Rocket Floor Heating

Hi!

I’m new here (my first post) and keen to hear opinions about ”rocket floor heating”. We live in real north, above Arctic Circle, where we have tons of snow, -45°C(-50°F) and endless nights during winter. Now we are about to build a small bunker -style place to where we were planning to design rocket floor heating, meaning all one can see is the 55 gallon barrel. Any tips?

Here we have ”streamlining pipe”, flexible 6,5 inch ”double wall” pipe that can tolerate +600°C. Have anyone ever used this sort of thing? Attached it to the manifold(after T-junction)? In a way the concept is similar to ”climate battery” which we have in our greenhouse but obviously the length/magnitude is way smaller and there is small rising angle in this one. We do not want to build the standard rocket mass heater cause there is no room for it and the soil/floor is 90% grey clay, meaning the mass is there already. Sorry about my English

I believe that would be overkill. I don't think the pipes in your floor could get that hot.
Second, How would you clean out the pipe?
Third, You would need to insulate from the ground outside the house down several feet to keep it from exchanging heat with the cold outside ground. Heating the great outdoors is a waste of energy.  

Similar system seems to work in greenhouses: https://permies.com/t/171410/ground-RMH-greenhouse I mean floor doesn’t have to be hot, not freezing would be nice Our bunker is well insulated, google ”turf houses”, +1 meter of snow.

The thing that made us interested about this topic, ”rocket floor heating”, is that it saves space. All you can see is the barrel and fire hole. In a small bunker that is highly welcome.

Perhaps the biggest concern for us is this flexible pipe. As you mentioned, the biggest disadvantage is cleaning. After manifold and T-junction, it is just the pipe.. Let us say we have 4 meters horizontal and 4 meters vertical, all together 8 meters. That is not easy to clean although not impossible either with right tools, but perhaps it is necessarily to take it out every now and then if the J isn’t well designed and doesn’t burn everything.

When it comes to the pros, flexible pipe is flexible, one can make ”S” curves etc. with it to the floor or create shapes/corners that would otherwise be difficult. I’m not aware of anyone who would have used this sort of pipe in RMH so maybe we got to be the first ones to try

Interesting idea.  Seems like a modern take on the ancient Roman "hypocaust".
https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2017/03/heat-storage-hypocausts-air-heating-middle-ages.html

If you decide to move forward with this, please post your results!

Why not Have visited in couple of those places in Baltic but those were quite structures. We are definitely using polished granite slaps in our bunker although the reason is their electric properties (folks had granite batteries in pyramids of Giza before the pharaoh era for example) but why not trying those in this sense as well. So thanks for the tip! We have few high quality granite mines around an hour away so for us it is convenient to test that material

It's a very interesting project. I think it has lots of potential. A non-frozen floor has a huge impact on the comfort level of a building in very cold conditions.

I assume you are not on permafrost? That could cause problems.

I think you want single wall pipe, not double wall. Single wall has direct contact with your thermal mass. Double wall insulates. Packing the clay around the pipe while wet achieves a better thermal connection.

I'm concerned about maintaining a good draft, but the rocket scientists here can speak to that better than I can.

Regarding cleaning, it would be better if you had a few straight pipe runs than a continuous curve. You could install hard pipe elbows at a couple of critical spots, to allow inspection and the use of a flexible cleaning brush. Digging everything up seems like a lot of unneccesary work. Or, you could put a flexible cable (wire rope) in the pipe during installation, allowing you to pull a cleaner through (and another length of cable).

Please keep us up to date on your progress. I have a project like this in mind.

No permafrost. We have max +30°C and 24/7 light in summer and -45°C and 24/7 night in winter. So hostile but not that hostile

The thing with single flex pipes is that they do not have bigger ones in here, only the useless sizes..

Bell structure/hypocaust concept (no flues) would be more optimal for draft, clean up etc. but it needs to be way higher structurally and we do not know what it demands from the fireplace/whole system and flex pipes offer other structural possibilities. But as it is a bunker, the surface area of the floor ain’t too big so hypocaust type of whole floor ”bell” is possible. Insulation ain’t an issue in earthbag turf houses.

If we would have an extra million, it would be hypocaust type of thing made from shungit and granite like the oligarchs have..