portable RMH?

Hey folks,
I rent the farm Im on at the moment. I have a shop with an old barrel stove in it. The exhaust is rusted out and needing replaced. I will need to purchase firebricks to line in to extend the life of the barrel. I posted a question about it on the wood burning stove thread, and it was pointed out to me that I may like a RMH more. The question is if I can build a RMH in a kind of crate. Thermal mass being sand with a wood top. The reason is that I dont want to invest a lot of time in building one of these, just to have to destroy it if we wind up moving. We are planning to buy the place, but if that falls through I want a contingency plan.

Thanks in advance for any advice. Im also looking for guidance on a design.

Kind Regards.
James

http://donkey32.proboards.com/thread/849/green-machine-inch-tube-help

http://donkey32.proboards.com/thread/951/shop-rocket-heater

James Barr : We are asking all new members to goto> the permies Toolbox and clickon> My Profile which will take you to where you can enter your general location and your
local climate number if you know it !

Max is a Senior Statesman here and he wants to make sure that everyone knows that in many ways the Art and Science of Rocket Mass Heaters RMHs,has grown well past its
humble beginnings, and their are other types of Rockets to include horizontally-fed Batch-loaded rockets whose efficiencies rival the best performances of our simple J-Bend
vertical fed Rockets.

One day not to long ago Max was a newly starting rocketeer just like you and I, but for him the path is so well known and so well lit that he is eager for every one to race
forward, while a few of us who remember how hard it was to ''Think like fire and Flow like a Gas'' offer caution and the need to Understand a few of the fundamentals before we
soar with the eagles with men like our 'Max' When I make my next build it will be with many of the adaptations we have learned from men like max, and if I run into any problems
- then Max will be the First person I Turn to ! Thank you Max - - Big AL

hey, just having a hard time finding out what gauge pipe to use for the exhaust?

James Barr : Location location location ! If you are above say 40* north latitude, I would do my planned build with an inside chimney, built so that it would not be a liability for the
next man who wants to hook a wood stove up to it ! This will assure that it will draft well and be easy to light! Any stove pipe used in the Rocket Burner part or used inside the
thermal mass bench should be considered as a sacrificial form that will fail, If it is encased in 3''-4'' of Cob, the rest can be a wooden box stuffed with a pea sized gravel and we will
not have to worry about any failure of the stovepipe. I get the lightest cold air return grade I can scrounge, which is lighter yet than the lightest I can buy, with the government
protecting us from ourselves ! Hope this helps- Big AL !

I say if you want portable use water barrels as the mass. A basic rocket heater with the barrel exhaust running under some barrels (maybe 4 or 6?) laid on their side is a version I've seen that looks like it should perform fairly well. Oops That might only work in the barn. a bit unsightly for in the house

hey folks,
its finally summer here in alberta canada and cob making materials are emerging from the snow! I plan to tackle this tast this year. I have been doing more research on this topic. I think I will just go for a traditional heater, not portable. I am wondering tho, fire brick is pretty expensive here, somewhere in the neighbourhood of 8$ a brick. Can I just use Chimney pipe encased in fire cob instead? I have access to old chimney all the time, since I am a plumber. This would make the whole project much cheaper for me to build. Opinions?
Kind Regards,
James

Or maybe even just build a form from wood and skip the pipe. Making flue entirely from cob?