incorporating wood stove in Mass Heating system

Greetings all,
this is my stove here in Mongolia, i plan on moving this and replacing it with a Rocket stove. but i wonder if there is a way to incorporate it into a cook area with cob maybe some where else in my design.
Is it possible to encase it some how to make it useful? i was thinking about along one wall to incase it some how, run a flu out, have some kind of countertop, work space. brick oven, combo along a side of the wall in my 'kitchen-like area'

Kelsang Chitta wrote:Greetings all,
this is my stove here in Mongolia, i plan on moving this and replacing it with a Rocket stove. but i wonder if there is a way to incorporate it into a cook area with cob maybe some where else in my design.
Is it possible to encase it some how to make it useful? i was thinking about along one wall to incase it some how, run a flu out, have some kind of countertop, work space. brick oven, combo along a side of the wall in my 'kitchen-like area'

It is possible to encase a woodstove or cookstove, but the trouble is that the metal walls of the stove will expand when heated, causing the encasing masonry to crack.
You could include an air gap (use a cardboard spacer that can burn away), or use flexible insulation such as rock wool if you can get it. Do not use natural wool or other materials that would be likely to smolder and stink while they burn away.

You could also consider encasing only 2 sides and 1 corner of the woodstove, allowing it to expand on the other two sides. In this case you would only need a little flexible gasket or a collar on the stovepipe, to make sure the stovepipe does not open up and leak when the stove expands.

Yours,
Erica W

Here is an image of some cracking around an embedded woodstove:


You can see there is much cracking at the edges and corners, and also some cracking near the reddened area where the stovepipe is buried behind the plaster. This whole structure is earthen masonry around metal pipes, and the plasters were done with profession skill except for the expansion problem.

You can see the whole project here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/eritter
Rocket-Mass-Hybrids

Hope that helps,
yours,
Erica W

yes Erica thanks that does help.
i suppose that's why my wall had cracked around where the stove meets the wall, and the wall had had some serious cracking
also on xmas eve i had a fire in my house the wood stove was old and i think may have rusted out from the bottom or the joints expanded that were not sealed properly, or what ever but the stove was placed on a wood floor not cement and hot coals fell out and burned my floor. luckily i got out in time and the FD put it out in time for only the kitchen to be ruined.
so now i am very up set with that stove! and not interested in incorporating the wood stove in my design,
i am going to focus on using the barrel and making my mass heater the traditional- ist -as - i can get- ish way.. LOL!
and thanks for sharing your pix!

Thanks for letting us know about the fire. That sounds terrifying. Glad you and the house both survived.

Lots of people get excited about putting in a new stove over the existing wood floor (or any floor - carpet and synthetic linoleum are even scarier), and most of us don't have any first-hand experience with the hazards.
Fire is just a very destructive process. A fire hot enough to burn clean is intense. Metal rusts and warps, masonry cracks unless very carefully designed to tolerate the inevitable expansion and contraction. Devices that might be perfectly safe over a primitive earthen floor, or even wool rugs, can be horribly dangerous over wood or waxy plastic flooring.

The standard for US building codes is for masonry heaters, fireplaces, and masonry chimneys to be supported on non-combustible materials from the ground up. The exceptions are UL-listed appliances manufactured and tested for other installation methods, with clearances and instructions specified by the manufacturer prior to the third-party lab test.

We just get so used to woodstoves, kitchen appliances, and other portable devices with all these safeguards built in, that we start to think about installing right over the existing floor as the norm rather than the exception. Few of us see the five-figure research budgets that go into bringing these appliances to market in the US. I don't know how traditional cultures do it, but I suspect there have been many hard lessons along the way. We had a fire in our neighborhood this year that burned over 1000 acres after someone went inside while barbecueing, and coals dropped out and lit off some dry grass, and the fire spread in moments to a propane tank nearby. We had crews from at least three states helping fight that fire, and some folks were evacuated from their homes for more than a week, but from what I heard, luckily, nobody got burned to death.

Glad everyone in your case is OK, and good luck with the new project on a safer footing.

Yours,
Erica W