Cob: Wood stove in cob wall?

[Amanda Peck]

Wonderful to start building.  Do remember that a room laid out in the open 
air looks like a VERY different size and shape than the same thing once it's 
enclosed (or furnished).  I expect that lots of people have, to their 
chagrin, enlarged designs at that stage only to find out that they were 
right the first time.  Although Christopher Alexander does recommend doing 
most of the initial planning on the ground, as I recall.

I was going to put one of those neat cob benches with stovepipe running 
through it with the firebox outside of the little room I'm putting in the 
end of a pole barn.  "Everybody said"  that there would be a serious 
creosote problem.  Don't know if it's true or not--I'd sure like to HAVE 
such an animal--but the whole thing is taking--the usual--five times the 
length of time it should, and is running into more and more complications as 
we go on, so it's probably just as well I scrapped that idea.  There will be 
other buildings built here.

If it is fairly easy to do without a creosote problem, then a long pipe in 
the wall might work?  I keep running into people who bill themselves as 
natural builders who are really unwilling to even think about anything 
except what they've already done--fifteen or twenty years ago.

Anybody have any information about the heated benches and creosote? I know 
what "Ianto says."

................
Chuck wrote:
The one real concern that popped out during this meditation was using a wood 
burner in such close confines (each "room" will at its widest be only 9').  
Then the epiphany: integrate the woodburner into the 18" interior cob wall.  
Is this possible?  Given the right proportions of material (less straw, more 
sand) it seems as if it might work.  Plus there's the added benefit of 
heating both rooms of the house.  The woodburner is a Baron, a no-frills box 
made of steel plate and weighing in at roughly 300 lbs.  Measurements show 
that about an inch of the front would stick out from one side of the wall, 
and on the other side there would be an inch of play between the wall and 
the pipe.

Comments, ideas, speculation?

Chuck

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