possible to build a mass rocket stove in a manufactured home?

I bought a double-wide manufactured home that has a wood-burning fireplace in the center of the living room wall. Would it be possible to rebuild along that wall to have a mass rocket heater or would it get too hot against that wall? Would it be possible to vent up the existing chimney or would it require an entire rebuilding of that wall? Any experience appreciated!

Sarah, perfectly possible. What's supporting that wall? For replacing a chimney, i'd advise a horizontal batch rocket, may be with more bells than mass.

It would only be possible to put it in if you add structure under the home for the added weight.

Or build the mass UNDER the manufactured home, which would mean you would have to retrofit your crawl space into a conditioned space, which really isn't too difficult, just sort of expensive.

Sarah Yao :
- As always, have you been to WWW.rocketstoves.com to download your pdf copy $15.oo, of I. Evans' book 'Rocket Mass Heaters' ?

Assuming that your Mfg'd home sets on cinderblocks on a concrete slab (?) -Someone will have to go in under your structure and cut out all of the material out from under the floor
where you are trying to set the foot print of your R.S.M.Heater ! This will include the vapor barriers and the Insulation! At that point they can start work on re-routing Electrical and Water lines ,
Plus the Ductwork of the existing Furnace/ Heating plant.

All this work is prep for the welding work that will need to be done to brace the Frame that Supports the floor and all the rest of your House, so this work will have to be done by some
one with experience with Mfg'd Home Frames, Electrical, Plumbing, and H.V.A.C. Experience, then comes the Welding / Bracing work ,and replacing every thing back the way it was before, Then you
can start on the changes to The Interior of your home !

Inside you will have to reinforce the floor with 5/8'' or 3/4'' plywood, set bricks/pavers down in a pattern to make channels for air flow under your Thermal Mass, then your
1st base layer followed by a layer of reflective aluminum foil material to reduce heat radiating down through your wooden floor, then you can build your R.S.M. Heater on top of that frame !

Google "Rocket Stove Instructional DVD'' and play the clip from Kickstarter, at 9-13 sec you will see the air channels under the bench, and at 23 sec you will see the exhaust channels
at the top of the benches, this is the gap that you will need to have at the floor and the wall behind the Rocket Stove/Thermal Bench ! I have signed up to this 'Kickstarter' drive to get a copy of
this DVD for a Future build !

Having accomplished all of the above, I would not guarantee that your Rocket Stove would heat all of the farther ends of your trailer !

I am putting this out here not to dissuade you from building a Rocket stove but to make sure you have a few more facts before you outlay much for materials for a project that would
stop a good general contractor !

Be safe, Keep warm, Pyro-magicly yours Allen L.

Sarah Yao : I did not see Dave T.s comment before I (late) posted my Comment,
This would work, If it were a separate boxed, insulated space, same use of reflective aluminum foil to prevent overheating/ outgassing of your vapor barrier, With a booster fan located at this location it might even be possible to use the ductwork of
your home which is ( I believe ) located in the floor, you would need a floor register from the floor in the interior of your home to create a 'cold air return', see qualifying statements above.
Placing the Rocket Stove under your home would create the need to go out doors and entering into the heated crawl space under your home, to tend to your Rocket Stove
Allen L.

Sarah Yao : - sorry this is so very disjointed, -

life is what happens to you while you are making plans for tomorrow !

If you have room under your Mfg'd Home for the rocket stove base and the barrel,
you could consider going to UTube, and Web4deb(s) channel, where you are looking for his '' Rocket Stove - on steroids '' Video, it shows using a wood pellet delivery system that would allow for starting your rocket stove in its own insulated room under your house and then feeding it thru an remote located feed system that could be located in your home, again this would require manufacturing an insulated room under your home, and connections through your houses floor for 1)your feed tube,and 2) a 'cold air return' and 3)connections to the existing H.V.A.C. Ductwork,
If you do not have the "headroom' to allow you to install a Rocket Stove Mass heater under your home without raising the whole thing up in the air it could be located outside/beside your home in a space that could grow into an attached
garage !
This would still require a short run of ductworks to connect under your home to 1) the hot air ductwork in your home, and 2)provide a return 'cold air flow' as with out a way to circulate the heat from your thermal mass it would be impossible to guarantee that you would get any heat to the ends of your Mfg'd home !
This still allows you to consider the 1st option of bracing up the floor from underneath and building a R.S.M.Heater, which most be isolated from the floors and the walls of your home to protect your exposures !. Be safe Keep warm, Pyro magically Allen L.

I built a rocket mass stove in my trailer, still up on wheels. I stripped out the bathroom and put it in there, on the logic that a bathtub full of water and a fat man on the toilet would be as heavy as my small rig. I only have about 3 feet of bench, so its not much weight, and there's a lot of perlite in the cobb to try and keep weight down. I have been having more problems with moisture and steam, after a lot of burning the carpet gets damp in certain areas. But hey, its my first RMH, done without measuring, so I'm pretty happy with it.


Generally, I would say that your fab building is rated to bear a certain amount of load in the floor. You could easily call the company and ask them, then just figure out how much your components weigh. I would also say that you could model yours after Paul Wheaton's portable model, where he makes a coffin out of wood, a minimal RMH inside it, and fills the rest of the void with perlite. My feeling is that a RMH working at low efficiency is still adequate, and that it's going to be a hell of a lot cheaper than triple-insulated stove pipe for a normal wood-burning heat stove.

Word, good luck.

@ Allen

Thanks for the detailed response! This sounds crazy expensive.

@ Connor

Did you base yours off of the Paul's portable model? Did you get plans for yours somewhere or did you come up with it on your own? I would be trying to put my bench along the exterior wall adjacent to my fireplace (I think there's a steel frame there?) and it would only be about 3 ft. Maybe not even enough space left over to sit if I kept it along that wall. I could maybe run it out perpendicular to the exterior wall along the wall between the LR and MBR but it would still have to be very light and, I assume, very small. I was hoping that there would be a (cheap) way to do it myself and only have to pay a contractor to come put the duct through the wall.

I think I might be better off sticking with fast-growing trees and just using a lot of wood each winter.

This is how I did mine, what they describe is similar...

My RMH

Try this link http://www.youtube.com/feed/UCoxXpjp4ROpPf1aW3R8HuGw Jeff built a nice Rocket heater but I think it is called a rocket bell as it has no mass... sorry pretty new to this myself. Also look here https://permies.com/t/20958/stoves/Success-story-RMH-workshop This one is similar but I like the fire brick a lot better then the steel tube.It does need a little bit more work to make it living room acceptable though. Both have flue pipes that you can touch at full burn so the heat is getting taken and the burn is clean. These would be way more efficient then the fireplace, but I have no comparison for heat out put.

Kevin