[Cob] Want a flue-heated bench?...must use Ianto's rocket stove!

[ocean at woodfiredeatery.com]

I've been following the "cob wood stove" thread for awhile regarding a
flue-heated bench.

As far as I'm aware the ONLY way to do this right is to build a
Ianto-style rocket stove...normal wood stoves require a tall, vertical
chimney to draft properly.  If you take a regular wood stove and try force
the flue horizontal, the most likely occurance will be the fire will go
out and smoke will fill your room...

Ianto refined the rocket-cob design for over a decade, and the reason his
rocket stove works with a long (up to twenty foot!) horizontal flue bench
is specific to his rocket design.  (If you don't know what a rocket stove
is, it's a little elaborate to describe over email, so I strongly
recommend buying his new rocket stove book!)

The key feature of Ianto's rocket is a super-insulated internal chimney,
which he calls the "heat riser", which allows the wood to completely
vaporize and burn at temperatures up to 1100F, so that only steam and
carbon dioxide exit through the flue...no ash, no creosote, no chimney
flue fires!  Actually, it's instructive and somewhat amazing to smell(!)
the exit gasses from a blazing rocket stove flue: no smoke, just steam
more like a laundry-dryer vent with a nice woody scent!

So a well designed rocket stove combusts as close to 100% efficiency as
anything I've seen.  Why is this important, if wood fuel is plentiful? 
For one, no smoke to pollute our air.  But note also that more efficient
burning means more heat from less wood, hence less physical labor or money
spent acquiring fuel, more time for other activities (gardening, reading,
dancing, weaving, etc!)

Regarding the appropriate-ness of building a rocket stove versus some
other heat source for seldom-occupied buildings... we decided to provide
two heat sources in the cob Kiva at Ahimsa Sanctuary (
http://www.peacemaking.org ).  We have both a rocket (built by Kiko) for
long term heating of weekend-long events, and a Rumsford hearth (built by
Ianto) for providing immediate heat in the previously unheated building
for evening-only events.  The Rumsford fireplace burns hot and clean, and
provides immediate, intense radiant heat (it melted a plastic bucket 5
feet away!) while the rocket heats a buried-flue bench as well as
radiating heat through its drum.

Cobbies are welcome to visit Ahimsa Sanctuary and see the Kiva, if you're
in the Corvallis, mid-Willamette Valley, Oregon area!  Or come over to
Intaba's to see our cob oven cook wood fired pizza or fire grilled Salmon!

Cobbing Always,
Ocean Liff-Anderson

Intaba's Restaurant
Corvallis, Oregon
(541)754-6958
http://www.intabas.com

>On Aug 26, 2004, at 7:30 AM, Amanda Peck wrote:

Exactly, and it is nice to walk into a seldom-used building, start a fire
and the next people coming in come in to a warm room.  But with the old
leaky (FREE!) wood stoves that I see around here the possiblity for
horrible flue gasses in the room or up the chimney are probably greater if
one were to try to combine them with cob benches.

..........
Ed writes:

The main problem with trying to replace a rocket stove with a wood stove in a
cob bench is that they are designed to operate in completely different ways.
A rocket stove is designed to operate at really high temperatures for short
periods of time and to heat rock and cob in a bench. A wood stove is
designed to
heat air for a long period of time at very low temperatures.
    Think about this with a wood stove you come in to a cold room start a
fire