Peter Bring

Has anyone gone house-to-house and/or expert-to-expert and asked even 100 random non-Permies people why they don't have a reburning masonry heater (my current favorite name suggestion), or the reasons why they would reject one if they even knew about it?

The name has, in at least one case, been a convenient excuse for rejection by expert gatekeepers, but what does the data say about regular people? I suppose one has to keep both in mind to address both the new build and retrofit cases.

Building a RMH seems like a daunting project for the uninitiated, and the more cut-and-dried pebble-style is a major step in the right direction in terms of bounding the complexity.

What is the smallest, simplest RMH that is still worth building? Would segmenting the thermal mass to add or subtract length later help buy-in? The easier it is to install or remove, the less risky it is to decide to install one. Is the installation process as easy as that for a more typical wood stove?

Montana Masonry Heater gets my vote. Rolls off the tongue, with a folksy, underground vibe. Has "Masonry Heater" in the title for the red tape brigade.

It doesn't matter if they were not invented in Montana, though the rebranding was started in Montana. The Spanish Flu didn't start in Spain, and Nebraska-style strawbale buildings aren't only in Nebraska.

Rocket Masonry Heater would be my second choice. Sure, "it sounds like a rocket" and "its insulated combustion chamber burns very thoroughly " may appeal to me personally, but the goal here is to get butts-in-(heated)-seats. Any technical, efficiency, or especially "eco" terminology may very well turn off more people than it attracts, especially among the uninitiated.

In 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back (Gokhale, 2008) (Pages 112-113):

When an African or Indian village woman carries a heavy weight on her head (fig. 5-3), she is not passive under that weight, which would cause her discs to compress. Rather, she actively engages her inner corset ['contracting certain muscles in your abdomen and back']; her torso becomes more slender and her spine becomes longer. In this way she protects her discs from the weight she carries. ... Medical literature documents that in certain populations, such as the Bhil tribe of Central India, the discs of a 50-year-old look very similar to those of a 20-year-old (fig 5-5). The proper and frequent use of the inner corset muscles is perhaps why these populations experience virtually no disc degeneration as they age.

The book has a whole chapter about this concept. I have not found anything better for moving past my own back problems (not just the one chapter of course).