posted 11 years ago
Duane Camilletti : Yes you can! Though that would certainly be at the maximum for a 6'' system. I do have a few questions about why you would want to?
Starting with getting up to a warm house everyday your 1st task is to decide how you want to portion out your day, usually the decision is whether to have
1 or 2 burns during the day, dividing up the 5 - 8 hours of burn time to cover a 20 -25 hr period.
If there is a mad dash for everyone to get out of the house in the morning, and No one will be home all day, your house will have cooled some by the time
you get home, and start your 1st Fire!, the afternoon/evening fire becomes the single burn of the day, if some one is home during the day every day this
is much simpler to get in some ,most, or all of the days Fuel consumption/storage as heat energy in your Cob Thermal Mass.
I often compare learning to Tend to your Rocket Mass Heater to a Potty training your two year old, 1st you train the parent and then you train the child, The
1st rule is to be there, something that comes naturally to most parents, but something they must learn to be successful ! A 2-yr old off by himself will never
learn to potty train himself, the Adult needs to be in the same room with the child !
It is exactly the same way with a Rocket stove, any attempt to place a Rocket into an out of the way corner, Will result in Constantly missing the signals that
tell you when your RMH needs attention! Just like the Child !
If you bring the RMH into the heart of your home where it can be tended to auto Magically without any Conscious thought as you do other chores or just enjoy
its heat It will be like a Treasured member of the family that you want to spend time with!
Located out of sight and mind, you miss the clues to keep it running smoothly, and Stopping what you were in the middle of, Getting up one more time, to go
tend to 'that wood hungry monster' be comes a Drudges task, and you find excuses to not tend it, as a result it serves you only as well as you serve it!
Wood stoves left untended in remote locations like kids is never a good idea ! Think of your RMH like a well endowed Bank account into which you make
regular deposits of Small Very dry wood and Receive Automatic Disbursements in the form of heat, Warm gentle and relaxing heat, always there to give you a hug!
If your plan provides for you being able to tend to the immediate needs of a co-located RMH -And flow heat thru crawl spaces to warm your floors*, then by all
means comeback here with sketches outlining your plans and your fellow members will help you refine them to extend the comfort zone and the warmth though
-out your house! For the good of the craft ! Big AL !
*for your Rocket mass heater to heat your floors first it has to heat the air within the Crawl Spaces, and then the floors, this means that the interior or exterior
walls of the crawl spaces must be well insulated with No insulation between floor joists, even just carpet will retard heat transfer ! You are heating a lot of non
living space, Tons and tons of mass to eventually receive heat in your living space, it will take some time, days perhaps to charge the whole mass, If you go
away for a week, the whole house will be mostly warm for the first 3 days, and take nearly that long to charge up again when you come home !
Success has a Thousand Fathers , Failure is an Orphan
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