Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Masonry Heater is up and running

Yeah, apparently there was more than a bit of "excess flatulence" after Kingston sucked up the bowl of sourdough starter ;(


Heater update -- still running tiny little fires while the masonry curing completes, but right now it's 37F outside and 67F inside, running two small fires a day. Once the masonry is dried out I can go back to running one larger fire a day.

A typical fire right now is 4 typical pieces of firewood, albeit 12" long rather than the more common 16", with each piece split in two, plus a bit of newspaper and kindling, so I'm using about 8 pieces of firewood a day to heat the house.

The measured temperature around the corner from the heater was 72 degrees with the furnace fan turned off and just the ceiling fan going, but I found some of the most distant rooms and the basement were getting chilly. When I ran the furnace fan for a while the measured temperature dropped to 68, ie that was the average temperature of the house once the variations were evened out.

Once everything is dried out and operating normally the heater will be able to take maybe 4-5 times as much wood as I am burning now in a single firing, so I'm still hopeful that I should be able to heat the house with one fire a day for most of the winter.