Richard Watkins

I cannot put the heater in that room.

We use two electric heaters. I think they are ceramic type and are rated at 1500 watts. I am not sure how that equates to BTUs. They are zero clearance. No part is hot. Forced air and you wold have to hold your hand on the oulet for a while to get burned. One big problem with the heaters is there operating cost. The electric bill was around $400 a month. It got as cold as the mid 40's several times this past winter. Usually happens when have a cold night (low 20's) and then the sun doesn't come out the next day and it stays below 40. The heaters run all day and the temperature never recovers.

There is a fireplace with an insert. It never heated the room it is in very well and burned a lot wood ever day. Had to feed it a couple or more times during the night the temperature would get low enough for the blower to shut down. It uses a catalitic converter that seemed to wear out in one or two seasons. It is fairly expensive to replace. We only burned seasoned oak.

BTW, I don't trust vry much on YouTube useless I find a lot of other sites and/or books that agree. I have found that you can watch 6 videos on the same subject and find at least twice that many descrepences. Most are small but some are huge.

Richard

I appreciate the replies but I don't think that that type of stove will work. All the drawings show a footer poured in the ground. I really don't see how I can crawl under the house and block and header off the floor joist and cut a hole in the floor. Not to mention carry concrete in to pour the footing. Also a 3 foot square stove with 1.5' clearances becomes a 6 foot square stove.

Richard

Thanks for the reply. I looked through alot pictures and found some that were small enough (about the size of a very large water heater) but they look to be fireplaces. I didn't really get how you adapt them to a j tube. Google was translating the pages and I think I was missing something in the translation. Are there any plans around of something like this? My degree was in drafting and design so plans or sketches would probably make more sense than photos.

Richard

I live in a small run down house in rural East Texas. Generally it gets in in the low 20's a couple of weeks a winter. Last winter it was worse The house has shiplap siding with no insulation. Ideally I want to build small house that is well insltated. That won't happen this year.

I have been trying to figure out a way to use a RMH but there is simply no place to put it. I also think a fire in the the houseis a bad idea since mother is completely blind and prone to falling. I have considered boiling water and pumping water through heat exchangers inside the house. Everything I read suggest this a bad idea and I don't think I heat that much water.

My last thought is to building a small structure ouside. Insulate it very well and add a generous amount of thermal mass - cobb or two or three 275 gallon IBC's full of water. Add a blower and a piece two metal ducts to the house and for return air. I would like to put the woodfeed outside of the structure for draft reasons and to stop a huge heat loss everytime it was time to add wood.