Having just returned from Christmas at the family
cabin (a log cabin my parents, brothers, and I built 40 some years ago--I was five), I have a question about heating buildings from cold, really cold. I can see the advantage of
rocket mass heaters for maintaining heat; my dad had to stoke the fire in the high-efficiency metal box stove several times each night. But what of heating the cabin at the beginning? Does a
RMH radiate enough to heat a 400 s.f. space in a reasonable time, say a few hours, when the temp is down in the low single digits (meaning the mass stored in the logs is also down there)? We start the Monarch wood-burning cook stove, open the flue to the
oven, keep the oven door open, and stoke the heck out of it for several hours to get the place comfortable (meaning 50 degrees or so). We start the high-efficiency, too, but it doesn't do much to warm the place--its purpose is maintaining the temperature.
In practice, I expect this is a common issue for folks who are likely to build a
RMH. For example, we have a friends in SLC, UT with a cabin up one of the canyons. They've said that in the winter, the husband heads up to the cabin several hours in advance of the rest of his family to start the fire. I guess what I'm saying is I want it all: I want a stove that heats a place relatively quickly and then maintains the heat.