RMH as cook stove?

I'm wondering if anyone has experience with doing extensive cooking on a RMH and if this is a feasible plan for someone who does a lot of cooking (usually for 1, but about 99% of meals). I'm in the process of building a 400 sq ft cabin and would love to use a RMH, but having never seen one let alone used one, I wonder if planning to cook on it is workable. Money and space are issues and I would also like to cook with wood.

I've seen videos of rocket stoves turned into cooktops that resemble "regular" stoves, but those videos are usually in Spanish and don't provide detailed instructions. It also looks like they're intended for outdoor use in many cases or use in a more tropical climate where homes are intentionally quite drafty. I'm in WA state, about zone 7b.


A traditional wood stove is also an option I suppose but I don't like the heat loss and dirty burning. Part of my confusion here is my total lack of experience using/cooking on any of these surfaces, with an exception of a regular wood stove, which I have very limited experience cooking with.

Goals:
*cook food regularly
*provide heat for 400 sq feet
*use wood as fuel
*conserve space
*not overly heat space in summer months (I will have an outdoor kitchen setup and a hot plate or something similar for making tea/coffee water in the morning so maybe this isn't an issue.

Any insights/feedback/experiences would be appreciated!

Tessa Lampe: Welcome to Permies.com and a Big Welcome to our Rocket and Wood Stove Heaters Forum Threads ! With over 19,000 Fellow Members, and dozens of forums,
when you come here with a question or just to talk about ideas, you will always find someone who wants to talk about what you want to talk about,and whose Ideas will widely,
some would say wildly differ from your own, and most discussions are civil. We not only talk the Golden rule we enforce it for everyone ! Enjoy yourself!

This is quite a small place, easily heated by a commercial 4'' system or a D.I.Y. 6'' Rocket Mass Heater R.M.H., This is where I recommend that you go to rocketstoves.com to get
your PDF Copy $15.oo, of Ianto Evans Book 'Rocket Mass Heaters',there is STILL no other book with more R.M.H. family information - in any language !

The R.M.H. is an incredible food drier, you can easily do any thing on the drum top that you can do with a slow cooker,or rice cooker, and is perfect for holding food hot especially
soups and stews,Several layers of aluminum foil scrunched up and then wrapped around the outside of a big bowl will make you a form that you can use(shinny side to the inside)
will turn your drum top into an oven,with care you can wrap-up bread dough to proof it on your bench, and then with your bread dough in a pan and a cooling rack under everything
and your D.I.Y. oven on top you can bake bread! Also, You will soon learn to keep a Tea kettle on top of your stove for instant hot water !

A quick physics lesson, two identical barrels on top of two identical R.M.H.s Must give off the same amount of heat energy for the magic of the incredible 'draw' of our R.M.H. to
happen. So, the smaller barrel will have to radiate that heat energy at a higher temp then that of the 55 gallon Barrel, This is why when your 3 yr old wants to get up in your lap
they are such a pleasant snuggle, they are radiating of excess body heat at a higher temperature . Less surface area to mass = higher Temps ! Everything Else being equal, I
would go with the 55 gal barrel you will be able to work closer to it! Hope this helps ! For the Good of the Craft ! As always comments /questions are solicited and welcome Big AL

A late note, go to our sister site, richsoil.com and click on 'Rocket Stoves', the R.M.H.s in these videos are made by pros. or were approved of by pros, generally speaking you will
want to have the Cob Thermal Mass Bench ! A.L.