beautiful rocket mass heaters

Figured we needed to start a thread dedicated entirely to pictures of beautiful rocket mass heaters. Feel free to share any beautiful ones you find!


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A really pretty masonry heater which from my understanding is very similar to a rocket mass heater so I just had to add it.

LehmundFeuer

Again, feel free to post more pictures of beautiful rocket mass heaters to this thread!

Cassie L. : Just so you know, Ernie W. Lusts after the 55 gallon Barrel in your 3rd picture correction 4th picture !

Ha, what exactly do you mean by that Al?

Cassie L. : I mean it would be a very dirty trick to call him up and tell him you were shipping him one if it were not absolutely true,

Kind of a Bucket-list thing to Make another RMH using that barrel, 70 years old if it is a Day !

While I am back here to answer your question. The photo on the cover of the 2nd Edition of Rocket Mass Heaters needs to be there

For the Good of the Crafts ! Big AL

I'm sorry to say, but this one looks like toilets

http://www.inspirationgreen.com/assets/images/Blog-Building/Rocket%20Heater/juured.ee.jpg

But i love this bench.

allen lumley wrote:Cassie L. : Just so you know, Ernie W. Lusts after the 55 gallon Barrel in your 3rd picture correction 4th picture !

Ernie says it is a nice barrel, and someone has polished it up pretty, but lust would not exactly be the word.
He favors them covered in canola oil and basking in the heat.

-Erica

Satamax Antone wrote:I'm sorry to say, but this one looks like toilets

http://www.inspirationgreen.com/assets/images/Blog-Building/Rocket%20Heater/juured.ee.jpg

...

I can't follow that link, but here's an article which has a lot more images (and presumably, the above accused as well!)
http://www.inspirationgreen.com/rocket-mass-heaters.html

Erica : Say hello to ''the elderly naval man'' for me, and tell him he has Mellowed ! Glad that he is getting around much better ! A & M

Here are some RMH photos photographer Adi Segal sent us. Her website is here and her facebook page is here!

do all rocket mass heaters have to be covered in cob? (I'm not being a smart ass I just want to know what other materials would also work in case cob wasn't handy).

Betty Lamb wrote:do all rocket mass heaters have to be covered in cob? (I'm not being a smart ass I just want to know what other materials would also work in case cob wasn't handy).

Cob is not mandatory, but works well on multiple levels. Good density for holding heat, makes for a good seal/barrier around the duct work to assure you don't get gasses venting into living space. Paul Wheaton has experimented with a gravel mass with a portable RMH. I built one last year where I used cob to seal joints and make the burn chamber and feed tube, then buried the duct work in sand, because sand I have in abundance, but clay I have to buy.

Betty Lamb wrote:do all rocket mass heaters have to be covered in cob? (I'm not being a smart ass I just want to know what other materials would also work in case cob wasn't handy).

That depends on one's vision of the RMH. From a technical view, no. The mass could be other things besides cob. There are some that are made of all bricks (either high heat or common clay) and no metal parts or cob at all. Some people however, would feel a line has been crossed and the heater is now a masonry heater even though it uses the same principles in it's operation. Historically, The RMH has been a masonry heater that is made from found objects rather than bought materials so that one might have a very good masonry heater at a hundredth of the price of even an entry level masonry heater made of brick by a mason (about 10K CAD the last I heard). Personally, I would consider this a RMH:

Most would call it a contraflow masonry heater, but the riser is much smaller (and squarer) than the normal contraflow. Yes that is a high mass bench off to the left. Here is the build process:

Building the gymse

It shows the riser size and also the designer experimenting with running the flue down hill to exhaust.

That is probably on the very outside tip of what might be considered a RMH, there are many more examples of RMH made from brick that are more traditional in shape and operation.

From the masonry heater side of things (just to muddy the water), Alex Chernov designed a masonry heater that he felt could be built for a similar price to the original RMH and work just as well or better (every designer feels their design is better after all). He calls it the Russian Rocket. It uses the same number of fire bricks the RMH does, and then common bricks. (all of which can be scrounged for free if one is in the right place at the right time... I have a pile of fire brick I got free from a demo) In this article he uses masonry heater mortar, but he suggests a clay/sand mortar made much the same as cob could be used too.

Here is one built of all on site materials. Hand made adobe bricks and cob.
Here is another built inside a building.

As you can see, the field of high mass heaters is very broad and the RMH is just one corner of it. What seems to be happening as work is done to make the RMH a viable option for a home owner who requires a permit, is that the cost of the RMH starts to approach that of the masonry heater. Where they can be used at little expense (any high mass heater) seems to be where building codes are not a part of the equation.

In the end, the RMH needs to be built of something that can take the heat and provide a large mass, all while being safe(I would insert healthy in here too) to use in a dwelling.

Betty Lamb wrote:do all rocket mass heaters have to be covered in cob? (I'm not being a smart ass I just want to know what other materials would also work in case cob wasn't handy).

Absolutely not, but you can't have a RMH without some mass. So rock, gravel, sand, clay, brick, earth, water will all work to a degree, even wood with insulation from the initial heat. Cob isn't suggested for fun, it's just a proven mass, it might be better or even worse than other forms of mass.

Rick Howd wrote:

Betty Lamb wrote:do all rocket mass heaters have to be covered in cob? (I'm not being a smart ass I just want to know what other materials would also work in case cob wasn't handy).

Absolutely not, but you can't have a RMH without some mass. So rock, gravel, sand, clay, brick, earth, water will all work to a degree, even wood with insulation from the initial heat. Cob isn't suggested for fun, it's just a proven mass, it might be better or even worse than other forms of mass.

Notice the lack of the word "concrete". Concrete, like wood, could only be used once the flue gas cools below 600C other wise it crumbles. There is refractory concrete out there which would be ok... but most of us don't like concrete anyway

As you might (or not) guess, the use of portland cement in the mortar is also a bad idea. To add to this issue, even using concrete/portland cement in cooler parts of the design can pose problems as it doesn't seem to interface very well with clay based materials. So there is likely to be cracks develop over (probably not very much) time which would let flue gas into the dwelling. It is a good idea to overall, use materials the expand/contract at the same rate with temperature change. Most high mass heaters are therefore built with clay based materials to match the firebrick in the core.

I found this fireplace screen that I would like to use on my (future) RMH. I tried to post just an image but I'm doing something wrong.....


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