Useful dead ends in the system

[matthewwalker]

Well, Canyon touched on this in another forum, and I thought I might start a discussion over here and see what all of your thoughts are on the topic.

Canyon brought up the idea of an "oven" in a RMH at a cleanout, after the barrel. I have been playing with a variation of this over the last week, and wanted to share.

I got here because my first clean out in the system needed an extension on it to work in my bench, and I found that right over that clean out was one of the warmest spots.
So, what I did recently was extend another clean out by about 2.5' to heat a small seat extension. It's working very well so far, and when I feel the cap the stratifying is clear as the bottom surface is cool enough to touch while the top will burn your finger quickly. I'm thinking I made a sort of bell configuration. The gasses want to turn the corner at the t and go out the system, but some of the heat and gasses stray into the dead end and provide heat to the seat.

I feel like this is a viable way to utilize different configurations that might not work with flow through design, like small physical configurations that don't allow all the elbows and such. Not only that, but it could be expanded into an oven, or warmer, or some such.

Anyone have any thoughts? Am I heading for a major mess when it comes time to clean out?

[Donkey]

Huh.. Cool idea!
Have you tried sticking a piece of food in the thing yet?

I'm thinking that if heat is drawn in there, so will that nuisance light ash. Building a small oven there would stack functions, you'd get a convenient ash clean-out and a cooker/warmer.
I think you'll need a good tight door or you'd risk CO poisoning.

[matthewwalker]

Yeah, I had thought that it might be dangerous with regards to leakage. My system is 8", has a really short run due to location limitations, and exits vertically right next to the barrel into a masonry chimney. Because of those things, I believe it's got strong draw into the system at all points. That said, I do have a cheapie CO sniffer in the room and it's never made a peep, and my cap isnt' sealed all that well.

As for food, no. I have a little oven on the front of my feed tube that I cook bread in every day. It was Canyon's idea about the cleanout oven. My cleanout extension is strictly heat exchange. I do think it might work though, to enlarge a cleanout deadend, and bell it. I think it would collect enough heat to be a useful baking zone.

Also, I think the idea of extended dead ends allows some interesting bench/mass configurations. Little spurs to heat specific zones and the like.

[Donkey]

I agree.. It's totally worth a look.

I'd also be interested to know what would happen if you stuck a burrito (or something) inside your clean-out..

[canyon]

Thanks matthewwalker! This kind of creativity/experimentation really inspires me!

Mar 23, 2012 16:19:57 GMT -8 Donkey said:

I think you'll need a good tight door or you'd risk CO poisoning.

I think this is a good point Donkey, in this approach the cleanout covers start asking to be real gasketed doors. Also, if the space was used for cooking while firing, a dutch oven style method would be preferable for avoiding contamination of food. This idea of extra bump out mass heating is attractive, I hope we can see some results of that as bump outs have been a great challenge to heat simply so far in my experience.

[matthewwalker]

Donkey, I'll try it. Burrito in the clean out, coming up!

Canyon, so you've had experience trying to heat with a "bump out?" I'd love to hear about it. Mine is almost dry now, at least, it's dry enough to sit on if you want a butt steam bath. It seems to be working great as far as heating goes. I'd love to hear your experience.

I agree about contamination. My little oven on the front of the feed tube has air flow past it at all times through the door/window, which I leave slightly open. It seems that downstream of the barrel things might taste a bit smokey. Maybe not? Maybe it would be a good place to actually smoke stuff, or cure things that want to be held at 180* or whatever, like pork belly/bacon. Mmmmmmm, bacon.

[Donkey]

Hopefully there's not enough smoke down there to act like a real smoker.. If so, you're not getting what rocket stoves are supposed to provide.
Still, it WOULD flavor the food. Might be a great way to make jerky. I can see having more than one chamber, each with it's own temperature range.

I really like where this is going!