Another Type of Mass Heater?!?

While we all love Rocket Mass Heaters, I've stumbled across another type of mass heater that I've not seen here before.  A Swedish Tile Stove or Kakelugn, designed in the 1700s to address a wood shortage.  I saw no references to it here, so I figured I'd start a topic to see if anyone has any experience with them.

It's entirely vertical, but shifts the exhaust smoke back and forth in baffles to increase the time it spent in the mass.  Exhaust temperatures were apparently 200-300 degrees F (about 100-150 C).  

A Youtube Introduction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHEmeydLTls&t=61s

A few blog posts about them:
https://asimn.org/turnblad-mansion-collections/what-is-a-kakelugn/
https://www.style-files.com/2016/03/11/the-story-behind-the-traditional-swedish-tile-stove/
https://www.houseandgarden.co.uk/article/swedish-tiled-stoves

I'm seriously considering a trip to Minneapolis to check out the American Swedish Institute's collection of eleven kakelugn.

Has anyone had any experience with a Swedish Tile Stove?

Cheers,
Dave

There's a thread by Peter van den Berg about a prefab mass heater with a shorty core which is essentially a Kakelugn (he even mentions the similarity in function). I imagine not many people talk about them on Permies because they're fairly expensive to buy (albeit beautiful), and not many people have experience building them... Perhaps we need to work on attracting more Swedish members to Permies!

Would be interested to see the ones they have in Minneapolis!

Yeah, they would be expensive to buy, but I'm wondering if there is anything to be learned from them.  It sounds like Peter van den Berg knew about them with that shorty core.  Thanks!  It never came up when I searched for 'kakelugn' or 'swedish tile stove'.

I still want to go see the ones in Minneapolis...I wonder if they'll let me root around inside of one. :D

Hey Dave,
what is it that you're trying to learn?
There's a lot of different "masonry" style heating systems in the world. The goal always being to extract most of the heat from the exhaust gases.
To me the RMH is just the modern, more low tech take on that. The key being a complete combustion and a later heat extraction.
A lot of contraptions and inventions I see don't have that in mind and extract heat from incomplete combustion, which leads to creosote and potential disaster.

You might find this thread to be of interest - "Finnish Fireplaces" book by Heikki Hyytainen and Albie Barden - available for download

There are so many thermal mass heaters that were tradition to a lot of different countries.  Each had a name in that countries language all meaning the same very similar looking stoves.

Maybe some immigrants from those countries brought that design to the USA and maybe some can be seen somewhere.

Benjamin Dinkel wrote:Hey Dave,
what is it that you're trying to learn?
There's a lot of different "masonry" style heating systems in the world. The goal always being to extract most of the heat from the exhaust gases.
To me the RMH is just the modern, more low tech take on that. The key being a complete combustion and a later heat extraction.
A lot of contraptions and inventions I see don't have that in mind and extract heat from incomplete combustion, which leads to creosote and potential disaster.

In many ways it's exploratory.  Not knowing them, I'm wondering if there is anything novel (to me) that they're doing.  A RMH is freaky efficient, but I'm always curious about angles for improvements.

My other thought is one of adoption.  If these models have some level of adoption and acceptance, is there something to be learned there.  In this case, my guess is around cultural heritage and beauty, but it is still another angle to consider.

Dave,
Read the excellent book on Finnish heater design from the 80's.
The idea of wood efficiency was well studied/tested by the Finns early in the last century.
Peter's design is a reuse of the Finnish contraflow designs from before and after the Second World War, in a shippable format like the Finnish steel stoves mentioned, with an upgraded combustion box/process. The Swedish design has a segmented flowpath much different than Peter's well engineered offering.
Any changes to the RMH are a reversal of the idea of simplicity, low cost, material reuse, and ease of construction.
The way I read all of this.

Lars Valk , has a web site and a book on those types of stove , and theres many drawings on the internet on the inner layout of these ---enough to follow and build one  , Solid Rock Masonry site has done a swedish tile stove restoration build for a clients imported original .

sorry thats Lars Falk ---not Valk----and 32 years with swedish stoves