Thoughts on rocket stove for in floor heating?

We are looking at moving to a larger more remote property that has nothing on it atm. I am thinking a couple yurts to get us out there and using the piece and have been considering options for heating. I am in coastal southern BC so not super cold in the winter. I am leaning towards an external wood burning furnace type installation which can be adapted to in floor heating. I wondered if a rocket stove installation has been adapted to in floor heating applications? References, thoughts, or ideas? TIA

Hello Elizabeth,

In a way yes...thousands of years ago, and a few RMH have been "reinvented" to work as such. There are ways...

This may be an interesting read:

온돌 (Ondol) An ancient original form of heating with wood...

Hi elizabeth; As Jay says this can and has been done....very well by the romans, the chinese and others more recently ... however I think that feeding a rocket for this from outside would be "a bother, after a while" A batch stove with a longer burn time and hotter temps would be an improvement, especially if your under floor system has enough mass to hold that heat. Using an outdoor furnace with underground pipes works very well at keeping your mess outdoors, and can be loaded to burn for 12 hrs or more, but requires electricity for the fans. It also produces large amounts of smoke ,is prone to creosote buildup and uses large quantities of wood. I think that living in a yurt with a rocket mass heater inside, with a nice warm mass to sit/snooze on during those rainy- foggy -windy- raw days that coastal bc gets, would be just the thing. Small wood consumption , nothing but steam out your stack, never any creosote... and no running outside in the rain to feed the stove. I believe that there are posts here if you search dedicated to building & living with rmh's in yurts. Good luck with whatever design you decide to build.

Elizabeth,
Here is a thread at Permies that you should check out. RMH in floor heating for a yurt, just what you were looking for.

https://permies.com/forums/posts/list/40/5937

Thankyou all! I appreciate the links and sharing of info.

The only real need is for the ability to lower the stove below main floor level.(think some sort of split level home) Mass is mass and it should not matter where the storage media is. Cleanouts and having the stove enough below the floor to fit with the horizontal chimney being below floor level would be the difficulties. While researching I found numerous people who have done in floor systems. A few people were having cold stall problems but they all seemed to be doing the stove at floor level and trying to push the exhaust down that much farther. Erica has a post some where on building a diverter valve just after the stove so the stove can be couple directly to the chimney while starting then once it is running good you switch to the mass stack for heat recovery. Paul said in another post that such an arrangement will push more feet of pipe successfully. So it might be possible to take advantage of such an arrangement to push farther down instead of adding pipe length.