Clark Harris

The roof rises 1 meter for every 4 meters.  And the metal is the red corrugated metal with about 6 inches of flat between each rib.

Satamax Antone wrote:
Since i do roofing for a living. Going through a roof is no big deal for me.
HTH.

Satamax,  Since the weather is so nice, our roof is only 1x6" planks on top of rafter with tar paper and metal roof on top.  How difficult would it be to cut the chimney holes after we live in the house for a while?  Would we have to pull up the metal roofing, or could we just cut a circle and install chimney?

And to clarify, when I said vent, I was planning to have a chimney outside the wall.  I am not used to talking about all of this stuff and I don't always choose my words correctly.  Thanks to everyone for explaining these things.

Glen,  The building is designed so that one guest room is above another, making it possible to heat both from one stove.  I have considered this option.

Another option I am considering is using gas heaters fueled with biogas.  These would not need a chimney, I think.  Then my only question would be, "how far can heaters be from biogas source?"

Satamax Antone wrote:There's always smoke at the begining of the burn.

But besides this, you should not vent through a wall. Except if you are absolutely sure that the wind will always come from the same direction, and will never, absolutely never change direction.

Don't know about the US. But in France, chimneys need to raise 70cm (approximately 3ft) above the peak of the roof. Would these be insulated pipe against a wall, sticking out 10 ft above the gutter. Or a proper masonry chimney going through the roof.

Where i live, with the heavy loads of snow. We have to cable the chimneys sometimes, like guy ropes on a boat.

Check stack effect and whole house stack effects for the reason behind.

So my place is in Guatemala at 2300 meters above sea level.  The wind almost always comes from the south, we never get any snow, but the nighttime temps get down below 0 Celsius in January/Feb and are usually around 5-10 Celsius the rest of the year.  Daytime is usually around 20-25 Celsius all year long.  As you can imagine, heating is not a huge need but would be nice from time to time.  This is why I am trying to figure out how many holes to cut and what kind of heating.  For now, I am leaning towards one RMH in the 1st floor living/dining room.  I was trying to avoid running a pipe through the upstairs bedroom to get to the roof, but from what you say and other research, it looks like I have to.  Now I have to figure out whether I want heating in the guest rooms or just extra blankets on the beds.

I am in the process of building my place and trying to decide if I should vent my RMH through the roof or through the wall.  Since I am about to put the roof on, I kind of need to make a decision.  To be honest, I have no experience with RMH, but my understanding is that there is no smoke coming out of the vent.  Is this correct?  If so, then can I vent through a wall and not worry about leaving soot marks all over the place?  Or do I still need to run a tube above the roof line to avoid black marks?  If this is the case, then is it better to just vent through the roof and not worry about it?  Part of why I am asking these questions is because I have not decided how many and where I am going to be putting in the RMHs.  If I am going to vent through the roof, I really need to figure this out before I finish the roof.  If there is no problem venting through a wall, even if it is near foot traffic or outdoor seating, then I can wait to decide where and how many RMHs to install.  I'd appreciate it if anyone could help clarify this issue.  Thanks.

We get plenty of rain 6 months out of the year, but almost nothing from Dec to May. We are planning on building a 20,000 gallon cistern below ground and a 10,000 liter water tower, for about 20 people living on site during the dry season. I just don't have enough experience to know if this will be enough.

Does anyone know how much water we should plan for? Also, I am looking for a zero input filter for the shower. From my understanding, it looks like the shower uses the most water, and there should be a low tech way to filter that water for reuse in the appliances and even the showers.

So here is my idea: have shower water go through a slow sand filter, then through a UV filter to be recycled into the shower, dishwasher and washer machine. I figure this is safe, but I am wondering if I can recycle the water from the washer machine, dishwasher and kitchen sink, as well. Basically, since we will be using composting toilets, I would like to recycle all the rainwater that we collect, over and over again. Will the combination of the slow sand filter and UV filter make it safe enough to shower? to drink?