Rocket heater in an existing fireplace?

Hello thar. I've been looking into stove designs to replace my existing (broken) wood stove. While I've been all over youtube looking for different designs I certainly don't yet know enough to tackle this, and I was directed here for potential feedback. Here is my situation:

We have an existing wood stove and fire-bricked corner of the living room, with a metal chimney straight up and out the roof. The wood stove is basically toast - I'm unclear on what kind of door it had, but it's gone, and given the old wood shake roof I'm somewhat amazed the house is still standing after decades of using the thing for heat.

What I'm looking for is something I can put together on the relatively cheap side (ideally for about what the old stove can sell for at most), and which will not throw sparks far enough to escape the other end.

From what I gather, an ideal rocket mass heater will not leave hot enough exhaust for a traditional straight-up chimney to work, so I'm hoping it's possible to find a balance where a decent amount of heat is retained in the house and no live sparks are escaping, while still keeping the exhaust warm enough to rise out and not smoke the house out. Punching a hole in the wall isn't on the table, unfortunately. On the plus side, we have sufficient wood left over from before the death of the old stove to handle this winter easily, even with a less than perfectly efficient stove.

I'm imagining something not unlike this illustration: (lifted from http://www.richsoil.com/rocket-stove-mass-heater.jsp)



With the rightmost end terminating in a 90 degree bend feeding up into the chimney. I could conceivably build the whole thing in a box of some kind, with the metal stove structure bedded in dirt for later teardown and removal. This is all spitballing, of course, so any input would be appreciated.

Frank Yu : Location, Location, Location ! look at your name space and L@@K at mine, without knowing your general location and climate Zone Number
(affected greatly by high altitudes ) It is hard to give you an answer, goto > the permies toolbox at the right hand top of the page and select the button
marked "my profile' click on it> and from the next page follow the prompts to fill in the missing information !

First some good news, you have got the story of Rocket Mass Heaters RMHs, and how they work with a good internal chimney exactly backward, they work
very well with inside vertical chimneys

Richsoil.com is a sister site to Permies.com. The Rocket Mass Heater RMH, works at such high temperatures that a very clean very efficient burn occurs during
all of the burn cycle, what we have to do after we have burned the wood so efficiently is store it within a Cob Thermal Mass Bench, that part of the sketch
marked- buts to be warmed go here. There are more than a few adaptations related to safety, but generally one firing of 5-8 hrs will heat your house 20-25
hrs! again location, local climate, and house lay out !

If you think you are serious about a RMH as a D.I.Y. Project please go to rocketstoves.comto Download a PDF Copy of 'Rocket Mass Heaters' $15
This is 'The Book' used by most of the 1000,000 rmh builds made world wide, and 95% of all the First Builds (that worked) were made following 'The Book'

Read 'the Book' and come back here with any questions, if there is a Rocket, any kind of Rocket in your future,we will help you find it !

Assuming the old wood stove was in a central location ether a sketch of your house lay out and or pictures would help us help you ! BIG AL

I'm in southern Oregon at roughly 1600 feet. I've attached a crude paint sketch of the ground floor of the house. There's also a single-room second floor directly above, and the same size as, the left-side bedroom. The fireplace and chimney are marked. No photos - I am presently snowed in elsewhere which is why I had oodles of spare time to consider this project. :b

Franklin, there's plenty of options.

Myself i will tend to say to say batch rocket and bell.

But there's already a discution about retrofiting hearth and chimneys with rockets. You should check it.

Is there? I didn't see it on my first graze through.

Franklin Yu wrote:Is there? I didn't see it on my first graze through.

https://www.google.fr/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4SAVJ_enFR550FR551&q=rocket+fireplace+site:www.permies.com

Going down that first page, those threads seem concerned with in-wall hearth type arrangements. Maybe fireplace was the wrong word - this is a freestanding wood stove with a straight pipe up through the ceiling and roof.

http://batchrocket.hostoi.com/html/foto.html

http://technologieforum.forumatic.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=27

Franlklin Yu : The first thing we need to do is determine if you are prepared to take something like this as a D.I.Y. project, there is a middle ground, the good
people at dragonburners.com do have a range of Castle build models from the 4'' to the 6'' and 8'' which are good fits for you depending on the number
of sq. feet in your house and house construction !

That is why I was recommending 'the Rocket Mass Heaters book' as a Downloadable PDF Copy from rocketstoves.com, to help you determine if
you were comfortable with doing almost all of the work yourself !

You can always comeback here 24 /7 and leave a message or question for consideration a hopefully good and timely answers ! BIG AL

late note the sketch helps, the length and width within 10% would be fine or we can guesstimate off of the sq. ft. A.L.

I'm quite comfortable DIYing things - half the point of this is wanting to build something and finding a reason :p. Haven't the first clue as to the square footage, I'm afraid.

Satamax, I don't read whatever language those last two links are in, sorry.

Anything commercial is out, I just can't afford it. If I had the kind of money to be throwing around like that I'd be building my own place :b

These links are certainly giving me an idea of what I'm looking for!

Franklin, you don't need to understand the language, pics are good enough for the most part. But it's in Dutch, and exept a few words, i understant zilch!

If you want to know more about the batch rocket.

http://donkey32.proboards.com/thread/511/adventures-horizontal-feed

If you can use sketchup, check this, it's one of my latest drawings.

Prety much all dry stacked, held with steel wire etc. Box does the air tightening.

http://donkey32.proboards.com/attachment/download/743 right click, save as.

Says I need an account to view that. Ah well.

However, this thread https://permies.com/t/22485/wood-burning-stoves/mini-rocket-mass-heater has a design that looks plausible for this location. At least it's built in roughly the same amount of space.

franklin Yu Chris Burge is a member,give him a P,M. and explain your situation, basically chris' system is massless ask him how he would do it again,
get his opinion on 'Bells ! BIG AL

Franklin Yu wrote:Says I need an account to view that. Ah well.

However, this thread https://permies.com/t/22485/wood-burning-stoves/mini-rocket-mass-heater has a design that looks plausible for this location. At least it's built in roughly the same amount of space.

Sorry my dear Franklin. I didn't think of this.

Ooh. Dissecting that has been most informative.

What is the purpose of the little air (?) tube above the feeding magazine? Is that more effective than having the air flowing in under the wood?

So the idea I'm toying with right now is to build the whole thing in an old burn barrel. Layer of high thermal mass filler, then set the j-tube down on top of that and out the side, then more filler to cover the magazine, then fit a larger tube around the stack and fill the void between with insulation, with an exit hole to the chimney just above the top of the filler. Then I can put the lid on and cover it with bricks or something to retain as much heat as possible, or maybe even put a couple layers of stacked bricks under it first as well. Have I got anything wrong? Crude and not-to-scale diagram is attached.

Additionally RE filler: what should I use? Ideally something I can pour in dry so the thing can be disassembled later. Is the insulation around the stack the same stuff, or different? I was half thinking to just use local dirt but if a bag of vermiculite or whatever is ten bucks and works better I can go that way as well.

Nobody?

Franklin Yu : You might want to look at the Aprovecho Institutional Barrel stove at Aprovecho Research Center, but forget about their horizontal or any angled
Feed Tube, They both need to be watched very closely to continue to feed finely split wood into the fire! by hand ! A lot ! your model with the feed at an angle
will have a tendency to end up with the Burn Tunnel loaded down with coals and embers and become self-constipating Hope this helps ! BIG AL !