Masonry Stoves

[Hogleg]

Any one have a masonry stove?

Did you build it, or buy it?

I am looking for plans to build on on the cheap, $1000 or so. The kits for sale on the net are out of my budget. I have done alot of internet research and most sites try to scare you away from building your own. I have heard the books that are available are not to current. Is there a book that would teach someone to build a masonry stove/heater? Are there plans available.
I am going to build a 2100 square foot single story home with a 720 sq. ft great room, where the heater will be.
Thank you for any info.

[MadTripper]

Forgive me for not knowing, but one of the foxfire books, I'm thinking 1 which has the log cabin building portion, has instructions on building a fireplace. Details about the throat and so on are included. If you are looking for more of a stove instead of fireplace I'm not real sure. There are some ideas around ferro-cement that may work and be on the cheap side.

Tripper

[machinemaker]

I don't have any personnel experience with masonry stoves, but I like the idea of heating a large thermal mass. Have you gone to the web site of manufacturers and looked at any cut away photos or drawings? I do this when I want to build things, prospect for good ideas and concepts from a variety on builders and take what looks best. On some equipment I have been able to find mechanical drawings and parts lists. You might expand you web search to include things like bio-mass, combustion, thermal mass, thermal storage, etc.
kent

[Westcliffe01]

This is the place to get plans: http://mha-net.org/html/bookstore.htm

There is code now on the design of masonry heaters and if you follow one of the plans in that booklet, you will have no problems with your building inspector.

[conundrum]

One of the cord wood building books I have contains a pretty detailed article about a masonry stove/mass. It is titled Complete Book of Cordwood Masonry Housebuilding. By Rob Roy. Maybe the local library? c.

[humbug]

I was lucky enough to visit Rob Roy the cordwood builder at his home. He showed me how the masonary heater worked. It seems like a really good idea. However from everything I have been able to find on them the kits for the inside of the heater are pretty pricey. That coupled with the expense of building the chimney for the thermal mass seems to bring the price up pretty high.

[RobertRogers]

Humbug, I took Rob Roy's cord end home construction course several years ago. It was good, learned alot. Saw his stove too.

[humbug]

Robert..He is an interesting guy to talk to isn't he. I am sold on the earthbermed houses, but not sure about round...cordwood or the earthen roof. I prefer a more traditional looking house. I think a Blaze king wood stove would come in a close second to the masonary heaters.

[LeatherneckPA]

Took a little searching, but I finally found the link for the plans I found. I too was running into the "you don't dare do this yourself" warnings of dire consequences and such when I was searching. I printed this off for when I finally buy my land and build my own place. You might find this helpful:

Missouri Designed Masonry Stove (http://www.dnr.mo.gov/pubs/pub781.pdf)

[johnjmw]

I am looking at the "Rocket Stove Mass Heater" from Iyanto Evans. Easy and very inexpensive to build safely. They have a bunch of demos on www.youtube.com but not all of them are thermal mass.

it's made from mostly metal barrels, fire brick and Cob. Oh Ok,,, there is stove pipe in there also some where.

John

Opps, that was by Ianto Evans and Leslie Jackson who wrote the book

[JAK]

I suggest getting information from different sources and mixing it all together to come up with what works best for you. The 'modern' masonry stoves, kit or custom built, are very nice but also very expensive. I think the rob-roy type stoves used in some cob and cordwood homes are way more practical. I think you can get a lot of good ideas and information from sites like this one also.

http://www.aprovecho.org/web-content/publications/publications.html

Finally, the design and construction of your home can greatly simplify or complicate what you need to do in the way of wood heat. Climate is another consideration of course. One of the benifits of a smaller and better insulated home is that you not only need less fuel, but also a smaller heat source, and your mass storage will be more effective, and any interior walls will be relatively less of a barrier to heat distribution. So more insulation and smaller windows is a good start. If you are including passive solar in your design you might actually need a larger heat source even though you reduce you total fuel use, unless you are able to incorporate effective thermal shutters somehow. Incorporating hot water heating should also be well thought out beforehand rather than later. I am not sure if anyone really ever does a good job of that unless it is built primarily as a hot water heater and secondarily as a space heater rather than the other way around. There again I think Rob-Roy and Aprovecho are nearer the mark than the folks that are building more conventional wood stoves and masonry stoves. If a space is small enough and well insulated enough, the hot water needs exceed the space heating needs during much of the heating season, and so hot water heating needs to be more than just an add-on.

I think a good goal for 2100sqft would be to get your hot water and space heating needs down to 3 cords of wood, with 1 cord of that being for hot water. That would require solar hot water in summer, and some sort of transition from solar hot water to wood fired hot water in the shoulder seasons. In the mid winter when space heat exceeds your hot water needs you might need to remove some insulating panels or incorporate some radiators in order to get more space heat out of your stove. More likely you problem will be that you get too much space heat on mild days when all you want is more hot water, so some supplimental hot water heating might be needed, electric or whatever. You might also learn to naturally use less hot water on mild days and more how water on cold days, or less hot water in general.