Walker tiny Rocket masonry In really small house?? To hot maybe?

I'm looking at purchasing a small shed. But I want to build it with sustainable design. The shed is 12 by 8 and 8 foot tall. Would  Matt walkers tiny masonry heater be too hot. I love the design of cook stove oven and thermal mass. But would it cook me out of my house??

Interesting question! I guess if it's only for heating, you'd quickly figure out how much wood to burn and how often. If it's for cooking too, you probably need more heat and that could make the space pretty toasty. Of course you can open a door and a window, but that gets old. My 2c.

My partner and I have a modified version of the Walker tiny masonry heater. Our house is 22 by 24, so bigger than what you're talking about, but still pretty small. We did cook ourselves out of the house a couple times, but I think it's fairly easy to get the hang of proper timing and fuel use to avoid that. Using small sticks to get quick bursts of heat to cook with helped. I also think if we had a range hood, the overheating problem would be almost non-existent. The Walker stove is amazing, so I feel it's well worth learning how to work with and sorting out some ventilation, if needed.

Would you be using the stove for cooking during the warm times? I'd think that would be the major issue as far as overheating your house. Not sure what climate you're in. We have yet to figure out how to use our stove for cooking in the summer without it being miserable in the house. So we have an outdoor kitchen for that time of year, which works well enough.

I live in the upper Midwest so i would be using the stove from September to April depending on the year. The rest of the year I plan on having an outdoor cannery/kitchen. Did you put an oven on your stove[Heather Sharpe]?

Hank Waltner wrote:I live in the upper Midwest so i would be using the stove from September to April depending on the year. The rest of the year I plan on having an outdoor cannery/kitchen. Did you put an oven on your stove[Heather Sharpe]?

Good plan. Yes, the stove has an oven too. It's not the same as the one in the tiny stove design. It was actually a modification Matt Walker suggested that might make it possible to get a hotter oven temp. It's a little tricky to describe, it lead to the footprint being about a foot wider than the tiny design. Didn't get around to using it for baking last year, as the door was made last minute and wasn't very practical to open. Still need to fix that. So alas, I can't say how using the oven would affect the likelihood of overheating. I did look at the oven temperature a few times, trying to get an idea how much fuel it would take to maintain an oven temp above 350 F. It seemed like during normal use just for heating it was running between 300 and 350. Some of the hotter fires got it closer to 425. If I had been trying to bake in the oven at 400-450 for extended periods, the house would probably have overheated quite badly without ventilation. But I suspect if you were mostly just wanting to use an oven in the range of 300-350 degrees F, I think you'd probably be fine. If I recall, I think the oven on the tiny stove design only goes to that range anyways. Again, take this with a grain of salt, since I've only had one winter with this stove and haven't played with the oven really.

We did cook most of our meals on the stove top everyday and I don't think that was ever the source of overheating the house. Should've been more clear about that in my first post when I said we "cooked" ourselves out. The times that happened, it was really cold and we just got overzealous loading the firebox. Hope this helps! Best of luck!