreds of times, of course. Both designs are good in burning with absolutely minimal pollution, that's for sure. So pound for pound, you'll get the same fuel consumption for every unit of heat generated. The heat absorption part, that transfers the heat to the living space and at which pace that is going, is solely depending on how it is built. And last but not least: the chimney temperature plays its own role as well. It's very important that the different parts of each system are carefully tailored to each other.

The batchrocket system is truly scalable as goes for the bell system it's using for heat absorption, most of time. One could just calculate what the measurements are for any arbritrary size. The smallest being 4", largest I've seen 10" and everything in between. The system's development is done with a gas analizer, among other tools, so it is precicely known what it's capable of.

And I second James for his points.

Ok, one of two questions answered, sort of. Does anyone out there run a DSR2-3 with significant reduction in seasonal wood consumption?  Over a steel/cast stove.

Sorry I was typing while PVD was posting.  So I get the consumption to generation part of the equation, my question is reclamation of generated heat through mass results in a reduction in fuel volume over a season because less heat  is going up the chimney, like what is depicted in a number of videos on youtube.  Building the unit to a professional/commercial standard isn't a big deal for me. I want to see the claims made about j channels be made about batch stoves as well. I couldn't find it in print

Either variety of RMH core will burn the wood completely to mineral ash. A batch box may reach higher temperatures and destroy some compounds that a J-tube won't, but I doubt there is much significant difference. A batch box has a calmer fire and may send less fly ash into the air, not sure about that. Certainly a batch box will burn longer on a single loading.

The good news about RMHs is that you can safely burn softwoods like hemlock without generating any creosote to foul the chimney.


Theoretically a J-tube might be able to be a tiny bit more efficient than a batch box, because since J-tubes generate some draft in the core, they can have lower final exhaust temperatures and wring out a bit more heat than a batch box which requires a positively-drafting (thus hotter) chimney to be reliable. I would not consider that above many other variables, though.

Hey Scott;
There are a couple of folks who have a running dsr2-3, perhaps they will have numbers for you.
I can say that I had an 8" J-Tube RMH that I converted to a 6" Batchbox.
Wood consumption remained the same, frequency of loading changed a lot!
Our 8" J-Tube, once hot, required loading every 60 minutes, our 6" Batchbox using the same 8" piped mass system easily burns 2hrs and has coals for another hour.

I just finished installing Peter's newest version of the Batchbox "The Shorty Core" in our home.
This is our first season using it.  With only burning 2 loads a day I expect to use apx 1 cord or less.
Previously with a heavy metal box stove, we burned 3 cords.