David Huang says:
May 18, 2022 at 7:49 pm
If anyone here lives in a climate that requires home heating at some point during the year, and it’s also a region with a reasonable supply of trees I’d like to seriously recommend you look into rocket mass heaters (RMHs). From what I can tell these are a newish development of the Appropriate Technology movement. Many people who have switched from traditional wood stoves to a RMH found they used as much as 90% less wood!
I made one for my home 4 winters ago, retiring my Hearthstone, soapstone woodstove. These past 4 winters I’ve used between 1.25 cords to 1.5 cords of wood each year to heat my place to a much more comfortable temperature. For me this was a wood reduction of about 50% to 60%. In addition I have all but eliminated my need for supplemental heating with the traditional propane furnace, reducing my propane use by 80%-90%. I most just use propane for the cook stove and when I’m away from home for multiple days, thus unable to do a burn in the RMH.
These are related to masonry stoves but much cheaper and easier to construct. You don’t need to be a master mason! They certainly won’t work for everyone’s situation but in my opinion you would be doing yourself a favor to look into and learn about them at least. I found most of the educational resources to build mine over at permies.com. They have a forum section dedicated just to rocket mass heaters. https://permies.com/f/260/rocket-mass-heaters I also documented the construction of mine on my blog which some might find of interest. Here is a link to that entry. https://theartisthomestead.com/rocket-mass-heaters-increase-your-wood-burning-efficiencies-50-to-90-percent/
While these can be made in a future that is much rougher than where we are at now, it would be far easier to do before collapse gets seriously underway, while it’s still fairly easy to get access to higher quality materials like fire bricks and ceramic insulation. You’ll likely have a more efficient RMH as a result too. Is it worth doing? Consider how much happier you would be only needing to chop 2 cords of firewood a year to heat your home instead of say 10 cords! Then consider you might find yourself needing to do this by hand if you can’t keep your chainsaw operational! If collapse happens really slowly where you are then you just get to save thousands of dollars in home heating instead.
http://permies.com/f/260/rocket-mass-heaters
http://theartisthomestead.com/rocket-mass-heaters-increase-your-wood-burning-efficiencies-50-to-90-percent/
I have come to realize that men are not born to be free. Liberty is a need felt by a small class of people whom nature has endowed with nobler minds than the mass of men. -Napoleon
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