Glenn Herbert

It sounds like you could make a hatch cover that you could open when you want to use it, with something like plexiglass in it to let light through. That could also make it lighter for ease of use.

So the point is, does the stairwell need to remain usable all the time, occasionally, or can it be sealed for winter?

The directions could have been more explicit, but "invite code" in the author's post and "code from your sponsor" seems clear enough, especially as there is no alternate interpretation for those items.

You would enter one of the "Invite Codes" from the bottom of the first post to see the website.

I don't know about the one at Wheaton Labs, but there is an active rocket kiln group on Facebook, The Wood Fired Rocket Kiln Project, with lots of people sharing their builds and results. Many get cone 10 and higher firings in just a few hours.

"Stumps" is Australian for what we call posts in the U. S.

A gravel pad is not suited to point loads, but rather something like continuous sills.

Looks like a good plan. Just remember that when you join half barrels at 90 degrees, you will have to extend the top of one barrel over the joining one to cover the whole space. This means either shortening the run covered by the barrel, or adding a partial "triangle" of barrel to fill the gap. So for your plan, the best thing would be cutting filler parts from a third whole barrel rather than alter the shape of the layout.

With two planters separated by a walkway, it seems you would have to have two downspouts one way or another. How long is the roof edge/gutter, and how long are each of the planters? The double-sloped gutter would accomplish the dividing, and one gutter could run sideways under the eave before dropping to the second planter.

I would be concerned about the triangular holes getting blocked with leaves, and a gutter that does not drain freely accumulating leaves - unless there are no leaves to worry about.

Too bad it turned out to be impractical to build your RMH in this house, but I'm glad that you foresee acquiring a house more suited to the job. If you do end up with a well located masonry chimney which may not be reliably safe or code compliant, a stainless steel liner with perlite poured around it can work nicely. I did two of those last fall in my family house which my parents built, and it was a fairly straightforward process which works excellently. My wife insisted on reusing her nice Morso stove in the basement and buying a beautiful soapstone stove for the living room fireplace hearth. The interior sections (most of the length) had almost no ash or creosote deposits. I had to extend the living room chimney about 5' above the existing masonry chimney for sufficient draft, and that portion does get creosote deposits.

The original living room chimney is 12 x 12 flue tile, much too big for a stove and costly to fill with perlite around a 6" SS flue liner, so I surrounded it with 8" galvanized duct and poured in an inch of perlite all around.

The basement has an old cracked 8 x 8 tile flue which tenants had lined with now disintegrating 6" stovepipe. The fireplaces and chimneys are all contained in a 32" x 10' block core in the middle of the house, so I put in a 7" SS liner to handle a future large batch box I want to build using that core for the bell in the basement. The tile being cracked and partly displaced, I had to slightly flatten/square the liner to fit all the way down, and poured perlite in to fill the corners. I made a wooden trough about 6 1/2" wide to hold 7" flue sections and squeeze them to get the right shape. It was picky but not difficult. By the way, you can get good solid stainless steel flue pipe from a company called Supply House, currently about $90 for a 5' section - not cheap but not exorbitant. (It was $70 when I bought the first batch of it...)

Very nice! I would use the thinnest brick you have for the riser, as it will heat up quicker.