Matt Todd

B Beeson wrote:A simple but effective remedy would be to reverse the direction of the fan. Positive pressure inside the house will blow air into the RMH and out the chimney.

Thanks but I don't believe that is really how these things work. The "suck fan" effectively makes every open window like a fan as breeze is pulled in, cooling those in front of them.
To reverse the fan and inject air in would only feel cooling if you were standing in front of it. The overall temperature would decrease over time but us inhabitants wouldn't feel it as much without the direct interaction of breeze.

Listen, I love her but she smells a bit.
In the non heating season, we use a whole-house fan whenever it's not too hot to require air conditioning. Essentially the same as an attic fan but just mounted on a window on one end of the house to pull air through other open windows.
The side effect is that it pulls air through the mass heater chimney. It's not as bad as the clothes you wore around the smelly campfire but it's not pleasant either. Especially when it's moist outside. My wife does not appreciate this moist woody smokey smell (and I'm not overly fond of it either.)
I've experimented with putting plastic wrap over the firebox door to make that even more air tight. I have also been able to plug the bottom of the chimney with the access provided by the cleanout door. But I guess because of the bypass, there is still some airflow since that is not a 100% blockage.

Anyone else have this issue? What would you do with this annoyance? I could plug or even bag the top of the chimney and hope like hell I don't forget about that by the time the first fire of autumn is lit!  

thomas rubino wrote:Here are some new photos from this year.
The three females are thriving, and the one male is plugging along.
Unfortunately, my cuttings did not survive the winter.

I hope they do well for you! I gave up last weekend and cut mine out. Started with 1 male, 2 female in 2019. One of the females did not live long. Fast forward to this year and the majority of the male died off. Never in the 7 years of growth did I see a flower, let alone fruit! I can't blame the plants though. They want FULL sun and I did not provide enough for them as the fruit trees grew larger around them. I'll wait a year or so until the suckers stop coming up and replace them with honeyberry and/or some type of ribes.

Congrats! Now watch out. Nobody warned me sufficiently that this stuff can SPREAD. Or so it has here in Missouri. More than I ever thought possible. I have to thin it out in some of my plantings.

thomas rubino wrote:
Do you try to do your own repairs?
Know how to change the timing belt at home yet?

I used to do most repairs. Then I had a bad experience replacing a half axle. New one just WOULD NOT quite fit. Turns out I'd pulled it apart inside the rubber boot. But that took so long to figure out I got a bit jaded and now I pick and choose the suspension repairs I want to fool with!

The new mystery is a popping noise deep down inside whenever there is a momentum shift. Possibly a motor mount. I can't find it, my wife is tired of hearing it, and it's going to the shop soon.

Also can't figure out why the gas gauge is stuck at 3/4. I tested the sending units at the wire harnesses on top of the two sides of the tank and they seem to be working (they change resistance when rocking the car back and forth.) So it might be the cluster itself.  

Welcome to the second engine Subaru club! Guess we have that in common too. Our 2003 Forester is on engine #2. Much cheaper than buying a whole new car these days.

Matthew LeVan wrote:
Nice! Thanks for the quick reply. How about the “frost pocket” problem? I’m in Minnesota where growing season is already short, and was hoping my Hugels could help (not hurt) that!

If you overfill the trenches with wood and cover that with soil, you'd have hugle mounds rather than a depression that would "attract" frost.

Or maybe you're worried about the space between the two rows collecting frost? With open ends I don't see that being an issue.

I don't see how this would be a problem. If you had more slope there might be a problem with washing out, but that yard looks flat enough. I'd fill those suckers up with wood to at least two feet above ground level and cover that with the dirt you've dug out and you'll be good to go. They will sink over time but you'll be left with some great soil in a low mound. I dug my hugles into the ground and they work just fine.  

Jackson Bradley wrote:How does this do in the room the heater is in verses the room on the other side of the window? Does one room have higher temp than the other or does it even out well?

The dining room where it sits gets most of the heat. The approximately 2x4 foot opening into the living room does get some, but we haven’t re-arranged furniture yet to get things fully open to receive heat.

These heaters work best in line-of-sight. So if I’m sitting on the couch in the living room, I can feel those long infrared beams hitting the back of my head/shoulders through the hole.

Time is a factor as well. At first you are only feeling the heat beaming directly from the bricks, but by the next morning the heat has had time to soak into all the surfaces and you feel a more all-around sense of warmth. Since I didn’t finish the build until mid-March, there hasn’t been much chance to burn on consecutive days to really feel what it can do. I’m pretty impressed so far though!

thomas rubino wrote:
In my opinion, bricks look better, but it's all in the eye of the beholder, and in their wallet!
A stone or tile facing would improve the look.

Beige lime wash for now. Just close enough to my wall paint color. Maybe something even more decorative in the future.  
I designed the bell with the concrete block size in mind and only had to cut ONE SINGLE BLOCK (to accommodate the cleanout door.)  
That made for a very quick and sturdy base for me to then fumble with brick laying. Mistakes were made in brick laying but it all came together in the end.

I can't tell yall how my times I went back and looked at previous build posts to visualize how this could all work!