rob hinkle

Wonderful! Thanks!

All,
I have one more question before I start putting the whole thing together.
I was under the strong impression that if I were to use a 55-gallon drum, I needed to make this an 8" system. Is this correct? I ask this, because I have on hand some 6" stove pipe and components, and for some reason, in my location, 8" parts have been somewhat iffy to find. I would really like to use 6" for this reason.
We live in an earth ship of about 1000 sq. ft. in Montana at an altitude of about 5500', in the mountains. While outside temps regularly drop to -30F or lower, our indoor temps usually range from 50-60F with no supplemental heating, unless there is absolutely no sun for several days, which is seldom the case. So, my heating load is not terribly great, but, 50F is a little chilly for me. In this case, does it seem that a 6" heater would suffice?
Thanks again.

Bryon, Thanks greatly for the amplifying info! My wife and I are very excited about actually putting this stove together in the house. I will try to post photos of our completed project.

I see the concept of stacking the barrels, using a clamping ring, and that sounds like a great idea. Is it a different kind of ring than the lid clamp ring? I do not "see" how to use it in this application. Is the ring wide enough to accommodate two rims together, or is there some modification needed to join these two, including a gasket? Also, if I am to make the top barrel to be the proper length, I assume that the method is to cut out a section in the middle, and weld the two remaining sections together, keeping the rim section to join to the manifold section. -is this correct?

John, Byron, Thanks for your replies. I went ahead and wrapped the riser with insulation and bermed the burn tunnel and feed tube, and got amazing results! Now, all I have to do is figure out how I am going to get my barrel installed on the completed J-tube (core) as my ceilings are few inches too low!

Greetings! I am a Long-time lurker, to much benefit, but now have a specific question that i haven't seen on any of the threads. Not sayin' it hasn't been answered already, just that I haven't seen it.
I just finished temping together a firebrick core, just as shown in Ianto's 3rd ed. book. I burned a test fire in the core alone, with no insulation, and with no barrel. -just the brick J-tube with the brick chimney(riser). I wanted to see how it would perform before I went further. I got a pretty good draft, it seems, with the horizontal fire in the burn chamber. But I also had a lot of smoke and some flames coming back out of the feed tube! I don't think this is normal, and I tried adding courses to the riser to raise the draft, with no luck. Like I said, I built the core just as shown in the book, so I can't be doing something too terribly wrong. I was burning very dry scrap lumber. Do I need to put the barrel on before the core will draft properly?