Christian Nelson

Hi,

My name is Christian, this is my first topic, I did some searching, and did not see any posts on the subject.

I do a lot of working on cars, and I live in Wisconsin, for about 6 months of the year, it is colder than I'd like, so I'd like to build an efficient heater for my shop. A batch style rocket mass heater sounds really great, efficient, clean burning, and low maintenance.

I am not too keen on mud being used, I know how to weld, so I am looking for minimal mud use (I would like to convince my wife to add one to our house as backup heat, and there is a hard "no" on bringing mud into the house, nothing made with mud will pass the test). If I can show her how clean and how well it works out in my shop, she may agree to having one in the house. I may encase some of the mud in metal so it isn't visible, I know it will kind of be needed to make the transition between the steel barrel, and combustion chamber. I have a bunch of old chimney brick from two chimney's from my house we took down. Not sure if they are good enough for the actuall combustion chamber, but some of them appear to be actual fire brick.

That said, being that I do quite a bit of work on people's cars as a side gig, I end up with quite a bit of waste oil, stuff you would not want to put in a diesel because it is pretty nasty, and old. It's not enough to run a full blown waste oil heater full time, but more than I like to just turn in to "recyclers" who probably just dump it out the back or sell it to someone else who is going to use it in THIER waste oil heater.

My thought was, have a steel line run into the combustion chamber of the rocket stove, where it isn't so hot it will melt the steel, but hot enough once it gets going to vaporize, and burn the oil. I've seen a few guys mod regular wood stoves for this, and thought it might work for a rocket, and actually burn it cleaner. It won't be the sole fuel for the rocket, my main source would still be wood, but it could cleanly and efficiently get rid of the waste oil, and benefit me by keeping me warm.

Has anyone done anything like this? I know it's not the most hippie thing out there to do, but honestly, it's gonna go somewhere, why not burn it in a rocket to make sure it is as clean as possible?

Thank you for any good ideas to help me!

Christian

New guy here, been lurking for a few years, but this thread has me excited.

I have been following rocket stoves for years, but have never pulled the trigger.

I have gathered an old house chimney's worth of bricks, a whole bunch of metal ducting, and I have access to steel barrels.

The hurdle that has stopped me so far is two things.

#1 there is no standard formula on how these things work, that works every time, and is idiot proof (I qualify as an idiot sometimes). I see a bunch of hand wavy "this should work well" type of statements, and things like "well you'll have to experiment, and fire it a few times as you are building it to make it work best" which makes it very hard to commit to dragging all this what my wife considers garbage in our home, and playing around with it in the basement (weight makes it impossible to place it anywhere else) lighting fires, and seeing if it will work, meanwhile winter in Wisconsin gets to -30, and if it doesn't work right, we are in big trouble. All the while, she's tapping her toe with her arms folded, because she is justifiably skeptical that this is going to work.

#2 I went to great expense and effort to convert my home to radiant water heat, I love it, I love not having hot air blowing around my house making my allergies flare up and the boiler takes up a small section of wall where it hangs in my basement. If I were to do a rocket, somehow I have to get the heat from the basement to the 1st, and 2nd floor of the home, which can easily be done with water, but people make statements like "boom squish" which basically dismisses my ability to work with this. I installe dthe boiler myself, as well as the radiators, and piping, and know how to install a radiant water system. The water never boils never goes above 170F, in the pressurized system. Now, I did have a wood fired outdoor heater before, which consumed literal tons of wood per winter, my entire summer was used up with cutting chopping, stacking, and driving my truck back and forth to places where people wanted fence line cleared. With the amount of hours, and fuel I spent I saved nothing doing this. Anyhow, the reason I bring it up, is that was an open system, that was how they prevented "boom squish" very simple, really. Why can't a person do an open system with a heat exchanger to the closed system for a radiant heat setup?

Thank you for your time. Solve these 2 issues, and I will have one in my home.

Another suggestion.

I want to heat my shop with one, and I have access to waste oil, is there a way to make one that we can inject waste oil to suppliment the wood/trash burning?

Honestly, this may be a first built one, before I do one in my home.

But yeah, I also have an issue with cob. I just don't see it as very durable. I fear it will crumble, and be messy, and crack, and break. Even concrete doesn't hold up to some abuse, I would feel better about entirely iron, or steel.

See what y'all do with these issues I run int that prevent me. Like I said initially, I've been sold on the CONCEPT, I have just been discouraged by the seemingly experimental nature of it. I do'nt have time to experiment, I have other things I need to get done in life, I want it to be something that does not take all of my time a way putzing with it to make it just right, I want to spend some time, build it, then basically forget about it, til I need to feed it every so often.