Justin Davis

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:
I hear you. Ornamental fireplaces are designed for looks. When it comes down to heating, they are mostly useful for sucking the residual heat out of your house and blowing it up the flue. And chewing up your woodpile in the process.

For emergency use, a basic freestanding wood stove that you can plunk down on a big, approved fire resistant pad right in front of the ornamental fireplace makes all the difference. Make sure there's a big spark-safe zone in front of the door. It should be monitored at all times when operating, with fire control measures at hand.

If it becomes semi-permanent, though, clear it with insurance; they love any excuse to deny a claim.

That stove looks amazing -  thanks!  I'd been looking at getting a basic wood stove for this house's emergency heating scenarios, and doing some more big outdoor projects with RMH's.

And possibly also "regular" small wood stoves for the small living quarters at our ranch (~900 SF and ~600 SF).  The gilligan factor would need to be pretty high for them.  I just have a pretty big problem using electricity to generate heat...

Yeah I’m near Austin and had a multi day power outage chopping wood to try to heat our house with our ornamental fireplace.  I have very strong feelings toward that fireplace now...  not good ones

I’ve been studying the rocket mass heaters a lot and even bought one or the cores to play with some. We’ve got a house in the city, then a ranch outside the city with a couple small living spaces and a bigger “gathering barn” for events and things.

It would be amazing to have some big thermal mass heaters for some of the colder periods but as mentioned above, most of the time a thermal cooling mass would be more helpful.  

I’m still rolling some ideas around in my head for some of that but I’d love to hear “first thoughts” of an effective heating system for using the ~40 nights and ~10 days a year we really need supplemental heat here.