Tent living - 5kW cast iron burner/horizontal cobbed-over flue

Hello!

I'm making a moving to SW France from England to work as an apprentice on a cob/strawbale house build. My girlfriend and I are staying under canvas in a corner of a grassy field at the work site.

The plan is to build a yurt over the summer, ready in time (hopefully) for the Christmas, but until then I want to work out a way to intelligently heat a 6m 12oz canvas 'bell tent'. It will sit on a raised (a foot or so), flattened earth platform.

I had an idea to place a 'cleanburn' Morso Badger 5kW cast iron wood burner in the middle of the tent, and then snake the flue horizontally- cobbing the flue over, perhaps into a bench and/or bed headboard. I'd like to cob over the entire stove, but it's on loan.

The tent has an attached, heavy canvas groundsheet - and I don't want to go slicing and dicing it up as reselling it will help fund the yurt. On top of the groundsheet i'm thinking a plywood form, with insulated bottom layer, covering the entire footprint of the horizontal flue.

Could I capture & trickle release a good amount of escaping heat this way? Can you forsee any problems with this?

Thanks
Matt

The Mörso stove is not built to take a horizontal flue. There will not be enough pressure generated to drive the flue, and the combustion will not remove the tars before they get to the flue so you will get tar condensing.


I would be very of having a fire in a tent, I am a coward.

Thanks for the info Roy. That's a bugger but everything you said makes perfect sense. My dream of caking metres of flue in cob will have to wait!

Do you have any idea if making a little freestanding fireplace for the stove, (covering the back, sides and top) of thick cob, would be detrimental to the cast iron, or interior of the stove, by overheating the metal?

I'm not talking about plastering cob all over the stove, but making a very tight-fitting little cob housing for the stove?

As I said in another thread, I just stacked bricks against mine. That made quite a difference, not so much variation in heat output.

great Roy, again, thanks a lot.