Good stuff... "Screaming hot," means everything. My favorite fuel is chunks of wood. I get it screaming hot, throw in chunks, open the secondary and close off the air supply to a trickle... wow! I get double the burn time with half the wood and just a wee bit less heat... and still, no smoke... secondaries rock. Rockets are so much fun!
after 20 years of three different self modified woodburning stoves .My heating device has evolved into a 500 kg refractory cast panels assembled almost like a simple glue together design .which hold usefull heat output for more than two days. It has an afterburn chamber a heating chamber with 9 X 30mm od stainless steel 80cm long air heating tubes . a second flue chamber to preheat the refractory mass prior to the cooled gasses exiting up the chimney .
The cleanest 6" stovepipe I ever had been the result of burning GREEN wood. (The entire pipe was outside in the winter weather and I collected buckets of water that ran down the inside of the pipe!) It could be the brainchild of the safest wood stove ever ....maybe even the most efficient. Imagine a straight vertical pipe made up of connecting sections with water jackets collecting heat and a means of collecting the condensate. We actually used the condensate as a wood stain....Or maybe an air-jacket pulling outside air to totally remove drafts....
If you have to burn green/wet wood you can dry it by putting it near enough the fire/stove that it steams and you can dry the fuel faster than you consume it. However I was reading and didn't notice with one batch that the steaming had stopped and it began burning; so as always you do have to be careful.
To dry green wood as quickly as it’s needed, you need to place it dangerously close to the heat source, as you discovered. In reality, it takes about a cord and a half to dry one cord doing this safely.
The wood I was drying was in the fire ring so it was reasonably safe or I wouldn't have been reading. If you put the wood to be dried in the oven you may fill the house with smoke but you are unlikely to burn the house down and of course if you are in the house you are much more likely to notice the smoke than if you are sitting near a campfire as I was.
It is a newer technology and they have matured a lot in the last five years. There is one in Oregon that is pushing 30 years old. Maintenance is cleaning out the ash once a year.
Sometime in the future, hopefully sooner than later, I would like to convert a bus and have a RMH for heat. 1. Is this feasible or realistic? 2. I'd very much love to use Hymalayan pink salt blocks as the mass. A. Yes I know it'll be expensive, but will the weight be an issue? B. Will it retain heat? C. Would a bell be more appropriate in this situation?
«burning green wood in a conventional wood stove leads to creosote buildup» We need to solve this kind of problem and became able to burn any trash. I suspect the keyword for start is «pyrolisys».
Split wood has far more surface area to offgas. You aren’t burning wood, you’re heating wood and burning the gasses. A stove designed to capture heat benefits from small split wood. A crappy stove burns it too quickly.
So based on this conversation, would you say heating a glasshouse/greenhouse overnight without an active fire burning is possible with a rocket mass heater?
What if you mix in some punky wood with green wood? I mean if punky wood would absorb moisture as it burns, would that help drying the green stuff faster?
The efficient and complete combustion of wood depends on the ratio of mass of the wood to its exposed surface area. Needless to say, there has to be sufficient amount of oxygen to burn that wood. Large pieces of wood that are not dry burn incompletely or not at all because most of the generated heat is used to convert the contained water of that piece of wood into steam and drive it out of that wood before that piece of wood could burn efficiently. How the generated heat is dissipated is a matter of choice. It could be immediately sent up a flu or it could be diverted to release its heat content to masonry before it enters a conduit to release carbon dioxide, etc. to the outside. Any further "theories" are nothing but expressions of choice alone. The chemistry of combustion will not change!
@@jakebredthauer5100 It’s secondary combustion just like all modern woodstoves have. A new Blazeking, as one example, has about the same burn efficiency as a rocket stove, but not the mass to store flue gasses. These guys seem to feel that mass storage leads to burning 1/10 the wood but I’ve never seen an honest comparison. I’d be willing to bet if you ran the exhaust from a modern high efficiency woodstove through a bell mass it would do the same thing. But the discussions by this group always create a negative perfect storm of an old inefficient woodstove operated by an idiot burning green wet wood with the damper closed. In that case, pretty much anything better will use 1/10 the wood!
@@brucea550 Without the thermal mass, steel stoves, I guess, are operated in an inefficient manner, to compensate. I have never believed the 1/10. I recommend Walker Stoves, not this guy. Broaudio channel UA-cam. The problem with the steel stoves is that they would burn up if operated at the temperatures these guys use. High temperatures are used to burn up the smoke. I have practically no experience with either. Do you have a question? There is a huge difference in safety. I have never heard of the idea of using a purchased stove to have the gases go through a thermal mass. Rocket stove was originally for cooking.
@@jakebredthauer5100 Look up the woodstove decathlon. It was in Washington DC. It challenged teams to design and build wood stoves that are low-emission, high efficiency, innovative and affordable. Ten judges tested and assessed the 14 finalist stoves and announced a winner on November 19, 2013. You know what won? A Walker stove. You know what also won? A traditional EPA soapstone woodstove made by the Woodstock company. The Walker stove is a steel stove surrounded by mass, but can be operated as a standalone stove as well. Thus my comment that any efficient woodstove can do the same thing as an RMH.
Vertical chute which gravity-feeds pallets down to a wide mouth? That'd be a lot of fun to play with. I suspect it'd still be most efficient to break down the pallets and feed into a more normal shaped stove mouth.
Mine (6 inch J tube) is happiest burning small twigs. It can cope with split logs, but it strongly prefers wood thinner than my wrist. I suspect the large logs you talk about Ernie burning in his RMH would make mine very sad - perhaps an inevitable difference in build quality.
Mine (8" J-tube with masonry bell) can burn anything from twigs to 4-5" split logs. I find that twigs burn down into a heap of coals too fast, but medium or larger dry wood makes an inferno as long as the feed tube is mostly filled. Wrist size is about the smallest for good lasting performance. Round wood is harder to fill the feed tube with vs. split unless you have a good mix of sizes.
It's always better in an RMH to burn faster, not slower. Faster, hotter burns are cleaner burns. The split stuff burns better because of fluid dynamics. Sharp edges keep the flame stuck to the wood, like a flame holder. Rounded edges (unsplit) provide less for air and fire to "grab onto" so it will slide off and go out or sputter.
The main challenge with burning wood cleanly is the problem of how to transfer the heat from the exothermic process of combustion to the endothermic processes of pyrolysis, tar-cracking and drying (and later reduction, but that's easier since it's post-combustion). I think small pieces burn easier because there's better heat transfer into the wood from radiation and convection when the wood has a high surface to volume ratio. Turbulent flow also tends to move the reactions forward, with higher rates of heat transfer by convection, mixing or both. (Besides the RMH, you can see an extreme case of this with some Imbert? gasifiers which actually feed air in to a central point with an array of focused nozzles in order to maximize gas turbulence. ) In the RMH, the large amount of primary air (and no secondary air) means that all the char is burned up, so that isn't available as a heat source to drive pyrolysis and drying. This contrasts with a conventional woodstove (and gasifiers for producing woodgas) which usually limit primary air to create char (or at least limit how much air goes into the bed of char). Char is then available to help drive pyrolysis and drying (and reduction). The RMH/RMS is essentially a simple downdraft gasifier operated with plenty of primary air. The main reason they are less smoky is that the cooler tar gas (smoke) that results from pyrolysis passes through the hotter combustion zone. The high temperature heat drives the tar-cracking processes and initiates combustion. I think one could, in theory, use a different gasifier with a RMH, in order to obtain different properties, like perhaps making it easier to use different fuels. The main issue is that those gasifiers are often driven by a fan, air compressor, vacuum or other source of air pressure besides just the draft from a chimney/stack-effect (natural convection). The J-tube has less pressure-drop than other gasifiers, so it works better on natural draft alone. When your only air pressure is from stack-effect, it works better to run it wide-open. Rather than try to get a turn-down ratio, RMH design has apparently taken advantage of it's higher efficiency heat-exchangers to go in a completely different direction, and just use small fuel. The small fuel is easier to start so there's less need and less advantage to having a fire that can burn all night in a high turn-down ratio stove. Another general approach to clean burning that some gasifiers use is to preheat the air. This works well but since air is an insulator it requires a high surface-area heat exchanger (like in a RMH), so it's usually skipped to keep it smaller and lighter weight. I guess an advantage to a RMH is that it can use a lot of free on-site materials, and the mass provides thermal storage. A disadvantage is that they might tend to be too heavy to be shipped, so they tend to be custom built. The pebble bed design is an example of how the thermal storage could be added afterward, so that is a design that might be better for a product that could be purchased and shipped. I also think the design could be made smaller if desired, if an electric air blower was used. This is basically what we're seeing for example in modern (natural gas) "condensing" boiler, where a more effective and compact heat exchanger is used, and the exhaust temperature is low enough to condense steam.
We are using our rocket mass heater for the second winter now. It uses 6 inch tubing and the J Tube is made of firebrick... Anyhow I’ve been starting it lately with a small pile of old coals from outdoor fires in the past mixed with small bits of wood left on the floor from making kindling, sometimes a small piece of paper wadded up, and some small match stick diameter wood pieces. I kinda build a pile of that stuff and then make a loose wall of small, dry kindling between that and my burn tube. I’ve been using small pieces of kindling that were dipped in pine sap to get that going. That or “fatwood” pieces from the base of dead pine branches (the wood infused with sap). Anyhow I’ve learned that if I build that kindling wall to constrict the air going to the burn tube, then the air that does go through acts like a bellows on the embers and fire. After burning some good, dry wood (usually pine) I put in wood that is wetter, or harder wood, round branches, etc., but always with some good burning wood mixed in. Also old furniture wood and pallet wood burn very well. I have pieces of old furniture and some flooring boards and molding set aside if I ever need good hot burning kindling or firewood.
Would the extra moisture released from burning green wood in a rocket mass heater reduce the temperatures within the burn tunnel enough to risk not having a complete burn? I have never dared burn any in my RMH as don't want to cause the build up of creosote within the very long chimney.
Stack the wood in a sunny location and cover at least the top to keep most of the rain off. It seems to me like most hardwoods will dry in one summer down to 20-25% moisture content. In theory wouldn't that be enough for a downdraft gasifier? I think so, but it may depend on the case. After 2 years it's probably dry to 10-15% MC. Make sure the burner is getting hot enough. It may help a bit to use the radiant heat from the stove to help pre-dry the wood , just be careful about fire hazards.
In their discussion of woodsheds and size needed- a woodshed is a great place to store dry wood, NOT to dry green wood. Green wood dries best stacked in single rows on pallets, piled at right angle to prevailing wind, in full sun, with the top (but not sides) covered. Wind dries wood faster than sun, so that’s the primary consideration. Once the wood is dried this way, THEN it can be stored in a shed.
Look up what is considered a hardwood and what is considered a soft wood. Only use hardwoods. Softwoods like Pine, Spruce, Silk Tree, etc are no good for 3 reasons. #1, the resins in these woods, when burned, coat your stack and can eventually cause a buildup witch can cause a fire in the stack. Some experts disagree. They say that once these high resin woods are dried/seasoned, there isn't as much resin and since you should be cleaning your stack yearly, this stack fire worry isn't really a problem. However, regardless if these experts are correct or not, there is another HUGE reason not to bother using softwoods...#2, they simply burn way to fast and that means you are CONSTANTLY feeding wood in your stove. I know this from experimentation on my own and it's very true. Softwoods are simply not worth the inconvenience. I have used pine lumber, though, and for some reason it burns much slower than seasoned pine branches, but it's still best to just use wood from hardwood trees, like oak. #3, Imho, many of these softwoods stink when burned, especially spruce. BTW, you cannot tell a hardwood by it's strength, that's not what make hardwood a hardwood. For instance, spruce branches are hard as hell, but they are actually a softwood. Look for a list online of what is hard and what is soft. It has to do with fibrosity and density, not the actual hardness or strength of the wood. One way to know if a wood is hard or soft is if it is a fast growing tree or not. Fast growing trees, like Mimosa and Silk Tree, have wood that is less dense and are therefore soft wood. But you would have to be around trees a lot to know what grows fast and what doesn't. Any weed that you know of that will grow into a tree, like mimosa and silk tree, are all soft wood.
The difference between hardwood and softwood is leaves vs needles. That’s it. All deciduous trees are classed as hardwood, conifers as softwood, despite something like poplar being way ‘softer’ than, say, western yellow pine.
Because there is snow on the ground outside and we were outside before the video started. Also, the big door was open - we closed it to make the video. And .... once the door closed, we were all quite a bit warmer, even though the fire was pretty much out.
Yr 2 made a big mistake. Free wood too much free wood. Enough wood to cover 3 hard winters. Greedy mistake. Now I'm gonna have make a giant stirling engine and another rocket to operate the engine to use up all this wood.
Donkey, you can sell that dead manzanita to Aquarium hobby folks for good money!!! NO joke! let me know if you need direction, but you could sell for really good money...
You're right. Everyone should only be allowed to have 2 kids. This way, not only is the carbon footprint smaller, but since 2 or less children per kid will eventually mean the demise of the human race, this works out best in the longrun since eventually there will be no humans at all which translates to a ZERO carbon footprint on the planet as a whole. Right? Now, do you see how sill what you just said sounds?
thanks to my patreon peeps for getting my youtube engine running again patreon.com/pwvids
I find your collective insights and willingness to share most gratifying.
Good stuff... "Screaming hot," means everything. My favorite fuel is chunks of wood. I get it screaming hot, throw in chunks, open the secondary and close off the air supply to a trickle... wow! I get double the burn time with half the wood and just a wee bit less heat... and still, no smoke... secondaries rock.
Rockets are so much fun!
Not having to run a fire all night to stay warm - that's the beauty of a rocket mass heater.
after 20 years of three different self modified woodburning stoves .My heating device has evolved into a 500 kg refractory cast panels assembled almost like a simple glue together design .which hold usefull heat output for more than two days. It has an afterburn chamber a heating chamber with 9 X 30mm od stainless steel 80cm long air heating tubes . a second flue chamber to preheat the refractory mass prior to the cooled gasses exiting up the chimney .
Ahhhh so good to see you all together sharing knowledge! Love you all 🥰
Tammy, kinda like what you are used to seeing in oregon? :)
The cleanest 6" stovepipe I ever had been the result of burning GREEN wood. (The entire pipe was outside in the winter weather and I collected buckets of water that ran down the inside of the pipe!) It could be the brainchild of the safest wood stove ever ....maybe even the most efficient.
Imagine a straight vertical pipe made up of connecting sections with water jackets collecting heat and a means of collecting the condensate. We actually used the condensate as a wood stain....Or maybe an air-jacket pulling outside air to totally remove drafts....
I'm really enjoying this series. Looking forward to seeing more.
This is really inspiring stuff for me....just taking my first babysteps into more sustainable living. Thanks from the netherlands, europe
Once again, the problem is the confusion between "rocket stove" and "rocket mass heater".
If you have to burn green/wet wood you can dry it by putting it near enough the fire/stove that it steams and you can dry the fuel faster than you consume it. However I was reading and didn't notice with one batch that the steaming had stopped and it began burning; so as always you do have to be careful.
To dry green wood as quickly as it’s needed, you need to place it dangerously close to the heat source, as you discovered. In reality, it takes about a cord and a half to dry one cord doing this safely.
The wood I was drying was in the fire ring so it was reasonably safe or I wouldn't have been reading. If you put the wood to be dried in the oven you may fill the house with smoke but you are unlikely to burn the house down and of course if you are in the house you are much more likely to notice the smoke than if you are sitting near a campfire as I was.
These guys are the best! Awesome information and discussion, as usual!
What is the expected life of a rocket mass heater? What kind of maintenance do you perform on them?
It is a newer technology and they have matured a lot in the last five years.
There is one in Oregon that is pushing 30 years old.
Maintenance is cleaning out the ash once a year.
nice video Paul i know i love rocket stove i have bin doing some experiments trying steel,fire brick and cement casting.thanks too you and Ernie.
Sometime in the future, hopefully sooner than later, I would like to convert a bus and have a RMH for heat.
1. Is this feasible or realistic?
2. I'd very much love to use Hymalayan pink salt blocks as the mass.
A. Yes I know it'll be expensive, but will the weight be an issue?
B. Will it retain heat?
C. Would a bell be more appropriate in this situation?
yes. yes. yes. it depends.
Has anyone done this? What are your thoughts?
We need to know whether you want to retain the mobility of the bus, due to the weight of thermal mass.
«burning green wood in a conventional wood stove leads to creosote buildup» We need to solve this kind of problem and became able to burn any trash. I suspect the keyword for start is «pyrolisys».
We find the completely round pieces, that are not split, don't seem to heat up our RMH as much as split pieces (of almost any size).
Split wood has far more surface area to offgas. You aren’t burning wood, you’re heating wood and burning the gasses. A stove designed to capture heat benefits from small split wood. A crappy stove burns it too quickly.
So based on this conversation, would you say heating a glasshouse/greenhouse overnight without an active fire burning is possible with a rocket mass heater?
yes
What if you mix in some punky wood with green wood? I mean if punky wood would absorb moisture as it burns, would that help drying the green stuff faster?
This is some great info! Thank you guys!
The efficient and complete combustion of wood depends on the ratio of mass of the wood to its exposed surface area. Needless to say, there has to be sufficient amount of oxygen to burn that wood. Large pieces of wood that are not dry burn incompletely or not at all because most of the generated heat is used to convert the contained water of that piece of wood into steam and drive it out of that wood before that piece of wood could burn efficiently. How the generated heat is dissipated is a matter of choice. It could be immediately sent up a flu or it could be diverted to release its heat content to masonry before it enters a conduit to release carbon dioxide, etc. to the outside. Any further "theories" are nothing but expressions of choice alone. The chemistry of combustion will not change!
With Peter's rocket heater fresh heated air is put into the heat riser for a secondary burn in that very hot secondary chamber.
@@jakebredthauer5100 It’s secondary combustion just like all modern woodstoves have. A new Blazeking, as one example, has about the same burn efficiency as a rocket stove, but not the mass to store flue gasses. These guys seem to feel that mass storage leads to burning 1/10 the wood but I’ve never seen an honest comparison. I’d be willing to bet if you ran the exhaust from a modern high efficiency woodstove through a bell mass it would do the same thing. But the discussions by this group always create a negative perfect storm of an old inefficient woodstove operated by an idiot burning green wet wood with the damper closed. In that case, pretty much anything better will use 1/10 the wood!
@@brucea550
Without the thermal mass, steel stoves, I guess, are operated in an inefficient manner, to compensate.
I have never believed the 1/10. I recommend Walker Stoves, not this guy. Broaudio channel UA-cam.
The problem with the steel stoves is that they would burn up if operated at the temperatures these guys use. High temperatures are used to burn up the smoke. I have practically no experience with either.
Do you have a question?
There is a huge difference in safety.
I have never heard of the idea of using a purchased stove to have the gases go through a thermal mass. Rocket stove was originally for cooking.
@@jakebredthauer5100 Look up the woodstove decathlon. It was in Washington DC. It challenged teams to design and build wood stoves that are low-emission, high efficiency, innovative and affordable. Ten judges tested and assessed the 14 finalist stoves and announced a winner on November 19, 2013.
You know what won? A Walker stove. You know what also won? A traditional EPA soapstone woodstove made by the Woodstock company. The Walker stove is a steel stove surrounded by mass, but can be operated as a standalone stove as well. Thus my comment that any efficient woodstove can do the same thing as an RMH.
I always wondered if a rocket mass heater could be built to burn whole pallets.
Vertical chute which gravity-feeds pallets down to a wide mouth? That'd be a lot of fun to play with.
I suspect it'd still be most efficient to break down the pallets and feed into a more normal shaped stove mouth.
Who has a rocket mass heater? What do you burn? I've found the round sticks burn much slower than split wood.
Mine (6 inch J tube) is happiest burning small twigs. It can cope with split logs, but it strongly prefers wood thinner than my wrist. I suspect the large logs you talk about Ernie burning in his RMH would make mine very sad - perhaps an inevitable difference in build quality.
Mine (8" J-tube with masonry bell) can burn anything from twigs to 4-5" split logs. I find that twigs burn down into a heap of coals too fast, but medium or larger dry wood makes an inferno as long as the feed tube is mostly filled. Wrist size is about the smallest for good lasting performance. Round wood is harder to fill the feed tube with vs. split unless you have a good mix of sizes.
It's always better in an RMH to burn faster, not slower. Faster, hotter burns are cleaner burns.
The split stuff burns better because of fluid dynamics. Sharp edges keep the flame stuck to the wood, like a flame holder. Rounded edges (unsplit) provide less for air and fire to "grab onto" so it will slide off and go out or sputter.
The main challenge with burning wood cleanly is the problem of how to transfer the heat from the exothermic process of combustion to the endothermic processes of pyrolysis, tar-cracking and drying (and later reduction, but that's easier since it's post-combustion).
I think small pieces burn easier because there's better heat transfer into the wood from radiation and convection when the wood has a high surface to volume ratio. Turbulent flow also tends to move the reactions forward, with higher rates of heat transfer by convection, mixing or both. (Besides the RMH, you can see an extreme case of this with some Imbert? gasifiers which actually feed air in to a central point with an array of focused nozzles in order to maximize gas turbulence. )
In the RMH, the large amount of primary air (and no secondary air) means that all the char is burned up, so that isn't available as a heat source to drive pyrolysis and drying. This contrasts with a conventional woodstove (and gasifiers for producing woodgas) which usually limit primary air to create char (or at least limit how much air goes into the bed of char). Char is then available to help drive pyrolysis and drying (and reduction).
The RMH/RMS is essentially a simple downdraft gasifier operated with plenty of primary air. The main reason they are less smoky is that the cooler tar gas (smoke) that results from pyrolysis passes through the hotter combustion zone. The high temperature heat drives the tar-cracking processes and initiates combustion.
I think one could, in theory, use a different gasifier with a RMH, in order to obtain different properties, like perhaps making it easier to use different fuels. The main issue is that those gasifiers are often driven by a fan, air compressor, vacuum or other source of air pressure besides just the draft from a chimney/stack-effect (natural convection). The J-tube has less pressure-drop than other gasifiers, so it works better on natural draft alone.
When your only air pressure is from stack-effect, it works better to run it wide-open. Rather than try to get a turn-down ratio, RMH design has apparently taken advantage of it's higher efficiency heat-exchangers to go in a completely different direction, and just use small fuel. The small fuel is easier to start so there's less need and less advantage to having a fire that can burn all night in a high turn-down ratio stove.
Another general approach to clean burning that some gasifiers use is to preheat the air. This works well but since air is an insulator it requires a high surface-area heat exchanger (like in a RMH), so it's usually skipped to keep it smaller and lighter weight.
I guess an advantage to a RMH is that it can use a lot of free on-site materials, and the mass provides thermal storage. A disadvantage is that they might tend to be too heavy to be shipped, so they tend to be custom built. The pebble bed design is an example of how the thermal storage could be added afterward, so that is a design that might be better for a product that could be purchased and shipped.
I also think the design could be made smaller if desired, if an electric air blower was used. This is basically what we're seeing for example in modern (natural gas) "condensing" boiler, where a more effective and compact heat exchanger is used, and the exhaust temperature is low enough to condense steam.
We are using our rocket mass heater for the second winter now. It uses 6 inch tubing and the J Tube is made of firebrick... Anyhow I’ve been starting it lately with a small pile of old coals from outdoor fires in the past mixed with small bits of wood left on the floor from making kindling, sometimes a small piece of paper wadded up, and some small match stick diameter wood pieces. I kinda build a pile of that stuff and then make a loose wall of small, dry kindling between that and my burn tube. I’ve been using small pieces of kindling that were dipped in pine sap to get that going. That or “fatwood” pieces from the base of dead pine branches (the wood infused with sap). Anyhow I’ve learned that if I build that kindling wall to constrict the air going to the burn tube, then the air that does go through acts like a bellows on the embers and fire.
After burning some good, dry wood (usually pine) I put in wood that is wetter, or harder wood, round branches, etc., but always with some good burning wood mixed in.
Also old furniture wood and pallet wood burn very well. I have pieces of old furniture and some flooring boards and molding set aside if I ever need good hot burning kindling or firewood.
Would the extra moisture released from burning green wood in a rocket mass heater reduce the temperatures within the burn tunnel enough to risk not having a complete burn? I have never dared burn any in my RMH as don't want to cause the build up of creosote within the very long chimney.
John Derry
As a general rule, just stick with the dry stuff.
what species of trees are best for first year burning? What species should be seasoned for two years at a minimum?
In a cold climate: black locust. And when you split it to wrist size or smaller, two summer months is plenty of drying time.
Stack the wood in a sunny location and cover at least the top to keep most of the rain off. It seems to me like most hardwoods will dry in one summer down to 20-25% moisture content. In theory wouldn't that be enough for a downdraft gasifier? I think so, but it may depend on the case. After 2 years it's probably dry to 10-15% MC.
Make sure the burner is getting hot enough.
It may help a bit to use the radiant heat from the stove to help pre-dry the wood , just be careful about fire hazards.
In their discussion of woodsheds and size needed- a woodshed is a great place to store dry wood, NOT to dry green wood. Green wood dries best stacked in single rows on pallets, piled at right angle to prevailing wind, in full sun, with the top (but not sides) covered. Wind dries wood faster than sun, so that’s the primary consideration. Once the wood is dried this way, THEN it can be stored in a shed.
Look up what is considered a hardwood and what is considered a soft wood. Only use hardwoods. Softwoods like Pine, Spruce, Silk Tree, etc are no good for 3 reasons. #1, the resins in these woods, when burned, coat your stack and can eventually cause a buildup witch can cause a fire in the stack. Some experts disagree. They say that once these high resin woods are dried/seasoned, there isn't as much resin and since you should be cleaning your stack yearly, this stack fire worry isn't really a problem. However, regardless if these experts are correct or not, there is another HUGE reason not to bother using softwoods...#2, they simply burn way to fast and that means you are CONSTANTLY feeding wood in your stove. I know this from experimentation on my own and it's very true. Softwoods are simply not worth the inconvenience. I have used pine lumber, though, and for some reason it burns much slower than seasoned pine branches, but it's still best to just use wood from hardwood trees, like oak. #3, Imho, many of these softwoods stink when burned, especially spruce. BTW, you cannot tell a hardwood by it's strength, that's not what make hardwood a hardwood. For instance, spruce branches are hard as hell, but they are actually a softwood. Look for a list online of what is hard and what is soft. It has to do with fibrosity and density, not the actual hardness or strength of the wood. One way to know if a wood is hard or soft is if it is a fast growing tree or not. Fast growing trees, like Mimosa and Silk Tree, have wood that is less dense and are therefore soft wood. But you would have to be around trees a lot to know what grows fast and what doesn't. Any weed that you know of that will grow into a tree, like mimosa and silk tree, are all soft wood.
The difference between hardwood and softwood is leaves vs needles. That’s it. All deciduous trees are classed as hardwood, conifers as softwood, despite something like poplar being way ‘softer’ than, say, western yellow pine.
The volume is missing
Thermal mass. Slow to heat/ slow to cool.
One person in this video is in a t shirt, everyone else has layers on, why?
Because there is snow on the ground outside and we were outside before the video started. Also, the big door was open - we closed it to make the video. And .... once the door closed, we were all quite a bit warmer, even though the fire was pretty much out.
Yr 2 made a big mistake. Free wood too much free wood. Enough wood to cover 3 hard winters. Greedy mistake. Now I'm gonna have make a giant stirling engine and another rocket to operate the engine to use up all this wood.
Donkey, you can sell that dead manzanita to Aquarium hobby folks for good money!!! NO joke! let me know if you need direction, but you could sell for really good money...
the guys buddy would have a smaller carbon footprint if he didnt have ....................14 kids...............just sayin..........
You're right. Everyone should only be allowed to have 2 kids. This way, not only is the carbon footprint smaller, but since 2 or less children per kid will eventually mean the demise of the human race, this works out best in the longrun since eventually there will be no humans at all which translates to a ZERO carbon footprint on the planet as a whole. Right?
Now, do you see how sill what you just said sounds?