What's the best option for my climate?

So at one point I was having a home designed by an architect and I had decided I wanted a masonry heater. I thought it combined the best of both worlds, an open fire or at least glass door and a lot of stored heat. Well we had an energy consultant come in and said he's never seen anyone south of Michigan install those. So I thought it must be too much for our winters in Missouri.

Now I am not going with that original architect design and am getting a cabin put up on my land and I want to revisit this fireplace/wood burning stove topic. I have pondered installing an RMH but my thoughts are if a masonry fireplace is too much for my climate wouldn't a RMH also be? And on further thought are there any techniques to retain more heat from a wood burning stove? I see a post on here about creating a mass behind it but is there anything that can be done with the chimney of it, as far as routing it back down or through mass of some type? Maybe this is a more moderate approach to storing heat? Personally I'm just not sure I can go with a RMH, I love watching a fire dance. Any ideas are welcome. I do plan to have central heat with a heat pump as well so the fireplace doesn't need to heat the whole home, which will be just shy of 1500 sq/ft in case that helps determine my needs. Wood isn't an issue, I can obtain plenty from my land.

Hi Mike. Excellent questions!

Help us out -- give us some data on your climate, hot and cold and humidity, as a starting point.

Mike Bettis wrote:Now I am not going with that original architect design and am getting a cabin put up on my land and I want to revisit this fireplace/wood burning stove topic. I have pondered installing an RMH but my thoughts are if a masonry fireplace is too much for my climate wouldn't a RMH also be? And on further thought are there any techniques to retain more heat from a wood burning stove? I see a post on here about creating a mass behind it but is there anything that can be done with the chimney of it, as far as routing it back down or through mass of some type? Maybe this is a more moderate approach to storing heat? Personally I'm just not sure I can go with a RMH, I love watching a fire dance.

I love to watch the fire dance too, which is why I love wood stoves (and why I don't need television!). I think if you're designing from the ground up, maybe you can have the best of both worlds. The stove could exhaust into a labyrinth masonry chimney made of dense brick to capture more heat (or bypass it if you just want a quick little stove fire). Since you have several months where a bit of extra heat would be welcome, this flexible arrangement might suit you.

I think there are designs of RMH that have a flame viewing window as well. Will it overheat your space? That's hard to answer, so I'll leave that to the RMH wizards here. I imagine the length and frequency of the burn is how heat output is controlled.

A batch box RMH can easily have a glass door for fire enjoyment. The only way a masonry heater would not be suitable for a climate with winters that get below freezing would be if the daytimes generally get up to shirtsleeve weather, i.e. very large daily temperature swings most days. Even then, a mass sized appropriately could be fired in the afternoon or evening, keep the house warm overnight, and taper off on heat delivery by the next morning.

The advice you got may reflect the idea that a masonry heater is expensive and only justified in extreme climates.

Routing a wood stove exhaust through mass will necessarily cool it and cause serious creosote condensation, so I would definitely not advise that.

Good thoughts above!

Glenn Herbert wrote:Routing a wood stove exhaust through mass will necessarily cool it and cause serious creosote condensation, so I would definitely not advise that.

I imagine there are a lot of variables packed into that, such as the type of stove, how it's run, and how the whole system is maintained.

Personally I think there is room for the hybrid approach, but yeah I agree there are potential pitfalls to watch out for.

Don't discount the mass in your house already. Drywall, cement slabs, ceramics all contribute mass and help even out the heating curve. I personally think an efficient woodstove is the most responsive solution for moderate heating needs but there is a huge pool of RMH knowledge on site who can steer you that way.

It does depend on other variables in your situation. If you want a very hot iron or soapstone surface warming your house or really like the look of that, great, as long as you have a superefficient one that is able to run low overnight without losing efficiency. If there is no good way to support the mass of a modest RMH, that is a consideration.

If you want a bench or seat you can warm yourself on, that would be a point for an RMH. Likewise if you want to have no fire while you are out of the house or asleep. The best new woodstoves may eliminate creosote; a properly built RMH will definitely do that.

I like wood stoves, so I'm totally biased (can you tell?).

But the more I think about thermal mass and observe seasonal heating/cooling in my buildings, the more attractive a mass heater becomes.

A Batch rocket mass heater would be a wonderful fit. It will give you a thermal mass just like a regular RMH and because it a batch version you get the glass lid with a view of the fire.

Mike Bettis wrote:Is there any effectiveness at having a longer run of the stove pipe while on the interior?  Like along the roof pitch for example?  Or is this not effective in anyway?

Since you are at the design phase choose to build efficiency into the house over and above the bare minimum and any of the mentioned options can do the job. In my climate here that meant a smaller then average footprint, triple pane windows, R72 in the attic and R28 in the ICF walls. We designed our house to respond to where I think utility prices will be a generation from now. The cost difference is negligible while you are building and expensive to think of later. I find too many people worry about how to heat their place without giving enough thought to minimizing the amount of heat they need. To get off my soap box for a modern efficient woodstove extra runs of chimney are not worth it as it adds bends which collect soot and slow down the draft. Usually you are better to add air movement near the stove to refresh the bubble of cooler air around it. All too often Stoves form a bubble of hot insulating air around them which lowers efficiency. Blown hot air towards existing mass like slabs, drywall, ceramics,  can give you the same effect as mass near the stove and be evenly distributed. Different rules for RMHs' of course ill let another comment there.
Cheers, David

Mike Bettis wrote:Is there any effectiveness at having a longer run of the stove pipe while on the interior?  Like along the roof pitch for example?  Or is this not effective in anyway?

I agree with David.

Historically, a long interior pipe run was often used with antique coal/wood stoves. You will often see this reproduced in museum displays. These were positive-pressure stoves and combustion inside the stove was incomplete. The long pipe radiated heat inside the building, but also cooled the flue gases. Regular maintenance was required to clean out the creosote deposits and avoid a chimney fire.

A modern, efficient wood stove is engineered quite differently. The goal is to re-oxygenate and recirculate combustion gases so they are burned within the body of the stove itself. The chimney (especially the insulated exterior part) is in fact a critical part of the overall system, creating enough of a vacuum to maintain draft and yet allowing additional residence time for the gases to be consumed in the combustion chamber. A horizontal or convoluted pipe run could actually decrease efficiency and cause creosote problems.

It looks like you are getting a lot of good technical advice.

The only thing I can add is that I'm from western Oregon, zone 8b.  Winters are long and dark, cool and damp. Sometimes cold, but many years not below 20F. The thing with western Oregon winters is that there is very little solar gain due to the fog and cloud cover.  This may be different where you are.

I've been in two homes that had Tulikivi soapstone masonry wood stoves. The different owners each loved them.  They were fantastic to be around.

Placement is definitely important, of course, but the gentle heat from them did work better with fans for airflow than my beast of a Jotul stove. (The cast iron Jotul gets very hot, and you have to really work to move that heat. Even with fans, it would easily be 20F hotter near the stove, and cool-to-cold in rooms away from the stove.)

My friends' homes that had those Tulikivi stoves were vastly more comfortable.

So there's my experience, for what it's worth! I think RMHs could have potential in your region.

I'm in the desert SW now and still want an RMH. :-) But we are planning for it to go outside. We can heat with passive solar (and an effective home design) here, there is so much solar gain year round.

Check out the videos of a product named Reco-Heat.It takes the a small amount of heat from the internal stack pipe with no change to tar build up.Your stove will produce more heat over a longer period of time using less wood.