Glen Yoshida

Hi Orin,
Thanks for taking a look and for the suggestion. I'll take your advice and increase the burn floor thickness from 1” to 2.5”. Makes sense to me and it doesn't seem like it could hurt to do so.


Hi Gerry,
Thanks for the link to Ernie and Erica's video intro. That's very helpful to see how they vented under the mass and stove. It might be a challenge for me to do the same with this bell housing meanwhile keeping the bench at a comfortable height to sit on. I'll tinker with the plans.

I'm not following a design in particular and at the same time yeah, I'm trying to follow what seems to work well with what others have done. I went with 9” x 5.25” (47.25sqin) since the square area is somewhere in between a 6” and 8”. Mr. Walker of WalkerStoves has some beautiful low rise stoves and his stoves are an inspiration. He has much, much more experience than I do so I've just resolved to learn as I go. Worse comes to worse I can give up and someone local might get some bricks on the cheap.

“Not sure how the afterburn or secondary air is utilized in your design. “ That's a good question. I was planning on adding in secondary air with some rectangular steel tube welded into an L shape but I accidentally deleted that part of the design somewhere along the many versions of the stove. I just forgot about it and never added it back in. I'm pretty sure that a secondary air supply is going to be critical to get a clean burn so I'll see if I can figure out a way to add it back in.

Yep, the core is firebrick for the floor and the walls of the burn tunnel. The roof of the burn tunnel is Ceramic Fiber Insulation Board.

“Just not sure how the stove will draft properly before it even gets into the second bench bell.”  My wager is that the 14' rise within the flue will pull the air into the burn tunnel. So unlike a rocket stove where the low pressure and draft is created by the nearby riser, this one will be pulling from much further away in the chimney.

If you haven't finished your bowl of popcorn yet and are looking for an excuse to munch on a few more morsels of savory corn puffs then I have a video for your entertainment...

I'm planning to take a crack at making a masonry heater for a small 230 sqft wood frame apartment. It's for the "second story" where the total available height for both floors is 14' so the first and second floors will be 6'11" and 6'3" respectively. Good for a shorty like me but a noggin bumper for those of you that were blessed with a more active tall gene. I've never built a rocket mass heater or a masonry heater so this could end up being just a learning experience but I figure there are worse things in life than learning through some trial and error. Who knows maybe it'll even work with versions 2, 3, 4...?

By uploading, the hope is that obvious problem(s) to an experienced person might be pointed out and fixed before the first version is constructed.  

I'm also hoping that some pointers will lead to a better masonry heater for other people's future projects and maybe encourage more of us that want to get in there and make something with our hands. Even if it doesn't work the first time