michael carman

wife and i are 70s.  we built one in month in our living room in jan  midwest.  hard work and we bought our clay.  it works perfectly with ericas plans followed to the tee.  we love it.  heats our old farmhouse much better than large new englander.  if you are considering doing it i would say do it.  our pics are somewhere on this site

b/t/w  we have a "regular" rmh per video instructions.  i don't know about the "batch heater" kind of stove.  we don't even have to use "kindling".  just somewhat smaller sticks of wood.  split or not.  i've been paying attention and 30 seconds to a good fire that one can put big chunks of wood in would be about average.  and if we can do it i'm sure anyone could.

if i didn't have a torch it would be a doomsday scenario which of course is possible.  then i would do it the way most people do.  the slow but sure fire way.  but until that happens the torch is our way to go.  simple, easy, foolproof and extremely fast.  obviously we're not "purists" on this.  when we get up or come home we want to get warm fast and easy.  i would be sad if we could not buy little propane tanks, but we've been starting regular woodstove fires for over 30 years and i only wish we would have discovered the obvious torch method 30 years ago.  we only started using the torch 2 winters ago when we finished the rmh.  we are more than pleased

we go to 1000 F  to heat the house up fast but then run it at say 650 to 800 or so most of the time.  that's the top of the barrel of course.  

we have successfuly built a rmh.  we go to joplin sometimes as i have relatives there.  we live in lawrence ks in an old farm house w/ our rmh.  you can see pics of our heater on this site    michael carman.  my wife and i built our "stove" two years ago and it functions perfectly.  call 785 887 9965 or email michaelcarman2000@yahoo.com.  will help you if we can.  we got much help and advice on this site.

we had some problem at first with back "burning".  added about 10 feet of flue on the roof.  never a problem since.  works perfectly.

we've had our rmh for 2 winters and use a propane torch to start fires.  takes 30 seconds to one minute tops with just regular pieces of kindling