Update on my RMH and some questions.

Here are some photos. The heater is burning amazing. Still no where near done. I'm going to add more section of pipe to make my bench an L shape with a bell at the end.

Mixing clay with anything is really tough work lol. Love decided that I'm going to lay a brick wall all around the bench and fill around  the batch box with clay sand the rest of the way and I'm going to put gravel in the bench. The upper two inches I'll mix clay and sand to seal it. Then on top some slat mortored in.

My question is I'm getting a lot of black dust. Has no smell and it's  dust, wipes right off. Could that be from burning these 4x4 lumber?

Last picture is how I get my draft going works amazing the paper and all that was driving me crazy. I heat for a min in the riser then pit small 4x4 in the back and light them up for about 30sec.

Glad it's working well for you! The black dust is soot, which means that you are not getting complete combustion, and it seems to be quite a bit for a short time in operation. It might be due to the burning properties of your softwood lumber, can't tell from here. Can you get some seasoned hardwood to burn a few loads? If you clean parts of the interior, burn as much hardwood as you have burned softwood so far, and inspect it again, you will get a good idea of the culprit. Either it will be cleaner, indicating the fuel as the issue, or not, indicating some problem with the build.

It appears that you don't have a secondary air supply. This is some added complexity, but may make a real difference in completeness of combustion. The best current practice involves a channel recessed in the firebox floor (so the air gets preheated) and a metal tube rising just in front of the port to inject the air where there is maximum turbulence. Look up "pre-port injector" for configuration and sizing.

Glenn Herbert wrote:It appears that you don't have a secondary air supply. This is some added complexity, but may make a real difference in completeness of combustion. The best current practice involves a channel recessed in the firebox floor (so the air gets preheated) and a metal tube rising just in front of the port to inject the air where there is maximum turbulence. Look up "pre-port injector" for configuration and sizing.

Hey Glenn thanks for the reply. I do have a secondary air it's under the barrel lid. It's about 1 1/2" squared. I know it's working because if I drop dust or something in front of the barrel it sucks it in. I haven't had the chance to clean it all and try it with hard wood yet. But I will soon.