900 sq. ft. home heating needs

[freedomlives]

This video is longer, but also a few minutes before the video posted above.

[matt walker]

Looking good there man. So, you have no vertical exhaust hooked up to the thing yet? It was just venting out the bench? That will make a big difference in the draft, for sure. Get a vertical section hooked up at the end and things will go much better. Not only that, but your burn looks almost perfect. A cover for the feed that obstructs a portion of it is necessary and will solve any issues you are having there. I use a small pot, a lot of folks use bricks, but something over half of the feed or so and it will be just fine. If the feed was full of fuel it wouldn't do that, but since the fuel is almost gone there is enough volume in the feed for the velocity of the incoming air to be slower than it would if there was some obstruction, allowing the smoke/fire to creep up.

Things will also improve as you dry it all out. Keep going, it's looking great!

[freedomlives]

Thanks for the encouragement Matt!

It was just flowing out the first section (~5 feet) of horizontal duct.

The sealing of the barrel appears to be complete, which I was worried about because it was really tight fitting into that corner-- the back side of the barrel I sealed by blindly throwing down cob and tamping at a board! Also, in placing the heat riser back on the core, I did knock off random chunks of core that needed to be patched up-- just glad the whole thing didn't collapse!

Will keep y'all posted as the build progresses. So far I've made photographs as I've gone along, fairly step-by-step. Dunno if I'm working on it tomorrow, because its nice weather right now to plant potatoes...

-Andrew

[mannytheseacow]

Hey Andrew, it's looking real good there. I can't expand much on what Matt said. Mine still does what yours is doing if it's above 40* outside, not to mention you're still wet and have no exhaust riser... I'd say you're doing just fine!

Also wanted to say welcome; I don't remember if I did before. Are you from Slovak Republic or just living there now? My great grandparents came to the US from Slovakia, and I've always wanted to go there... never been able to afford the exchange rate though. Their last name was Mikalek. Cheers, enjoy that nice weather this weekend!

[4seasons]

I can't tell from the video what kind of wall that is is the corner. When you get this thing up and running well, that barrel is going to get hot. While I don't think it would cause a problem with brick or concrete, a lesser wall will not be able to take the heat off the barrel at the few inch clearance you are running.

[freedomlives]

Hi Manny,
I married a Slovak, that's how I ended up here. I'm from Atlanta. Where in Slovakia were they from?

Plane tickets are expensive, but this is actually a pretty cheap country to visit, especially compared to the rest of the EU, and it has the old castles, old churches, old town squares, etc. for which Americans often visit Europe. As an example of costs, unless you are at some really fancy restaurant, a 16 ounce glass of beer will cost less than $2, and a meal at dinner can be as little as $10 per person, depending on what is ordered. Most restaurants have lunch specials which are about 3.50EUR ($5). Its hard to get a burger and fries for that in the U.S.... Accommodation in pensions and privats (privately run accommodation) can be 10 to 20 EUR/night/person. It is also possible to get a cheaper flight to London and then a ticket on one of the low-cost, sardine-tin airlines from there to Slovakia.

This website might tempt you to visit and see where your ancestors are from: http://slovakia.travel/en

4seasons-

The wall is made of mud bricks, then plaster, so it will hold up to the heat. There isn't even a few inches clearance-- the barrel is touching the wall! Maybe not the best thing, but only after I got the heat riser put on top of the core did I realize how close, and since some bits of core fell off I didn't want to move it around any more...

[pa_friendly_guy]

If you feel the clearance to the wall is a potential problem why don't you cobb behind the barrel up against the wall. Give your self as much non-combustible material as possible between the barrel and the plaster wall. It will add to your mass as well. Just a thought, you can always run it awhile and see if there is really a problem or not. Then do what ever you feel is best to fix the problem if there really is a problem.

[freedomlives]

I don't think it will be a problem with heat, though I am going to fill the "hole" behind the barrel with cob just to prevent stuff from falling down there. We have kids, and when its not winter and the stove isn't on I'm sure legos and stuff will find their way to the top, and then would dissappear down the "black hole" to get melted later. Already last winter I found in our kitchen stove a blog of melted green plastic of unknown origin.

[freedomlives]

Its going!

All of the smoke tunnel / basic structure is done, and its been burning for the last three hours or more!

I had a bit of trouble with smoke escaping from cracks in the cob/between mud bricks, etc., partly from making cob without much attention to the clay/sand ratio. The bench still needs a bit more height, and then several finishing coats of cob to seal cracks, and finally lime plaster will go on.

There is a bit of a problem that somewhere in the chimney there is a hole or crack likely from rats in the past-- the particular chimney was not used for perhaps two decades or more and I found corncobs in it-- such that when the stove is starting and the smoke is much cooler and heavier it finds its way through some rat tunnel and out a crack in the plaster in another room!

At the last minute, I added the cubby-hole, which I'm going to put a door on, as a place to culture yogurt, kombucha, sourdough, etc-- hopefully it will just at that point get warm and not hot. I put 4 thermocouples into the flue system, so the last time I checked, the first one (where the smoke leaves the barrel and enters the flues) was showing about 85°C and the last one (about a meter before the smoke leaves out the chimney) was showing 40°C.

Here is an album with construction photos up to where I am burning it today:


Materials cost was:
2 bags of perlite -- 13€
16 white, ordinary bricks -- 5€
Cleanout fittings -- 10.50€
Hydrochloric acid -- 3€
Silver stove paint -- 2€
Large bolt and nut to plug hole in barrel -- 2€
500kg of sand for cob/earth plaster -- 12€
Total cash outlay-- 46.50€

The barrel was given to me by a neighbor with a scrap yard, the clay roof tiles and sheet metal (used as form for heat riser) were from when we did our roof (standing seam replaced the old clay tile roof-- hundreds of old clay roof tiles stacked in our yard), rocks and concrete chunk infill were waste from previous demolition/reconstruction projects, plywood was recycled from a shipping crate-- so no cash outlay for these things. Clay of course is free-- just my labor to dig it out of the ground.

For lime plaster there'll be a bit more cost...

Of course, a simpler design would have needed only two cleanout fittings, etc...

I wanted specifically to go as low cost as possible, even though I could afford other materials, because I want to show an example for poorer Slovaks and gypsies what they can do for less than they can buy a cheap chinese stove (150€ or so).

Cover the feed hole with a brick does indeed flame outs once the fire is going good.

[matt walker]

Andrew, it looks great! Nice job man, I know how much work that is. If it's working okay now, it will just get better and better as it dries.