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Rocket Mass Heater - On Steroids
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- Опубліковано 18 гру 2012
- www.BigelowBroo...
This is the final design of the rocket mass heater for the aquaponic geodesic dome greenhouse. It goes a bit above-and-beyond what the typical heater does!
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As an ex-boilerman in a local Sawmill I can tell you the worst thing that can happen to the feed line is fire creeping up through the fuel and reaching the storage bin. We had that happen a couple times and it was very difficult to extinguish. The vertical door that you installed will help but a vertical separation from the storage bin to the sloping feed tray is the best way. A door at the bottom of the storage bin that lets fuel fall into the delivery tray ensures separation and so that fuel doesn't build up in the feed tray. Vibrating the sloping feed tray ensures fuel goes all the way down each time your control system calls for fuel. I know it sounds more complicated but you can't be too safe. A fire in the fuel bin could be disastrous. That vertical door that you used is also a very good idea. Nicely done project!
The 2nd most viewed video this year triples the views of number 3! With 264,007 (268,862 total), it was published at the end of last year. It shows some extreme enhancements we made to the rocket mass heater to try to extract as much heat as possible from it. I'm still burning pellets in it without any issues...but I am currently working on a new design for next season! Rocket Mass Heater - On Steroids
do you have a cost comparison of fuel pellets vs wood?
Logan Mailandt the pellets are clearly more money, but the gain is the convenience. Over time, the user would learn the ratio of pellets over time, and be able to add that specific quantity to the system all at once. Only having to return periodically to fill the system back up for the next burn. The wood fuelled heat would consume a chamber full of fuel much more rapidly, requiring the user be present much more often.
All that said, wood pellets aren't too expensive, and are much more affordable when used in a more efficient systems than the conventional pellet heater.
I can gather my own firewood but must purchase wood pellets. The ones I'm using are $7 can for a 40lb bag and I would rather burn nearly free firewood over 7 dollar a day pellets. Although he may be able to increase his efficiency by throttling down the pellet feed rate. His exhaust to outside temp seems too high, wasted money.
Somebody give this man a cookie! And make it a golden one! As thanks for excellent home-engineering contribution to mankind!
Yes he "re-invented" how to warm up water using all existing technologies known to mankind since the ancients .
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You could use attach a peltier TEG generator on top of the warming radiator, apply cool water to the other side of the peltier module, before it enters the radiator, and use that resulting DC to power that fan.
Actually I had a similar plan but I planned to use TEG units instead of a radiator. They like 500 to 600 degrees. My only concern is the barrel may get too hot for them. They can get 800 degrees. So long as you keep enough water flowing through the TEG units they should be alright. I'd add some redundancy on the water pumps and I even considered adding an elevated water reservoir in case the pumps gave out. If you design it right in a pinch the heating water can keep it circulating. Maybe not enough to save the TEG units though. If they get too hot it burns out the thermal chips. I'd run the pumps off a back up battery and keep a minimum of two pumps in the system. The newer 100 watt units I think run around $700 so you don't want to kill a couple of those over a dead $30 pump or a black out.
Or run the fan off a sterling engine
I use cold outside air, coming in thru my ash pit, rather than already heated room air, to feed the firebox. It means less lost room heat, and cracks & room vents don't tend to pull in cold outside air. You have the pellet chute as well, but that could be sealed with leather or plastic. I found this to make a huge difference in the comfort of peripheral areas of the house.
you2tooyou2too oh?
great idea... here's another twist... run the feed pipe from outside under ground so the 0 degree outside air is warmed by the ground to 50 degrees then goes to the stove air feed.
@@nickrowe9221 The air to the fire needs to be as warm/hot as possible so as not to cool the fire and diminish combustion efficiency. This is true for any wood fired heater. Outside air is fresh, room air is stale. Use the stale warm room air to feed the fire. Use the fresh air to breathe.
Great vid - i have only one comment on this design: you may want to consider a heat exchanger at the aquaponics location to exchange heat to the water the fish are in. Fish emit nitrates as waste and these nitrates will corrode any metal parts in your system. The heat exchanger for the pond will need to be a material that can tolerate the high nitrate concentrations - such as a plastic unit rather than metal - since it is submerged in the pond it will not be subjected to very hot water.
I have seen some systems that combine the pond with a plant hydroponics set up so the plants extract the nitrite nitrate and ammonia and this also helps the fish.
i like it when maintenance men make systems rather than engineers. I've busted open hundreds of feet of concrete to get to steam lines in the earth and under the cement floor. When things get corroded or if something breaks down, you'll just be going to home depot all the time. I'm super pessimistic about anything complex. When thinking about sustainable energy and locally obtained fuel, simplicity and locally found maintenance material is a value much higher than convenience.
Johnmark Hatfield great comment. Having the ability to service and using quality materials a real cost saver in the long run. As we said at work. Ain't got the time to do it right but we got the time to do it twice or three times.
That's engineers and pencil pushers. Knew an engineer once pretty sure he worked for the railroad.
Great comment and hope you have great days.
Johnmark: I spent 27 years as a machinist/welder/jig and fixture builder, I agree with you 100% Keep It Simple, as possible. I spent many years in an industrial toolroom working with industrial engineers where I built tooling to make or assemble parts, complex designs trying to accomplish to many things at one time were a nightmare to keep running and production suffered.
Keep It Stupid Simple KISS
Interesting setup. But I would not use a box fan laying down. Most all have sleeve/thin bushing mount for the motor shaft. Its made to be run with shaft horizontal. Those mounts will wear out soon or cause motor to run with friction as the weight of the stator and fan blades push downward.
But they're $15
@@doumardose9785 Your mentality is exactly the reason China owns us.
That heater is producing as much heat as possible without continually increasing the wood charge. Built with readily accessible parts. So well thought out. Two thumbs up !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks for the positive feedback. This heater is still running great. One of these day's I'll do an update video.
Having some of the heat "leak" into the building actually works out well to heat the space. It's a fairly good balance between heating the water, air, and mass.
Great! That's Korean traditional heating system, 'Ondol'. They heated rooms from outdoor fire, cooking with the fire. The heated air flows under floors warming rooms. Warm foot. Free from smoke. They take off shoes indoors, enjoying comfortableness.
Now they flow heated water under the floor through pipelines.
It worked well over the winter. I did another video about pulling it apart and doing some repair work. I have a new design I'm working on this summer and will do another update late this year.
keeping the dome in the 50's over the winter is fine for the plants. I didn't want to make it more complicated to run. The ground mass has been slowly raising in temperature the more I burn. That was sort of the goal I was aiming for.
a few things - if you cross break those sheet metal panels, or add a hem to the edges, they will be a lot stiffer and stay flat. if there's a local sheet metal shop they can probably do that for you.
also, any time you have a wood fire and you're trying to remove heat from it, you have to be careful because if you strip the heat from the exhaust gases then they can condense inside of the flue pipe. all the tars and resins (which turns into creosote) will clog up if your flue gases are less than 200 degrees. unless, of course, you're able to get 100% combustion in your stove, which is possible, but on start up and shut down you will not likely be able to get 100% combustion, as the system is not hot enough.
Did you add a means to control the water's temp? Probably would want some electronic mixer to ensure that the water won't scald the fish or raise the temp of their water too quickly.
it would be a good idea to wrap your exhaust stack tube with copper tubing and run water through it to heat more water, why waste the heat
I love it when a plan comes together
The water will boil out of the radiators and the heat just domes out of the cover. It's happened twice now. Usually if we lose power, I usually run down it shut it off before the water boils out.
the hammer mill pulverizes the wood into sawdust, and then you can feed it into the pellet mill. (they aren't able to grind up material, just compress it together)
I would not use aluminum in contact with the aquaponics water. Only stainless steel should be in contact with the fish water. It would be safer to use a closed loop system for the heating fluid. It would also keep the radiators clean and free of outside sediments. It is a little more work and cost but much safer for the fish and you. Aluminum is no good for the body. Excellent build though. Working mine out in my head now. Most of the materials are onsite and this is what I am doing too.
other than the cost of an additional pump, it should be pretty easy to run a closed loop for the water heater. You could just coil pex into the bottom of the fish pond and run it through the radiators. I wouldn't expect the aluminum impact to be significant, but there's no doubt that you'll get organic plaques forming in the radiators that will eventually foul them and might be difficult to clean.
good point.!. what about copper...?
@@WandersOfficial no copper either mate. Only food grade plastic or stainless steel.
@@llewelyn9084 Coper is anti bacterial, we use it for clean water in homes ...
I am considering using Miscanthus giganteus as my rocket stove fuel. Its a perennial grass hybrid that grows 3/4 inch canes 8 to 12 ft tall. Take 10 or so canes and stick it in the rocket stove and just let it burn down.
Great stuff, love your work and thought you are putting in to your systems.
Interesting idea...wondering if energy density is sufficient? Let us know how that works?
Your filter for the water from the auqaponica to the radiators could benefit from a sump tank. A small tank where the water, after being filtered, flows freely into, and allows any unfiltered sediments to fall out of the water before the water continues into the radiators. :-)
Yes. I'm currently working on a new design that can deal with wood chips.
Love your videos! I'm a California guy who is moving way up north... Edmonton AB, Canada... My wife's family has a big chunk of land that we are going to start a farm on. I see me building something like what you have done at your place so your video's have been a wealth of information. I have done Hydroponics for years and have had Fish tanks most of my life so aquaponics is a natural match for me. Ill be sure to share once I start building. Keep up the good work.
Beautiful design! One thing I'd add: PLEASE make sure you have a carbon monoxide detector when making a home-made heater. One small design mistake can cost you your life.
in my opinion a carbon monoxide detector is a absolute must have no matter what kind of fire place you do have running. lucky we are these detectors exist so it would be a shame to risk your life just to save a few bucks.
Truth is this design leaves less pollution than your basic church candle, a carbon monoxide detector is valuable but it's nessity is overstated.
For this design stove in general , conversely the heat from the outlet of the burn chamber can erode and rust the barrel faster causing open flap es into a room this seems the most hazardous complication in design there should be a solid burn plate over rocket stove into the mass accumulator like a rorer plate in a Optimus petrol ( gasoline ) stove with a barrier plate flame spreader
The first being titanium or stainless and the second being a cheap thick plate steel
U VERY VRAIEY
I am wanting to do the same type of thing with the hot air in the top of my greenhouse. I plan to hang a radiator up in the top of the greenhouse. I was planning to make it closed loop system as the radiator is aluminum. I think that the best tubing to use in the fish tank and/or slump is PEX with aluminum in the middle. It has PEX on the outside and PEX on the inside and aluminum in between. This is used in in floor heating systems to spread the heat out.
It's hard to tell from the video, but the air is pulled through the bottom radiator. The water is pumped in parallel for the 2 radiators. I"m using the existing pump that is pumping the water for the aquaponic system, I've thought about adding a loop to the chimney inside the building at some point...but that pipe is expensive. Maybe someday. Sorry no wind turbine...we don't have enough wind to justify the cost.
Really nice set up on your dome. In this video you mention that it will still get colder in January; Another way you could maintain some of your heat in the dome would be adding a heat exchanger inside your flue. Old gas water heaters had a central chimney running up the center of the tank, inside this straight pipe was a spiraled piece of metal. Taken out of the flue it is simply a straight rectangular sheet of metal with regular bends to create a spiral effect increasing surface contact. if the fit is snug enough it could be drawn through the flue with edges touching the full length without having to weld it the whole way. Doing this along the length where you have the 10" cover with fan could give you a few more degrees. The same process also goes for between your flue pipe and the 10" cover pipe (with fan). The longer the air circulates across the hot metal the more temperature you will retain.
Also, while I don't know the soil content of the greenhouse floor, if you want it to absorb and transfer the heat a little better don't let the ground dry out, moist soil keeps a better temperature when the air cools off... Though depending on where your runoff goes the ground may have plenty of moisture.
Also curious what temperature range your fish tank goes through day to night, while I don't know much about the biology of fish I do know the water temp affects their behavior/ feeding habits, etc.
I grew up with a wood burning stove for a heater that my dad put a 55gal drum upside down over & let the exhaust pipe run through it to catch radiating heat & pump it to the rest of the house via a squirrel cage blower & 6" pipework along the ceiling. It worked great but not as efficient as yours... But then again were in Texas so it didn't have much to contend with. I was always trying to make it more efficient though.
Great work!! 7 years later (thanks youtube!) just a question of concern I have: Taking away flue gas heat could bring down the due point of the moisture in the gasses causing it to condense and turn into water. Have you had any problems with puddles of water at the bottom of the flue, and thus corroding the flue pipe? This can be seen in condense boilers that have to discharge the water frequently.
yes. The pipe has rotted where it exits the greenhouse. I need to replace it!
@@Bigelowbrook would a possible solution to the flue corosion be ,to mount a zinc rod thats in hot water tanks in there ?
Have you experienced any corrosion inside your radiators? What's your typical pH levels? What material are the radiators made from? And what purpose was the radiators originally for, if auto then how did you clean chemicals out of it.
There are new aluminum radiators for an Acura Legend. Typically it's not recommend to put AL in your system. pH stays around 7.0 most of the time.
Thank you. I think I will do this also. I may make my own radiators out of stainless though, depends on what my boss will sell the material to me for. I asked my initial question because I was afraid of corrosion with aluminum and copper. So I have one more question. How long has it been in your system, and have you had any adverse effects from the radiator install?
It's hard to split wood that's over a couple of feet long. My splitter only goes to 24 inches. Wood tends to jamb in the chuts with their uneven knobs and sticks. If you get any back draft, the flames come up and it can come out through the feed area. It's very difficult to put out the fire once these start to burn backwards!
We'll find out at the end of this heating season. Cutting wood is very time consuming. And I have to keep feeding it wood every 30-45 minutes. I can dump in pellets and it will burn for 12+ hours.
but how do you make pellets though?
This is fantastic. I'm interested in both aquaponics, and rocket mass heaters, so finding y'all is gold. Thank you!
Nicely done! You've done a great job not only with the build but with the video. I enjoyed it!
I've been researching this for years. this is bar none the best design and video I've seen. Well done.
This heater worked fine with wood burning, but you're right that it now produces too much heat burning the pellets. Most of the time I'll let it run for one bag's worth (3 hours) and let it go out. I don't need to insulate the outside panels since I do want some of the heat to go into the air space. Plus, if there's a power failure and the fan can't run, the heat will radiate out through the cover. I'm going to rebuild this after the heating season is over and probably go down to a 6" chimney
yup. The radiators are easy to remove so I could do this. There's no doubt you want to run them dry! I can also let more heat right into the air by removing one of the panels which changes the air flow. It's not hi-tech like a real heating system, but it will do the job!
Brilliant design youve come up with. you thought your way till the end. Nice choice to incorporate the heat at different Temperatures to their designated tasks.
Similar to what I've been working on. No pellets though as I am striving towards self-sustainability and pellets simply will not do. But, running wood through a shredder allows me to produce smaller sized wood for the burner and thermal valve feed control.
, brilliant. I love the way the rocket stoves continue to evolve. I feel like we're just beginning to scratch the surface or what's possible.
This year I'm buying pellets to see how much I'll go through. If it's a lot, I'll look into purchasing a hammer and pellet mill. The little cheapo ones aren't really rated for wood so it would be several thousand dollars to get a nice system.
I have about 55 acres here, about 1/2 of it woodland. There's enough scrap wood here to keep this heater running for a long time. I'd really like to get a hammer mill and pellet mill. We'll see how much it costs to buy pellets this year, then decide if it's worth the investment for the equipment. It would probably be easier to make the pellets out of the hay from the fields!
You might consider to redo your feeding system. Professional wood pelett heater usually use a screw conveyor
. this would make your stove more secure and solve all the issues you have regarding manual controlling the feeding. Plus you can build a big pelett storage below your stove and feed directly from there risk free.
The point of this design it to not need electricity to feed the pellets.
@@Bigelowbrook Right. For that, you could use some thermoelectric elements to run the screw conveyor. They are silent and should provide enough power for that. Of cours you would have to manually feed at the beginning when the oven is cold.
Awesome. First video I've seen of someone utilizing every bit of heat generated.
To transfer maximum heat, try a counter-current heat exchanger design on the chimney.
Does this give enough time for the air to 'cook off' the rest of the exhaust. My understanding of the way rocket stoves work to get maximum efficiency is that they continue burning the smoke while it flows up. It would seem to me that the radiators would be sucking out too much heat from the burning chamber.
He said the barrel exceeds 500 degrees (Fahrenheit I presume), which is plenty to keep it as intended.
But the entire barrel shroud / radiator / fan assembly is completely nonsensical, even a very small section of pipe at the inside of the barrel would work far better eliminating all other components. And if the barrel was not intended for cooking you replace it with brick / clay which will make for a slower and more even heat distribution.
I really like all the heat exchange you're getting.
I think you might be losing some heat to expansion, going from the riser to the next chamber. That might explain the 10-degree temperature drop in the diagram.
You have mentioned pallets... what about wood chips? Gravity fed wood chips rocket stove? Would that work?
the 4.4KW heater would just be for the water part, which is just a fraction of the heat the rest of the unit is putting out. Between heating the water, thermal mass, and air, it costs far less to heat with pellets than it would with oil or propane.
I've never tried to bypass any of the rafts to heat just the fish....I just wanted to avoid having the system too complex. I have to be really careful not to heat the water up too much over the air since it will start to condensate too much. I already have a problem over the winter with powdery mildew when it gets too humid!
So 40 lbs of pellets and can only get to 54 degrees in the house? Something is off about this setup.
That was ground temperature.
The air is being heated to 94 degrees he says. Heating the ground is more for radiant heat. The 5 degrees that the ground is being warmed up by doesn't seem like much but really makes a difference for hours even after the fire has gone out
You may want to consider the risks of Legionnaires Disease associated with any condensation build up in the floor pipes. Perhaps using a fluid medium for the heat conduction and venting out whatever air that remains slightly warm as an acceptable loss. Standing moisture can pose serious health risks if not dealt with regularly.
houses are far more energy efficient than a greenhouse (here in New England) so we need to produce a lot of heat at night. The unit burns far more efficiently and hotter than a regular pellet stove. It's also is used to heat the water and the extra heat is stored under the floor. It also costs less than $500 to build and doesn't require electricity to run (but I do use a fan to pump the air under the floor). There really isn't a comparison between this and a home pellet stove.
This is excellent. I love this Idea. May I suggest holding seminars at the Mother Earth News Festival. They had a person doing the rocket furnace stove there last year. If you can combine this with the aquaponics you mentioned, you should have great success! I am going to keep a close watch on your upcoming videos and probably use your build in the near future. Thank you so much for this video!
Great design my only worry is copper in the radiators could become a problem. Great engineering!
One pound of pellets is around 8000 BTU. A 40lb bag cost $4.18 for a total of 320,000 BTU's/bag. I'm finding that the premium bags are no better than the cheaper ones. In fact, if they have softwood in them, they burn even better.
Not bad. but wouldn't running pipes though the heater and blowing air though them work better, and be less complicated?
How about referencing your source??? This heater does exactly what I need it to do..puts heat into different systems from the one unit. I have no problems using external power source on this heat to accomplish this goal.
If you isolated the water pumped from the tank water by passing it through tubing placed in the fish tank you wouldn't clog up your radiators and you could run the separate pump for the heating water on a thermostat, no chance of boiled fish that way.
nice and cozy all over the green house area due to underground heating system, love the idea, nice...
thanks I hope to do something like this for my greenhouse & lots of the rest of my farm.
nice to see drawings & facts how it maybe similar.
Very cool design man! Thanks for sharing! Looking forward to updates!
I had to look at the description again. I am like the air is 52 degrees. That is too cold, awww but for a greenhouse that's good. How did it work in January and the other really cold months. That looks like a great design. I can't wait to see the video of the improvements. When I get my greenhouse I can't wait to implement some of these idea's. Janice
Awesome! Just Awsome! I was trying to come up with a way to heat my system with coils in the ground. I never thought of radiators. Thanks for the idea! Keeping Tilapia inside all winter is becoming a pain in the arse.
The heat pulling through that fan will burn up the motor in fan.i did this many yrs ago.FIRE..giving you a heads up
I'm impressed. Using at rocket engine to both heat the floor and heat water is a great application. I've seen more recent attempts at heating the floor where they put insulation down below the floor because they didn't want to lose heat to the earth. I think this might be misguided. Even if you are heating the earth for several meters below the floor, it's just more thermal mass storing heat.
The real advantage is insulating the perimeter. Heat won’t go down as much as out, because it will move to wherever is colder, which is the first few feet below grade. If you live where the frost line is several feet deep I don’t think insulation under the mass is a bad thing.
The ground is often considered a semi-infinite heatsink. The air is similarly often considered an infinite heatsink. We don't like letting heat escape to the outdoors because it can always accept more (act as a heatsink). Unless you have ground insulation, it will do the same thing. The ground is interesting in that it also acts as a thermal mass so if the thermal conductivity is low enough, the benefits of the mass/storage properties can potentially outweigh the negatives of the heatsink properties. It would be interesting to compare the system's performance with and without the ground duct blower on. My hunch is that the ground vents actually reduce efficiency. Even then, their other benefits including improved airflow and a more uniform temperature distribution may outweigh that. Interesting system indeed...
Maybe you could supply the induction air from the underground pipe from outside. (1 line supply) and the second line into the living space.
what a convoluted fantastic design! I will likely never be able to build my own place. I've watched time on videos on earthship and dirtbag houses. I like the relative freedom of design theoretically. it was actually on one of the earthbag videos I saw them talking about a rocket stove. if never heard of it. I tried to find what in the world it was and why it was better but alas my google-fu failed. then today UA-cam randomly out you in my list of might likes... and i liked it. thank you so much for explaining your system. it looks like a great design and I think it's awesome that you keep finding ways to improve!
the radiators take some of the heat that would have just been blown into the ground and put it into the fish water. I could have done it with loops, but I would have had to use stainless steel piping (copper is toxic to the fish) and it would have gotten very expensive!
it's going to be tricky to run for 2 hours. Have you seen the videos of the guys that made the "wood chunkers". Basically it chops the wood into little cubes. I be you could make a hopper that could feed them through. The trick would be to have it big enough so that the chunks don't get caught on it.
A friend of mine were discussing that the other day. We figured it would work really well to use the heat on one side and the water to cool the other. I don't think my machining skill are good enough to build one however.....
My main point is that the ground is already near the temp you want the air, so use the ground as a heat source to preheat the air to near 50 degrees, then you aren't burning anything to get it there. You just need to reverse the flow and draw air from the barrel and feed it as intake air to the heater. If you have enough contact area with the ground, you will effectively raise the temp of the air for free.
yes, most of the loss is through the poly. I've had several people ask about thermal blankets. I'm not a fan of them....expensive and labor intensive. It's easier to just throw some pellets in the heater. ;-)
I don't know if an inline thermostat will contaminate water & fish and get fouled up by fish water & behave erratically. Water heater system can be isolated from fish water by coiling tubes in fish tank for radiant system: heater core/radiator, coiled hydronic pex tubing, etc in water. You can then use some anti-freeze (ethylene glycol or RV potable water) in the system to keep pipes from freezing.
The Blue Tilapia I have are rated at 50-55 degrees for survival and they start dropping at 45. When the temp hit 60 I started moving them into the living room. That move took out 22 of my biggest because I didn't have enough oxygen or filtration. Obviously, I didn't think this through. So back to the drawing board for next cold season. I have a neighbor who is trying an in-ground RMH in a Green house. That may me my solution. I wish I had your forethought or research skills! Love the vids!
Hello, you will want to use the exiting excess heat to preheat new cold incoming air in the winter. This gives you a higher efficiency of the system and a higher room temperature.
Nice job!
There was a fellow who took ceramic "90' angle iron" and criss cross those ceramic angles. this was for a "standard" pellet stove with I believe a vertical pellet supply. the ceramics were tempered and supposedly could sustain higher temps vs. stainless steel and for sure reg. hi carbon steel. It would be worth investigating if the price was better than ss .
It hasn't been an issue, but using aluminum is usually frowned upon as it can become toxic if the pH goes REALLY low. I'm planning on replace them with stainless steel.
Thanks. I've been doing a ton of research on making pellets. My goal is to run this year on purchasing them so I can see how much I'm going to need. Then I'll figure out if it's worth the cost & time to make my own. I would love to be able to. The biggest problem I find is that the smaller mills aren't really designed for wood, but mostly grass/leaves. I rather do wood since I can get truckloads of chips for free!
1:35 grinder and paint makes me look the welder I ain’t
What about combustion chamber being enclosed within barrel filled with water? Then a grafity fed piping system would store hot water in elevated container for later use? Small electric pump would circulate water through fool heating system.
Is it just me coming with this idea or has it been done already?
Whole idea of rocket heater is to generate a lot of heat in short period of time, therefore there is a need for a mass to capture this heat and store it for later use. Water seems to be best for it.
Would using Wood Chips be almost as good as using wood pellets? I watched a rocket stove video once before and the UA-camr says he only uses branches and twigs no thicker than 1 inch.
Which is easy to collect, dry and use in a rocket stove. They never need to cut down a tree or chop wood. So I'm thinking it would be easy to throw branches through a wood chipper and even collect wood chips for free from an arborist.
How much of a gap did you give for chimney and outer casing? Heard too much gap and it won't work.
Surely you can adjust the flow of pellets by fitting a 4volt worm screw electric motor and controlling by a room thermometer?
Maybe I missed it, but were you saying that the key purpose of the radiators was to remove excessive heat from ground system? I know it also runs warmed water over to the fish tanks as well, but that could have been done with hot water loops around your outer barrel right?
I'm not judging, as I've only read about these heaters. I really appreciate your detailed videos and explanations!
I get it . Like a mini in floor heat without the out door boiler. High heat minimal creasote. Thermal mass, slow to heat, slow to cool. Good job.
Just a thought: you could further that idea by running that closed loop into a sump (hole) in the ground. The hole/trench would be filled with crushed glass and insulated from the earth to reduce thermal leaching. At night the glass would release the stored heat. The pump for the loop could be solar powered. Not my idea, similar to something I saw on a BBC series called "It Ain't Easy Being Green." Cheers!
Just WOW!!!
Thank you soooo much for sharing.
5:50 I appreciate all the temperature measurments as well as the care you took to avoid sun radiation to interfere with them.
Alex from Québec, Canada
I can't shut off the water that goes throught the radiators because it will boil out of them. There's so much mass in this system that running it for a 6 hour run only changes the water by 5-6 degrees. This design is nice and simple...don't have to deal with the risk of getting any antifreeze in my water either!
I could probably make a huge hopper out of a 55 gallon drum....but then I would have to lift them even higher to fill it!
Maybe an idea, i would have used stonewool inside de casing wer you radiators are this prevents cooling the hot air.
in the cabin
Seems you've extracted about all the energy available in the wood. Nice work.
Why not install a large funnel into the feedtube with a gate at the bottom of the funnel? That way, all the pellets would flow through.
That a pretty cool set up you have there, just a thought to get off that AC for the box fan is to replace it with an old car radiator fan, 12 volts and pretty cheep from a bone yard.
yup. I've been trying to find one that has enough static pressure to push the air through the piping. They aren't very powerful. :(
Curious, If you reverse the fan over the plastic barrel buried in the floor will it help cool during the summer?
We don't have to reverse it. Just turn it on and cool air blows out from under the grow beds. ;-)
True those are not normal pH ranges for fish and can in and of themselves be a problem for the fish. No need to have heavy metals or other things build up in a system so that they are released as poison when the pH goes out of the acceptable range. Another option for heat exchange in the fish tank is a stainless steel heat exchanger. These can be found at swimming pool shops that sell heaters for pools. However with any closed loop method you end up needing another pump.
Have you thought about feeding the air into the system from outside? Currently all the air that is vented out the chimney must be replaced from air which will enter the room from outside. Directly feeding from outside would eliminate this requirement.
Some of it depends on the plants. Lettuce does well in the cold, but zucchini hardly grows.