posted 3 years ago
If your house is reasonably well insulated and sealed, it should be able to coast partway through a fast temperature swing, giving you some time to build up heat.
My feeling would be that a water jacket bell for a 10" batch box would need to be at least 2' diameter by 6' tall inside for enough surface area to absorb heat, plus 3 to 6" for water all around, and the heat blast at the top would be boiling that water all the time the unit is running, necessitating a deep pool on top to absorb the heat without flashing away into escaping steam.
For storage tanks of 500-1000 gallons, they would work much better in the basement than outdoors; they will be losing heat 24/7 in winter no matter how well insulated, and far better to lose heat into the basement than into the wind.