rocket mass heater in a yurt do they keep the yurt warm at night after the fire is out ?

rocket mass heater in a yurt do they keep the yurt warm at night after the fire is out ? i read in Rocket Mass Heaters: Superefficient Woodstoves YOU Can Build by Ianto Evans that it shouldn't be done in a tent or tipi has it worked for you in your yurt ? thank you

we just did one as an experiment in a tipi, and I've seen at least two yurt heaters on here that the owners were happy with.

The big thing is that it's a lot of work for a portable structure. If you plan to live in the yurt for several years, and you are doing other things like insulating the yurt as well, then it could be worth it.

Use the "search" function (near the top of your screen, under the banner ad) to find other yurt projects, and you might post a request for an update if the owners haven't put up any new pictures since their first winter.

Yours,
Erica W

tim lane wrote:rocket mass heater in a yurt do they keep the yurt warm at night after the fire is out ? i read in Rocket Mass Heaters: Superefficient Woodstoves YOU Can Build by Ianto Evans that it shouldn't be done in a tent or tipi has it worked for you in your yurt ? thank you

if it's a working rocket mass heater, emphasis on 'mass,' then it will remain warm for many hours after the fire goes out.
Whether it keeps the whole structure warm depends on how fast the structure loses heat, and where the heater is within the structure. An RMH roughly centered in the floor of a yurt works great. An RMH outside a yurt, with some kind of half-baked heat transfer like fans blowing warm air into the yurt, probably wouldn't do so well.

There's not much point investing effort and expense in an efficient heater, if for the same investment you could make the structure 10 times better at retaining heat. A small space with good insulation can be heated with a very small heater or even body heat, in many climates; some of our yurt-dwelling friends use comforters on their bed and a pile of rocks on their woodstove.
So if it's a choice between a better passive improvement (insulation, picking a good site for passive solar, etc) vs. an improvement that will burn fuel, I'd go with the passive improvements first in most cases.

Hope that helps,
yours,
Erica W