RMH for heating 2 rooms

Hi, I've been heating my house in the Netherlands with a RMH for about 7 years now. It has an open kitchen, so kitchen and living room are in the same "heating space".

Now we're moving to France. It is an old house with thick 50 cm walls made of rocks.
The large kitchen is next to the living room, however there's also a 50cm wall between them. That's because one of the previous owners built the kitchen against the existing house. And the old backdoor is now the doorway between kitchen and living room.

I want to heat both places with the same RMH.

I was thinking to put the steel drum and inlet in the kitchen. That will heat the kitchen fast, which is nice in the morning for having breakfast.
And maybe create a hole in the wall for the exhaust pipe and put the bench in the living room.

But I'm afraid when it is cold  (0 degrees Celcius) when we have to burn for several hours, that it will be too hot in the kitchen. On my current RMH if have a woodstove fan on top of the barrel, and we can blow the heat either in direction of kitchen space or directing the barrel warmth to the living room.

Does anyone has suggestions, remarks or other solutions?

Thanks in advance

If electricity is available, consider a fan an duct work through the attic or floor…or both.

Also, a wood burning cook stove comes to mind.

You could design a thermosyphon fluid loop that absorbs heat in the bench and radiates it in the other room.

John F Dean wrote:Also, a wood burning cook stove comes to mind.

My feelings exactly - why have a barrel when you can have something like this instead? Especially as it's in a kitchen. Might as well stack functions...



If my house layout was like yours, I'd have the cookstove built in the kitchen against the interior wall, then the bench the other side of the wall in the living room. And make sure the door between the two rooms was open at any time there was a danger of the kitchen getting too hot.

Here's a link to a thread about them - Tiny House Cook Stove and Heater

And a link to the thread about the one we're building - Matt Walker tiny cookstove build in Portugal

Ours isn't finished yet, but here's a preview...

Didn't now about cook stoves. Thanks for the hint !

I'll definitely investigate this.

A first question that comes to my mind is, will this sufficiently heat the the 28m2 kitchen? As the bench will be in the living room.

Hello Pascal,
that is a complicated question to answer, as it depends on so many unknowns.
But in my experience most kitchens with a cooking stove were comfortable, they give off a super nice heat.

First and most important: what is sufficiently for you? 22°C all day and all night, even when it's below freezing outside? Then probably not.
Other factors:
How many outside walls are there? How are they insulated? How many windows? How is the floor insulated? How drafty is it? How cold does it get? How often will you run the stove/oven? How much clothing are you willing to put on in the early morning?
You could try to calculate the heating load and compare that to the output of the stove.

Can you give us a rough sketch and maybe someone that has a similar situation can tell you about their experience?!

Hi Benjamin, this was indeed a difficult question.

But what I meant was how does a rocket stove compares to a barrel type for heating. Specifically for quick radiant heating.

It's ok to have a temperature of 5° Celcius in the morning in winter. Our RMH heats it up to 15° in a reasonable amount of time ( after a couple of hours of burn) And then we keep burning,  to heat the bench.

After reading a bit about these rocket stoves it seems  they will be doing just fine.
Although it looks less permies than having an oil barrel 😂