Up to my plenum!

[Prescott]

Here goes gang, I have some great progress and great news! I am ecstatic and sharing with the hope that it's contagious. Like anything, take what you want and leave the rest.

Caveat, I am working 62 hours a week and driving at least two if not three hours per day, and spend an occasional weekend with my son, sssoooooo, you can likely infer I may not be the best at verbose replies, steady updates or the like, but I have a window and some free upload time, so put this in your rocket stove and smoke it!

I live in Maine and was having trouble finding local clay. I purchased the missing ingredients through Portland Pottery 3.5 hours away, but it's where my son lives so that worked out...

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I found fire clay, then the red art and grog to fabricate cob to line the bench piping.

That was the final round of ingredients so I built the core core, note the attempted tripwire and swoops at the end of the burn tunnel and turbulator.

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The tripwire is pointing the wrong way, the back end swoops should meet in the middle and the turbulator could be bigger and higher.

BUT, this is a prototype and one of our first rules here (do we have any Matt?!) is RELAX (and have a homebrew or something if you like)

Posting now so as to not loosing progress and will add more momentarily!

WHOOT~p

[Prescott]

So once the core's core was built, sloppily at best mucking around with my 6.5 year old son, we went for it! Hey, relax and make a prototype, share the progress, no pain no gain, let's evolve!

I mixed one bag of fire clay and firestop50 together, wet. That was a work out to say the least, but fun work out, wish I had a paddle mixer... Once mixed I threw in a bag of vermiculite (for reasons I can explain later, mostly because it was what was available!) the size of one of the other bags, volume vs weight as the bags were 50#s and vermiculite is fluffy business. I had to add a bit more to get the right consistency, and was sure to mix very thoroughly, again, a wicked workout but fun stuff!

I packed the bottom, set in the core and packed around it. You'll see that my help didn't pack as hard as me, but we are relaxing!

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We let it sit for 20 ish hours, the put the fire to it gently with a make shift heat riser

I took off the plywood off after a few hours of gentle fire and it steamed nicely

No cracks, very little shrinks dinky! It's softer than I had hoped but looked what I did with some furnace cement...

[matt walker]

Prescott!!!!! Dude!!! Man, seriously, I have been having a not so good day, just running into frustration everywhere. You, my friend, just totally turned my frown upside down! That is incredible man, fantastic progress, and the way it burns! Awesome. You should see my smile when I watched your videos and looked at the pics. Thank you so much for sharing this here, and fantastic job man. That thing is working like a dream!

[rjdudley]

You know, even if it failed (which would be very hard to do) the bonding of father and son is priceless. Everything else learned after the build is bonus material. Make the most of these years and plumb them for everything you've got. The RMH is secondary. The bond will endure long after any fire is extinguished.
Ray

[Prescott]

Matt, Ray, thanks so much, it sounds light, but your feedback is both touching and necessary. I have gone out on a limb a bit, perseverated a wee, the gang reeled me in a bit and then gave the "get out there" spank and here we are!

I ran out of time uploading a video on my free wifi situation, but will post more with comments here as it's where it needs to be on servers and such.. (Besides it appears that some photos post while others lead to photobucket and have at it if you like, it's completely RWMH related...

So I got an early day day last week, a smart and small training group works wonders! I threw together a heat riser, slapped on some furnace cement (bought during lunch break) and, well, got itchy and fired the thing up. The juices were flowing and I went for it. Should they be visible, the cracks in the top of the heat riser are from me "manipulating" the stove pipe to accept the connection to the chimbley... I ran out of my mix, which is why it looks funny, and while I pressed it together before firing, the compromise was there, it cracked. I am going to surround it soon after fetching more vermiculite and furnace cement.

I want to keep the mix the same in the heart of the RWMH for integrity purposes, I'll be messing with new materials and ratios soon enough.

Here's the core inside with the brand new heat riser on it

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Then on goes the furnace cement and connection to the chimney (relaxed but very impatient at this point, a little dark, not the best photo)

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Holy Toledo, I knew theoretically that more heat riser/chimney meant more draft, but holy rocket blast off! It sucks the flame off a match and I keep having that familiar urge to damp it down! Not this time though, that's just the sound, efficiency and heat we are working on.

And then here is the housing for the core largely constructed with the plenum roughed in. The outside is 2" concrete patio pavers mortared level and plumb (mostly) and then filled with straight vermiculite. The outside hasn't gotten more than barely noticeably warm to the touch. Ironically that means lots of heat to the chimney, but it's still mild out and the barrel goes on next week (or so) after I "skim coat" the top with my IRC (insulated refractory cement mix) and get the plenum secured using the same stuff...

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I guess my lighting video uploaded to some degree, I'll check it out later. I aborted the upload to leave work and get home but I now see at least some of it must have posted (in photobucket)...

I need a couple more lengths of stove pipe (I sacrificed some for the heat riser, my attempt to alter a sonotube was an utter fail but only a 4$ error as I bought a leftover hunk) and then finish sanding the barrel and it's bench construction time.

Huge progress and no set backs, winning! I am so curious to hear the new sounds as a barrel goes on, then have it run throught the piping, and then the bench.

This is so much more than just comfort and efficiency, and it's keeping up past my bed time on a regular basis...

[mannytheseacow]

Heeeellll yeah!!!! Awesome!!! I'm just as stoked seeing your build come off as I was my own! Welcome to your new addiction!

[dato1200]

Hi Prescott,

Thank you so much for posting up your progress.
I'm going to completely copy what you did to encase my core (i.e. bricks surrounding vermiculite, with a thin layer of refractory cement over the top).
I've been thinking of how to best support the barrel and encase the core. However if something goes wrong with my core, or I just want to improve it, and I need to cast another one, I'd like to be able to remove/demolish the core while leaving my bench intact. Yours looks perfect.

I'm guessing your making an 8 inch system, correct?

Can you please elaborate on your tripwire, swoops and turbulator. I've read a little about this features before (I've searched and haven't found all that much good info), but your pictures definitely worth a thousand words.

Looking at the below pic, I can see by the swoops on the bottom right (a little hard to see because of the shadows), that the right side is for the heat riser, the left side is your feed tube. You said before "The tripwire is pointing the wrong way". If the top piece of wood (the top side of your burn chamber) was turned around, would this fix the trip wire?

As for the dimensions of the swoops and turbulator, could you give me some estimated measurements for how big these are, or how big you would like them to be.

I really like the idea of the tripwire and turbulator.
My initial thoughts are that the swoops are smoothing out the burn chamber to heat riser transition, therefore reducing turbulence and hindering performance.

Does anyone else have any thoughts on the tripwire, swoops or turbulator?

[Prescott]

Hello dato.

I am elated that you'd like to emulate any of my work! I wracked my brain and if that saves someone from having to do so, that's wonderful!

Here is the link for tripwires, secondary air flow and those swoops and turbulators. Matt, our lovely host, is also involved over on the donkeyboards so I don't mind posting to something elsewhere... I'll share a little of my process and ideas with you but DEFINITELY read this thread. If you don't know about our friends over at Dragon Burners and of the remarkable Peter van de Burg, you have some great goodies to explore!

Here's the link. http://donkey32.proboards.com/thread/355?page=1

I discovered the tripwire issue too late, and flipping the board would have put the tripwire near the heat riser and not the feed tube, but a great idea! The tripwire keeps the unburnt gases from (theoretically) just flowing across the top of the burn tunnel. Peters discovery is that it separates the flow, pushing it down and towards the back corners along the outside edges. There it then hits the swoops (that's what I call them, I don't know if anyone has invented or given them a name) that scoop them up in the other direction, collecting them and then the turbulator at this apex tumbles the burning gases more, right up into the heat riser.

Now to mention something we play with a bit here, Matt at the helm, these little differences might make a difference, but potentially pretty small ones. The more little tweaks that work together the greater the efficiency, thus my desire to tinker with them. In the local vernacular of where I live, "It don't hurt!" Most importantly we must remember to relax (and have a homebrew if it suits you) and press on, work and share our victories and foibles. A great deal has happened in the past couple years, and I haven't even known about this stuff a year yet!

Before I forget, I made a 6" system, I already had some pipe so went with it. The 8" are that much hotter, but I like the daintiness of the six. On that note I almost bought the demure 4" dragon burner core, but that's just too small after some experimenting, and for the price of the core I have created my whole system. Don't get me wrong, the dragon cores are absolutely incredible, but ultimately, I really wanted to build my own, damned independent New Englander!...

Now, when I build another core, and I will, I think the swoops on the back should meet in the middle of the back of the burn tunnel, essentially making the entire back wall NOT flat, and going as high as the feedtube, height/ceiling of the burn tunnel. The turbulator works in the opposite way, the flat top where the swoops stop. Great image of half the core on the above mentioned thread. I was limited by the random chunk of 4x4 I tucked into the back. Next time I'll just put in a bigger chunk, it won't be 4x4!

This'll sound a bit esoteric until you read the thread. True that the thread can get pretty, uh, nerdy (and I mean that lovingly) but to read it as the thoughts evolve is remarkable, but I'm a nerd! I plan on playing around with the "Peter plate" once things are further along, I have some final dimensions. I plan on covering the whole thing with tile eventually so might tinker with a couple different secondary air intakes.

It's worth noting that there are tons and tons of RMH with simple 90 degree angles that building with rectangles (bricks) is a byproduct of that work very well. Since I wasn't using bricks, I wanted to play around!

It is also worth noting that the Peter plate, tripwire, swoops and turbulator all work in concert together. The ideal symphony a healthy roar bereft of smoke replete with maximum extraction of heat! Whew...

Hope this fans your fire, as it were! Keep it rockety~p