Rocket Mass Stove in a Underground House

Hello all

ive been considering building a underground house using Mikes P/S/P system
and i have been putting some thought into the heating of this house
i really like the Mass Rocket Stove (now called RMS for posting purposes) heaters, but i wonder if it might be overkill.?
i live in North Ar. cold weather from late Oct.-April. the idea i was throwing around was a 24'x24' structure with a RMS serving as bench along 1 wall and the main barrel and cob used to forming at least part of the wall between the bedroom and living area. any input you might have would be great

I guess i don't know what it is you are wanting to do. If you want to heat yer place, and you want to use wood to heat with, then the RMH can heat yer place using a smaller amount of wood.

If it gets too hot - that means that you used too much wood and burned too long - open a window.

The happy medium with mass heating is predicting when you will need heat in the near future. If you predict that you need a lot and it winds up being a warm sunny day, then you have over heated the mass. Open a window.

If you predict that you need little and yer mass is too cool then you need a sweater or sudden burst of heat to make up the heat deficit. The thing about the RMH is that you can burn and get a decent burst of heat radiation from the steel barrel. Or you can bake in yer oven or whatever you want to make up the heat deficit....

If you are like me - i have plenty of wood - then error on the side of overheat and then either go to a cooler room or shed to work for a few hours or open a window.

thanks Ronie, i was just wondering if a MRS in a 24x24 underground house, was overkill

What do you mean by overkill? Won't you need some source of heat for an underground house?

Yes i would need heat , but how much i wonder and i wonder if a MRS would be to much

Cyric30 wrote:
Yes i would need heat , but how much i wonder and i wonder if a MRS would be to much

No, it won't be too much.  You will however need to learn how much wood to burn during the differing seasonal demands.  You can burn less wood in an over sized unit but having too small a unit would mean needing supplementary heat sources.

Perhaps someone with some experience in Underground/Earth sheltered buildings could pitch in here.
I'm under the impression that a well built/insulated Underground/Earth sheltered structure would tend to stay close to the ambient temperature of the soil around and below it, so around 60 Fahrenheit or 16 Celsius.
That is a good thing if you have plenty of solar gain to warm the structure up, but that is far too cold an ambient temperature to be comfortable without some kind of additional heat.
I seem to remember that Mike Oehler had a wood fire going constantly, so a RMS with well designed thermal mass seems like a pretty good idea.

[I seem to remember that Mike Oehler had a wood fire going constantly, so a RMS with well designed thermal mass seems like a pretty good idea.

This is my hope also