Thanks for the info and links. I do think a batchbox mass heater would serve my purposes better.
Those are some pretty designs. I suspect mine will be less artistic.
A little more about us. Both my wife and I work away from home. It would
be nice to have a wood fed heater that could either be left burning with minimal fear of it getting out and burning down the house or a mass heater that would hold heat. It seems a batch box would be the ideal combination of both. Even if it is something we load and light when we get home at night we could let it burn down through the evening and use the heat overnight and into the next day.
I'm not probably going to get totally away from using our conventional LP HVAC but I'd like to be able to supplement it as much as possible.
I have access to all the pallet wood I can haul off at work so that helps on the fodder.
As mentioned by Satamax maybe our house is not that insulated compared to some of the houses y'all might live in but for a pier and beam brick veneered stick house it's loaded with insulation. It is well insulated for our part of the country. It is the windows that really hurt us. I am also pursuing
solar heating options but the mass heater seemed to be the best return on the money to begin with. My solar heating is going to be a bigger
project with a
greenhouse addition to the side of the house. A mass heater should be much less expensive and be productive on days like we are having, 15 degrees, wind, and no sun. There may also be a little desire to tear out our old ugly fireplace and replace it with something more efficient and certainly better looking.
I am having difficulties finding any good, or should I say concise, information about Batch Box
heaters. Does Evans and Jackson's book have information about Batch Box mass heaters? It sounds like a good book. Give me a good plan, or even the ratios and I'm confident I can build it.