Rocket stove mass heater

I would like to build a rocket stove mass heater with the bench but not using the steel barrel in hopes it would be approved by the city building department, possibly using fire brick or flue liner in place or ? in place of the barrel. I really like the 8" rocket stove mass heater plans i bought but the building department laughed at me. It is probably already covered and I did not find it. Thank-you, jay

Jay, look into bells. And may be batch rocket. As this might be more familiar to them.

Jay: Try calling it a masonry heater ,they might be more familiar with that term.

The definition of a masonry heater includes the stipulation that the skin temperature of the unit can't exceed 250°. If you are including a bare steel drum in your heater, it won't be able to meet this definition because the steel definitely gets hotter than that.