Today I finished building and fired up the rocket mass heater for the geodesic dome. Ironically, its January and were having record breaking warm temperatures in the 50s but I couldnt resist and started it up. I will do a full video about the construction in the future, but wanted to share a few pictures of it. This heater is a bit different than some you may see. I wanted to be sure there was enough drafting in the chimney so I doubled up the barrels.
The entire burn tunnel is buried under the floor. It took a little while to get the drafting to start. It didnt help that the internal chimney wasnt insulated yet (missing some parts for it), but once the system got warmed up, it turned into a raging inferno.
A picture without the flash shows how well the fuel is burning in the tunnel.
I ran out of sand so I wasnt able to completely bury the horizontal exhaust. It was quite hot to the touch, but as you moved down the pipe, I could hold my hand against the duct and it was slightly warm. It was quite funny to see the sand around the duct drying out so quickly. It will be interesting to study the temperatures along the system in the future!
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