Rocket Mass Heater Part 3 - p-channel for the batch box (Vermont DIY off-grid home build)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ก.พ. 2025
- What’s off-grid winter camping really like? Plus, Charles puts his metalworking skills to the test for the next step in the batch box build. And we take a beautiful drive to collect some local building materials.
Here are the open source plans that Charles is using to build the rocket mass heater: batchrocket.eu/en
We left behind our careers in Dallas Texas for life off the grid in the woods of Vermont. Here, we experience new rewards and challenges, living in a travel trailer while setting up water, power, and a yurt on the side of a mountain. Charles plans and executes our DIY projects. Jill is our TH-cam videographer. #diy #offgrid #vermont #yurt #rvlife
I am working backwards 😂 having a marathon……..lots of hard work and lessons learned but progress. I remember my 1st home up in Pollock Pines, Ca………all of our pipes froze, flat tire on icy highway, learning to drive on curves and lots of shoveling snow and stacking wood 😂 but I loved it…….❤️
Thank you Carole! It must be strange to watch the build in reverse order 😀
@@OvertheRiverandThroughtheWoods I am going to reverse it tomorrow…….❤️
You are amazing. Charles is a wonder. Engineers are a special group of human beings.
Thank you. For sure 😊
You've made a great friend there, who invited you to come use his shop. 👍
The winter here in Illinois has been a muddy mess as well. We had a serious cold spell around Christmas, well below 0° temps, but otherwise it's been fluctuating continually.
I wanted to give a shout out to a channel I've been watching by a gentleman who documents he and his wife's travels. It's called Haswell Travelled. He really makes lovely videos and I thought you and viewers here might also enjoy them.
Looking forward to seeing the interior cladding go up and how you make your cabinets.
Take care and have a very good week. 🥰
Thanks! We will check that out.
Just saw a bit of forecast for the Northeast. It will be super cold. Love watching the projects. Stay warm!!
Yes, that was last night... -20F (yikes!)
Your doing great! We enjoy watching the progress. Take Care.
Thank you very much!
So exciting to see your progress, stay warm!
Thank you! Fortunately, the super cold weather was brief and has already moved on.
thanks for your batchbox vids! Maybe you could put the various parts (3?) into a playlist? thanks
That's a good idea... when we finally get back to this project and finish up the build and the videos about it, I will make a dedicated playlist for the RMH. It seems to be a popular topic.
@@OvertheRiverandThroughtheWoods thanks - I appreciate RMH vids that are not be the "insiders" - the experts - since those vids assume a certain expertise already. The manifold is what I consider to be the most complicated part - but obviously having to weld a P-channel - I used a stainless steel pipe as a P-channel. But the pipe ended inside the fire box just under the vent in the door - and then I would get ash in the pipe. I just tried ceramic fiber board in a steel fire box and the pipe as a P-channel. I got serious heat - a cleaner burn for sure - but I couldn't load as much wood. So - also I got backdraft if it wasn't cold out enough - since I had the ceramic board in the baffle - not as much draft.
Hi. I hope you are still enjoying your new life style. Could you please post a feedback about your rocket mass heater ? Is it completly finished and how it works? Does the core stand the heat level without cracking ? Is your yurt warm enough ? Thanks a lot for this feedback.
Hello, yes we are still loving it up here, but I'm afraid the RMH project got put on hold for a while, while other interior projects like the plumbing / bathroom took priority. We do hope to get back to it this fall. On the bright side, you haven't missed any part of the project - the rest of it will be documented here on our channel. Thanks for checking in!
Just found your vids. Looks good. I plan on building one based on this design and theses vids. One question, what are you using for the top of the burn chamber? I'm sure that area will be subject to high heat. What material are you using?
Hi Chris, thanks! We got sidetracked with other projects and haven’t finished the RMH yet, but we bought a barrel that is heavy gauge stainless steel.
No, i was talking about the slab over top of the burn chamber? The batch box?@@OvertheRiverandThroughtheWoods
@@chrismarr2663 ok, that is ceramic fiber insulation board.
How are y'all handling the current weather?! Hopefully a good video will come from that. We were excited to see the fox as well, though my 3 year old thought it looked like a raccoon.
Is the mudroom working as intended?
Temperature got down to -20F here last night! We turned up the RV furnace to what would normally be our daytime setting and it kept the living area in the middle 50s (and protected the water lines successfully), so not bad! We will touch on this in a video for sure, but there's not much to film when we're hunkering down to keep warm! Mudroom is doing great, and we have an episode coming up in two weeks, with our driveway adventures after back to back snowstorms.
Why you call it "P-channel" when it looks like an "L" letter?
Ha ha, good question. Charles said he read somewhere in the plans for it that it was named for the batch box inventor, Peter van den Berg.
6:31 :(
It's two years later and I watched this scene transition a couple of times wondering why the cat under the table is sad -- If you're watching these videos in order yes, this is where Dharma used to sleep. Very sad indeed. I still miss my doggie.
@@OvertheRiverandThroughtheWoods Yeah I think I skipped two vids (they get recommended out of order grrr) and this was the first time I saw the cats after you updated us on Dhama's condition worsening and the decision having been made. The little bed being gone with the cat still in the beds spot. Very poignant, I was teary again. He seemed like a sweet dog , it's so lovely that they saved him off of the streets and he found you and lived a big happy life.
@@weareboundtooneanother Thank you. It's hard to know what his puppyhood was like but he led a charmed life as an adult. For future reference, I have tried to daisy chain the videos in order (with the end screen of each one linking to the next). One other way to see the whole catalog in order is to go to the channel page, then click "videos" and sort by "oldest" or "latest" to put them in chronological order.