How I got here and a few questions.

HI. I've been lurking around here for a while and like the site so I registered.

It is a long story how I found this site but, to keep it short. My daughter and I are trying to better the food we eat. She and my son in-law like animals. And they started with chickens/eggs which lead us to non GMO seeds and while waiting for planting season Maple syrup got brought into the scheme, since we had enough maple trees to provide enough sap for two families. We started down that road. With the maple syrup comes a lot of boiling (evaporating) which ended up here. And after many hours here my brain seems to be going 100MPH in two different directions. I have heated my house for over 30 years mainly with wood. First few years was a wood stove which was a wood hog. I switched to a Sotz double barrel system which was a lot more efficient. I would like to add here (for the people concerned about how long a barrel will last) my main burn barrel is about almost 30 years old and still in good shape. top barrel failed at weld points from mods I did to get more heat from it

I had an extra barrel kit so I built a single barrel with a hole cut in the top so I could slide a 12X20 pan in above the fire which makes a pretty good evaporater. Anybody who has made Maple syrup knows there is a lot of time to do a little experimenting. I have learned a lot more about making a good fire in the past few weeks than in the 30+ years I have been heating my home with wood.

Weather was nice the other day so I fired up the evaporator I built and went out to my Pac rat pile and drug up a bunch of stuff to build a trial rocket heater. Now even though I would like to build something to make my evaporating more efficient I am looking more to replace my currant home heating system with one of these.

OK, so here comes the questions

First, the book I have found links to from this site......I believe is $18 dollars new and a lot more used. Is the older one better?

Second, I have a walk out basement which has a porch from the main floor off to the side of the walk out basement patio which I had made a storage area under when I built the house. I would like to make my fire feed area there and run the horizontal tunnel thru the wall and have the barrel and mass part of the heater in the basement. So the question is how long can you make the horizontal burn tunnel and what are the draw backs with going longer.

Third, which is a second option is to put every thing including the mass under the porch and putting a second set of vent tubing thru the mass to extract the heat from the mass. If I do this can I inclose the barrel part of the heater in the mass Providing I have access for clean-outs?

Forth, I do have a conventional chimney but have read here that sometime basement units don't work (draw) properly. Since exhaust temps are low can I use a horizontal vent system or is the carbon-monoxide going to be a problem?

Sorry if I'm re-asking questions that have already been asked. I have been reading on this site for all of my free time (and time I should be doing something else) the past couple of days and have gotten a lot of answers, but not for these few. so if these have been asked can you point me to the threads

Thanks

Harold

H Shumate wrote:First, the book I have found links to from this site......I believe is $18 dollars new and a lot more used. Is the older one better?

library's the cheapest. I think you'll find the answers you're looking for there.

Second, I have a walk out basement which has a porch from the main floor off to the side of the walk out basement patio which I had made a storage area under when I built the house. I would like to make my fire feed area there and run the horizontal tunnel thru the wall and have the barrel and mass part of the heater in the basement. So the question is how long can you make the horizontal burn tunnel and what are the draw backs with going longer.

not very long. and the main drawback is that it won't work. you can make it long enough to go through a wall, though. you've just got to get the ratio of burn tunnel to heat riser lengths low enough.

Third, which is a second option is to put every thing including the mass under the porch and putting a second set of vent tubing thru the mass to extract the heat from the mass. If I do this can I inclose the barrel part of the heater in the mass Providing I have access for clean-outs?

you want the mass in the space you want to be warm. the advantage of the mass is that it's warm and you can sit on it and it will radiate more uniformly than a point source-like stove. extracting heat from it is sort of counter to the main idea. my understanding is that you can enclose the barrel in the mass, so long as it isn't insulated. shedding heat at that part of the system is important for the heater to function.

I'll leave the rest to more knowledgeable folks.

Was out and about today and locating supplies. When I asked about Vermiculite or Perlite they refered me to the garden center. Is this the same stuff or is the insulation stuff differant?

H Shumate wrote:Was out and about today and locating supplies. When I asked about Vermiculite or Perlite they refered me to the garden center. Is this the same stuff or is the insulation stuff differant?

same stuff. I believe there is perlite sold for construction purposes, and the only difference is the size of the pieces. I think coarser material would work better for you, but the stuff from the garden center would also be just fine.