Keith Fougere

Karen Donnachaidh wrote:Don't throw in the towel. Head back to the drawing board. You may come up with something great yet. Not everyone could come up with the design you had initially. Keep working on it.

Towel has been thrown. Drawing board put away. I don't want to die for my art.

Karen Donnachaidh wrote:Kind of like an add-on wood stove without the blower? Or am I way off?

Not quite, I was planning on getting the heat from exhaust not convection. Will not be doing this based on advice given. Thanks for the post

Phil Stevens wrote:Please don't do this. Read Erica's recent post on How Chimneys Work, for starters. If you scavenge too much heat from the flue gases, they become too cool and dense to maintain draft. Glowing coals are still burning, and what they are producing tends to be high in CO. If the draft stops/reverses, you've now got a very efficient carbon monoxide generator pumping the stuff into your living space.

If you want a masonry stove or RMH, by all means build one. But don't try to make a standard wood stove act like one by defeating a critical design element. Safety first.

Ok thanks.

Still in the thinking stages on this project, but I've got an idea of what I want. This is a diverter that will sit on top of the wood stove. It will allow smoke to go right up the chimney during startup and will allow the cleaner afterburn to circulate through a masonry mass with the turn of 2 dampers. I have no idea how to size the masonry mass but think I can capture a lot of heat this way. Does anyone have advice on using something like this ?



When I'm getting ready to turn in for the night the stove is glowing coals, no flame visible. I turn the intake air off and go to bed. At this point the surface of the plate steel stove is 500f and I have to believe that 500f is also going up the chimney. I also believe that in this situation, there is no more creosote in the exhaust to deposit anywhere. If the exhaust is diverted to a rocket mass type heat sink then back to the hot chimney, I will have adequate draft to start and maintain the flow. The unknown variable is how much masonry will be ideal to soak up heat. I have enough room in the stove room to build a bench type mass like the rocket mass designs, maybe 10 feet long so it would be a 20 foot loop. The materials are cheap enough to build it - I'd like to see how it works. Any advice ? Thanks