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Summary
part one of a two part podcast
Paul and Steven discuss running the Fisher-Price house RMH with Alexandra who is there for a month to get the
BB for "heat a house with an RMH". She's also learning about RMHs in general and aims to be an RMH expert in due course.
The Fisher-Price house RMH is now 12 years old and is an 8 inch system but with a 6 inch
wood feed, which is rectangular not square and can limit the wood sizes you can feed it.
Alexandra is an engineer and works modeling fluid dynamics so the gas flows in the RMH are interesting.
The house is warm. Paul complains that it's too warm, but the BB requires an average temperature of 70°F and mustn't go below 65°. 70° was picked as it's close to the average US house temperature. Alexandra has been running the RMH most days for about 2 hours, Paul thinks with more practice that could be as low as 1 hour.
Paul mentions some erroneous complaints people spout about RMHs, like "the heat is only in one room so the rest of the house will freeze, which doesn't happen. Alexandra comments that it's smaller than many homes, and Steven points out that in a big house you would likely have more than one RMH. Another thing people say is "you have to sit feeding the fire constantly" but Paul denies that. Once he's got it burning he goes off for 15 minutes doing other stuff before returning to refill it. If it's left too long the fire can get too low, though.
Paul comments that Alexandra's wood supply is mostly small pieces, turns out this is because the
kindling cracker is fun to use. Paul says he aims for a mix of sizes up to the maximum that will fit the feed.
This half finishes with some discussion of the mistakes people make when building RMHs, Paul's convinced it's the simplest stove you can build but Alexandra thinks if you don't have any background in building things, it can still be daunting, and mistakes can be made. They agree that it's still simpler than a batch box.
Relevant Threads
Rocket Mass Heater forum
All about SKIP, PEP, Badges, BBs and More!
Operate a RMH for One Month - PEP BB rocket.wood.month
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This podcast was made possible thanks to:
Dr. Hugh Gill Kultur
Kyle Neath
Bill Crim
anonymous
Chris Sugg
Kerry JustTooLazy
Jocelyn Campbell
Bill Erickson
Sasquatch
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Julia Winter, world's slowest mosaic artist
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Mark
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Candace Dahlk
Keith Kuhnsman
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Eric Tolbert
Nick DePuy
Nathan Hale
Opalyn
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Polly Jayne Smyth
Todd Gerardot
Katie Young
Ivar Vasara
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Weston prestage
Candice Crawford
Chris Holtslag
Song Zheng
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