Current design: Works OK but deteriorating and needs to be moved closer to the wall. Easy to load with full-size
wood, stovepipe temps 2-300 degrees, no smoke. Cooking features are OK, but not optimal. Thermal mass inadequate to hold heat. House is large but well insulated, full-size wood is a requirement.
Tried to insert picture here...not sure it will work.
Replacement ideas:
Pebble Style RMH- love the fact that you can experiment and change it easily. Also, think it might have possibilities to add a "spa" component. Maybe have different sections filled with different materials, salt, clay pellets, stones, etc. Or trays to switch out as desired. A constantly available hot rock foot massage sounds like a possibility.
Walker stove- Love the design but cost for materials in my area (insulated bricks) would be prohibitive.
Window preferred to see the fire.
Water heating would be an awesome added bonus as the house has a Pex radiant floor throughout. We no longer use it much as I found even with 6 zones, it didn't balance exactly as I wished with fewer rooms currently in use.
Easily available materials:
1. Mealmaster cookstove...interested in adding it into the system, cause it is cool and available.
2.Clay, wool- got them both on this farm.
1. Bricks and other typical recycled construction materials.
2. We have a couple of older wood stoves that maybe could have parts recycled from...doors?
We have a 10' x 10' corner to work with, the chimney pipe is about a foot off the corner. We considered coming up with some sort of damper, shunting the heat either to the stove or a rock bed with the
RMH in the middle. Or go through the stove first and then to the rock bed. Don't really need to bleed off heat from a barrel if we went through the stove. So maybe replace the barrel with an insulated mass?
Questions...what temps are we looking at where? How hot is optimal (safe) coming into the stove? Would there be
enough left to heat a box of rocks or
should it come after some mass bleed-off, so as not to damage the stove?
Our current
firewood supply contains an endless supply of bark flats, (not sure the real name, but the bark and about an inch of wood.)