Ventilation System?

Is there a good wood-burning method for creating a draft for ventilation? I'm just curious. I thought maybe another input could be attached to the burn tunnel of a rocket mass heater, but that would probably prevent it from working at all. 

You may want to google an old episode of This Old House. They showed an older home that had the state of the art ventilation system that was over a hundred years old. It seem that when they built the house the builder put in a dome that had NG jets ringed around a dome. In the summer they would open the doors and ignite the gas ring. The dome had windows at the top that were opened prior to lighting the gas jets. The heat from the ignited gas caused a convection flow through the door and out the dome top. Worked well.

Just a thought....

I would think that having a copula or a top story containing operation windows would suffice. Even here in Texas, there are certain times of the year that I can open the southern facing windows and doors as well as the northern windows and doors and get good ventilation.

how about a solar method?  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_chimney

jproche5 wrote:
Is there a good wood-burning method for creating a draft for ventilation? I'm just curious. I thought maybe another input could be attached to the burn tunnel of a rocket mass heater, but that would probably prevent it from working at all. 

The regular intake of the RMH will cause a negative pressure that will cause outside air to be pushed in cracks around the house... Unless your house is air tight.

An insulated chimney will produce an especially strong draft. It might be possible to have a valve that switches the firebox over between a heating system that pushes air through a large thermal mass, and a vent system that has a clear, straight chimney but draws on a complicated vent system. The tricky part would be minimizing the flow of heat into the room in "summer mode" whilst maximizing it in "winter mode."

One of the videos with Ernie Wisner shows a system with a valve to bypass the thermal mass, to get a good updraft as things get started. If you added onto that an airtight, insulated cowl, that forces the air intake to draw from registers leading to the warmest parts of the building, I think that could work.

Yeah, one of wood combustions drawbacks is the amount of negative pressure they put on a home. Some stoves provide a makeup vent but Ive read it can be a fire hazard. The newest efficient wood burners seem to have some pretty low(acceptable) amounts of CFM. I would suggest ERVs or HRVs. Perhaps an ambitious permaculturist could make a home made version.