Need help with too much liquefaction

My rocket mass heater producing huge amounts of water inside horizontal pipes and on chimney while burning dried wood as liquefaction process.
As a result I have a dripping problem at the joints although I seal them with fire proof silicone.
The first 2,5 meters pipe connects under the bottom of the barrel and has no slope but it has a clean out T pipe in which I open the stopper to film this video

While I open the T cap it doesn't smoke as I expected, but I'm still learning !!!

Between 2 and 3 seconds under the T pipe or at 15 second, you will see the dripping water path to the bottom of the interior of the pipe.
The water path is between the ashes which cover the interior.

The second 3m pipe (at the 27 second) which is behind the first pipe, has a slope on it's way to the vertical chimney, so the curved section (not shown on the video) which connects the these two horizontal pipes is full of water and dripping down there too

The concrete circumference which holds the barrel has water around 5cm wide. This water which is 35cm higher than water on the pipes is probably came from the barrel's wall.
While the heat riser is inside the house, only the feed chamber is outside the house.
This rocker stove is burn for it's first time for 5 hours.

The the main horizontal burn chamber is build with fire cement. The rocket stove support structure is build with bricks, mortar and concrete.
The heat riser in photo is made from a 8 inch wide inox pipe + rockwool and perlite + cement which holds the rockwool insulation in place.
The mass heater isn't build yet.

The primary reason I build this RMH is to dry out this room....
The water smells like smoke and of course this smell will became the sole smell of the house which will turned uninhabited

I'm stuck with this water liquefaction problem.

Don't worry, that's perfectly normal.

If you have bare pipes, or a wet mass, it usualy condenses. Even more if your fuel is wett, or if there's moisture in the air.

The cure, wait for your mass to dry, and insulate your cleanouts.

Satamax Antone wrote:Don't worry, that's perfectly normal.

If you have bare pipes, or a wet mass, it usualy condenses. Even more if your fuel is wett, or if there's moisture in the air.

The cure, wait for your mass to dry, and insulate your cleanouts.

Normal yea maybe, but that water's smoke smell would make the house uninhabited.

Do you see the video?

If I insulate the cleanouts and the pipe joints then where all this condensed waters shall go?

The structure is build a month ago.
The wood is dry 5 years old in the basement which doesn't have that moisture.
The moisture in the air is great because outside it is a something like a forest. 4 floor trees all around and grass at 150m above the sea level and 2km to the sea on a small mountain. The soil is always wet although it rains once every month and we have sunny days almost all this winter. Outside has 22 C while inside has 15 C at day and 10 at night and the double insulated house walls are like sponges from the moisture

I think that the mass would never ever dry enough, (even at the summer!!), because the 4 bags of perlite mixed with cement which act an an insulator to the heat riser are shielded under the barrel.

Shall I bring the plumber tools to add drainage pipes?

So you have practically summer weather outside (22C = 72 F +-), and are just burning to dry the room by warming it. Your description of the environment sounds like the exterior humidity is fairly high, which adds to the condensation issue. With those temperatures, it would probably be tricky to get good draft for a hot fire; how strongly does the fire burn? If you are condensing on the inner surfaces of the barrel, you would seem to have a very feeble fire that is not producing much heat, and the strong woodsmoke smell also indicates an inefficient burn. How much visible smoke comes out of the chimney?

hey buddy, i had posted the same problem and Glenn helped me out.

things that helped me out... make sure all your out side stacks are insulated as far as you can go. if you can only insulate a little then start at the point it exits the house and go as far as you can. 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. that helped me almost 100% and i had it as bad or worse than you.

i would like to ask are your exhaust ducts pointing down, up, or level as they go out to the up stack?

a level stack with low center point will be the worst scenario. make sure inside ducts have mass around them. do not cool the mass or pipe down too much with a water tank or you can have condensation build up. 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 those things helped me and i appreciate all the help those that stopped by and gave me their opinions and suggestions.

Glenn Herbert wrote:So you have practically summer weather outside (22C = 72 F +-), and are just burning to dry the room by warming it. Your description of the environment sounds like the exterior humidity is fairly high, which adds to the condensation issue. With those temperatures, it would probably be tricky to get good draft for a hot fire; how strongly does the fire burn? If you are condensing on the inner surfaces of the barrel, you would seem to have a very feeble fire that is not producing much heat, and the strong woodsmoke smell also indicates an inefficient burn. How much visible smoke comes out of the chimney?

The "summer time" holds from 10 in the morning until 2 at afternoon. The sun was in its lowest point on the horizon so there are too much shadows who overlap the land and the buildings. You have to be in a glade and face the sun on a sunny day to feel like you are at the summer. Here always the exterior humidity is too high and the interior is pretty much the same as you can see in the attach photos. When I try to heat this place either with the oil boiler and the usual water radiators or by any other means like fireplace, RMH even with electric radiators, the walls begin to condensation water. Condensation water start to build up in huge amounts only when I try to heat the room. Condensation occurs all the time when the room is cold but it is not that visible.

The fire was very strong in the beginning and has a good sound, like the best rocket stoves I heard. After some 4 minutes it became slow and it start to smoke on the feed chamber especially when the woods are not inside the horizontal burn chamber which is 70 cm long (= 27.5 inch). Only at the starting point the fire has high draft and only then all the flames are pointing into the horizontal burn chamber.

The inside walls of the horizontal burn chamber on this J system was melamine or plywood 1,5 cm thick around every wall side because that melamine was forming initially the mold.
Now these melamine and plywood were burned and the interior of the horizontal burn chamber is clean, but some cracks is visible on its walls. From that I consider that the expensive black fire cement I use to form a mold (which they tell that it holds temperatures at 1200 C) is inferior to the fire bricks.

Slow night burn

At the time of the fire on video, I was place a pot with water on top of the barrel to see how much time it should take to boil. After 1 hour the water has 60 C and at the end never boils

The barrel has a extra welded thick metal plate as you can in the attachment photo. So, I can't really tell if it is the extra metal plate or inefficient burn but i can't touch the top of the barrel more that a 3 seconds.

I don't see much visible smoke on the chimney except on the 30 minutes start of the fire (which burn the melamine). Most of the smoke is white smoke like water vapor or steam.

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 !

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


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 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 ! ( Generally ) For theGood of the Crafts ! Big AL

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?!

Hi Proteas.

Well, i think you have another problem to solve than heating. Is your building partly underground? Could you drain around your foundations? That would be may be a first step. Then, do a dual flux air extraction. May be this would help drying up the place. Another solution, try to find a Pabst refrigerator fan. They are IP67 usualy. And fit that at the end of the chimney. So, when you're running this, you are sure it won't stall. And thus, you could run it for extended period of time. Which could help drying up the place too. But if you are not continuously there, the two previous solutions would be sound to implement.