Canadian winters

[yigenuren]

Hi there. I've been reading up on rocket stoves here, on-line and, yes, I've read the book as well. Yet I haven't heard of anyone in Canada using one for heating (the guy who dries his lumber with one doesn't count) and I'd like to find out how these perform when the temperatures get really low and stay there.

My own situation is that I want to put up a well insulated yurt (it's what I can afford right now) and I'd like to heat it with a rocket stove, but I have a concern about when the temperatures get down to -22F (or lower) and stays there for a few weeks like they often do in northern Alberta.
Anyone have any experience with really cold weather and rocket stove heating?
I look forward to your responses/opinions

[Donkey]

Welcome yigenuren!

I have no experience living with those kind of temperatures..
I do know that mass stoves of various design were invented and used primarily in VERY cold climates like eastern europe.
Rocket stoves (used for heating) tend to follow the principles of other mass stove technologies: Burn all the fuel and store it in something heavy.

I imagine that a well built rocket stove should perform as well as just about any other mass stove, weather fresh on the market or antique.

[canyon]

Hello from the further west great white north! I am familiar with the extreme temperatures you experience as I live in Alaska. However, I am only now building my mass bench for this upcoming heating season so I can't speak from experience of use yet. I will certainly post how it works for me this winter. I have lived with wood heat for a decade and a half up here and am very much looking forward to the advantage of the thermal flywheel and greater efficiency/less waste or smoke/creosote with the mass storage. Last winter I used my test rocket to heat my bathroom and kitchen with water/radiant floor as the mass storage. However, I wasted a lot of heat up the stack. It still felt good to burn hot fires and not have creosote/smoke despite the extra work in wood preparation. I donated the book to my local library last year and have been a rocket mass heater advocate despite not having mine completed yet. Lots of people are planning to go for it here. I have a dozen people who are interested enough to come help me later this month in the bench construction.

There are many advantages to an rmh (rocket mass heater) for a yurt in cold climate. If you actually spend time in your dwelling you can do just two hot fires a day and have a warm place always. Even heat from wood otherwise is very difficult and messy. Wood selection and preparation(dry dry dry) is way more important but it is much better than banking a classic smoke dragon and making creosote with all the associated issues. If you need to leave your yurt for stretches of more than a couple of days when it is really cold out, it will take a long time to heat back up. So if you fit the use of the rocket stove it will fit you.

It should also be mentioned that most floors built for yurts are pretty light weight and an rmh needs a real load bearing structure under it so you have to build with that cost in mind.
They aren't very nomadic in nature.

I am fully confident of the use of rmh's in cold climates when they and the users needs are a match. Experience of masonry stoves has proven such for centuries and rmh's are in my opinion the poor person's (or intelligent resource user's) version or masonry stoves. As I said above, I can't speak to direct experience yet with a version like in the book but stay tuned.

[bendything]

Hi, I am just about to move into a yurt too and would be really interested in your heater design (see my 'Rocket Yurt' post above which I wrote before I read your post). What are you using as the mass? Will you use it for cooking or just heating? The climate here is nothing like as cold as yours, we get frosts a few times a week in winter, but I would still like a really warm home as I have a toddler who likes to be naked!