Rocket mass heater in existing basement?

Hello me again.
We have a little village house in Bulgaria  the basement living area consisting of a kitchen , a wide corridor  and what my husband like to believe  will eventually  become  his " media" room. Now its constructed of very large stones on the external walls and the north wall has , as customary  in  Bulgaria  has no windows, the internal structure is mainly wattle and daub over the stone work,  the floors are tiled. I was wondering if we could make a rocket mass heater along the north wall of the " media" room and make use of the existing  outlet for a wood burner to send out the emissions?
Any thoughts?

Hi Kath, I moved your post to its own thread in a forum where the most appropriate people will see it to give advice.

You may be able to build a good RMH in your basement area, depending on the conditions. What is the chimney like? How tall is the house, and how connected is the upstairs to the basement? What is the floor area you hope to heat?

A chimney that goes up inside the house is likely to draw better, especially if it is tall. If it is fully exposed on the north wall it may be too cold to draw well without wasting a lot of heat to warm the flue. The internal cross section matters too - it should be similar to the size of the RMH you want to build. If the house is tall and drafty, it may compete with the chimney to pull air and reduce the draft, perhaps causing smokeback in the worst conditions. Sealing all air leaks higher in the house would be an essential first step in that case. How cold do your winters typically get, and how steady is it? In continental Eastern Europe I might expect long cold periods which are ideal for RMH operation.

Thank you Glen I'll try and answer some of your questions.
The basement is partially  underground and the chimney runs up the north wall and is above the roof. Like most Bulgarian  village homes there is no internal staircase and people used to move down and live in their basements during the winter months, however as we're  about 40 kilometres  from the black sea the winters tend to be milder than up in the mountains and ski resorts. But it can be very cold in January,  February  and March.
Anyway back to the basement, the chimney serving this room in the basement runs up to the room above which also has an outlet and flue for a wood burner. Both the basement and the room above have separate little doors to ensure that ashes caught in the chimney can be cleaned out. So the chimney serving these two rooms runs inside the house rather than outside.
Both rooms are not large .
Hope this helps
Kath

It sounds like you have a good situation for putting an RMH in your basement. You do know that you can't have both floors actively feeding a single flue and have it work reliably, right? It is one or the other, and if you are VERY careful and conscientious you can have both connected and used alternately. That would be completely against US code, I don't know how strict things are in Bulgaria.

As you say the rooms are fairly small, a 6" RMH would probably serve you fine. Would you be in the same room all the time it is burning, or away some of the time? Depending on the weather and the size/mass of your system, you might only need to run it for an hour or two a day, or perhaps 4-6 hours. Knowing some numerical details would help narrow down the estimate. In upstate New York (42 degrees north), I often run my 8" J-tube for two to four hours a day in cloudy weather averaging around 20F (-6C) to heat 700 square feet (60 m2).

This will work as long as the basement will become an area where people want to congregate. No one wants to go downstairs every twenty minutes to feed the stove, but if someone is sitting on a warm bench watching a movie or working on their computer they can drop some sticks in the heater. Habits aren't likely to change too much without a major incentive. Also I have seen several rockets built where the uninsulated stone floor and walls absorbed all of the heat and wicked it away from the living area. There was too much mass for the heater to warm. In a few instances there wasn't even enough heat left over for the chimney to draft properly.

Thank you for your interest and replies. We intend to make full use of the basement during the winter and in the summer to actually. We dont intend to try and run the RMH from two levels of the house.
We did get details on how to build one from this website and I fully intend to hand this project over to my old man next year. If your interested I'll get him to post photos  when the works are underway, as for me when it comes to "tech" I'm still "banging the rocks together" to quote The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy.
Thanks again.