Hello, someone just shared this with me so I'd like to post it here. It is very common in Korea and works in a very similar way to a
RMH.
It looks like they typically have a brick chimney at the end of the line before sending flue gas to the atmosphere. I think the
RMH style of putting the brick chimney *before* the long flue is an excellent improvement to ensure complete combustion of the smoke.
And, the underfloor heating is analogous to the thermal mass bench. If the bench spread to cover the whole floor it would effectively become underfloor heating.
"In Korea almost every house has this kind of floor heating"
http://koreamanipuri.org/index.php?%20option=com_content&view=article&id=119:ondol&catid=48:korean-foods-and-cultures&Itemid=77
The focus is on having both cooking and heating provided by one fire.
http://www.koreabrand.net/en/know/know_view.do?CATE_CD=0005&SEQ=2320
I think this speaks to the cyclic nature of history. Something old has become something new again, to solve the problem of
energy which went away with the utilization of fossil fuels, but has returned with the growing consciousness of peak oil and the end to the fossil fuel era.