Inherited a 2400sq ft house in Northern California. We ripped out the forced air heat, replaced the floor with radiant tubes in earth, and were using an outside rocket stove with copper coils in a 55 gallon drum to heat a 300 gallon box of water that then would heat the floors.
Hard to go outside when raining and run the stove, so we decided to retrofit the woodstove. The pictures tell the story.
Originally tried to use the woodstove as is, but the airflow baffle was damaged and we would get a lot of smoke when lighting the unit. Then, I just piled a bunch of fire brick in the burn chamber (Knowing nothing about rocket stove design, since my husband spearheaded the project) trying to create a smaller burn chamber like our J unit had. This worked for a year, but required filling it every 15 minutes and hours of burning. I finally removed the top fire bricks from the chamber (they kept falling on me anyway) and this was fabulous this last burning season. I could fit in larger pieces of wood and more wood per batch. It also seemed like I burned much less wood this year.
The other highlight that made burning easier this year was my husband installed a temperature switch to turn off the water pump when the fire went out. Without the water running through the coils they would burn up, so I used to have to wait to go to bed or out of the house for the fire to burn down.
Thinking about making an earth retreat cabin with a batch rocket stove and am wondering how different they are from this design. (minus the water coils of course)
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Old Stove with wall between kitchen and living room on tiled wood box
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New cinderblock platform
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woodstove in place, lime plaster cinderblocks
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Sheet metal box on back. burn chamber vents to riser inside 55 gallon drum and then into added metal box and out the tubing
Hi Dorena;
Welcome to Permies!
Nice project you have there!
There were no pictures of your riser, do you have any ?
What style riser did you build? Firebrick , five minute riser, Perlite/fireclay?
Any idea what your chimney temperatures are when your at full burn?
For all your Montana Masonry Heater parts (also known as) Rocket Mass heater parts.
Visit me at
dragontechrmh.com Once you go brick you will never go back!
He did a double coil - an inner an outer coil for more heat exchange.
The riser was made out of Lynn Manufacturing Ceramic Fiber Board Insulation 1.5 inches thick. Found on Amazon. He cut the sheets and screwed them together with stainless steel screws. He thinks he made a hexagon.
Barrel has 1.5 inch fiberglass wool insulation all around and at the top.
The only temperature we've measured is at the exhaust coming out of the back entering the flue. With the water flowing through the coils and full burn it leaves at about 280 degrees F, but can spike to 330-350 degrees
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inner and outer coils side by side
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Making the coils
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Close up of coils on the stove, but without the riser in position.
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