Russian Plans Masonry Heater • Insteading

Top surface of the steel drum can be a cook top. The primary reason for building the heater was to eliminate the dependence on oil and reduce the cash drain that buying fuel demands; we have a ready supply of firewood right on the property.

Some people have tight budgets and cannot afford hiring a professional heater mason. Long winters and scarce fuel created the need for efficient heaters. These resins ignite at different temperatures. I set to work, first making a stone footing, then laying brick layer by layer per the plans instructions, only stopping to add a cast iron door or damper as needed.

Russian ovens are referred to as “stovemakers” (pechniki). The porridge or the pancakes prepared in such an oven may differ in taste from the same meal prepared on a modern stove or range.

I built one if his stoves ten years ago. Wonderful heat is produced on very little wood. Elpel shows how to lay up the brickwork for the core of the fireplace, how to build the arch, and how to build the baffle system.

in an effort to heat our workshop more efficiently, we build this russian masonry heater following free plans found online by Alex …Our Timber frame workshop – Russian Masonry Heater Plans



There’s another place that sells beautiful antique brick, or if i want to go on the cheap (or have to), there’s plenty of flat faced stone around (and i do have some experience building dry work terraces).

and although much of my house is on pillars, it so happens that the best place for the stove is a place which has slab underneath.

Unfortunately, many wood-burning appliances do not use wood efficiently and aren’t well suited for a high-performance house. The local stone has an attractive blue tone, similar to soapstone, which goes well with the brick. In the winter, heat is recycled from the exhaust air to the intake air, saving energy. It¹s on a 6″ thick slab, poured separately from the house slab. The heat is soaked up into the stone and concrete. I would like to describe in this article. You can even build with unfired clay bricks. Fahrenheit or higher) passes through a series of baffled chambers (heat exchangers), is absorbed by the large thermal mass of the heater, and then radiates slowly and gently into the surrounding living space for many hours after the fire has burned out.

Except during fueling, the heater doors remain closed, although a few models can operate with the doors open (in which case, the heater looks and functions more like a fireplace).

Heating efficiencies can be up to 90 percent, with very low emissions. Except when the fire is burning, masonry heaters are silent, so they are a particularly good choice for people who are sensitive to mechanical noise.

I thought a winter scene was appropriate for the subject. Our bakery is a very modest business and so our budget for the materials that went into the heater needed to be quite modest as well.

I was going to achieve before the heater needed to be pressed into full service. The chimney served the oil furnace with a liner, which we pulled out. In fact, they can reach efficiencies of more than 90%. A masonry heater is a solid-fueled heating device constructed mainly of masonry materials in which the heat from intermittent fires burned rapidly in its firebox is stored in its massive structure for slow release to the building.

and if it’s going to be a sunny autumn day and you have a lot of south-facing windows, starting the masonry heater in the morning may result in a period of overheating later in the day when the solar gain peaks.

In new construction, particularly in rural areas, it’s definitely worth looking into. Around 500 years ago winter came knocking early and stayed late. I know that’s not in line with your traditional methods, but would like to hear what you think. There was a full foot at the top with no insulation at all…. Cardboard creates an expansion joint between the brickwork and the stonework. Elpel demonstrates freehand stone masonry, using natural rock to lay up the stonework around the brick core. The methodology was effective, but when one house caught fire it often took the entire town with it. This caused most of the heat to soak into the brick rather than to go up the chimney. One of the options shown with it was a condenser pipe that provided hot water output from the stove. Bricklayers no longer work cheap, and bricklayers with a specialty are even less cheap.


I see them as a better alternative to the classic rocket stove. I would love to build a masonry heater in my living room up stairs. Doing a lot of reading for efficient heating/volume requirements/cost, etc. Reading your information, the images and plans are a great assist. Obviously, this is a matter of personal taste. One small wrinkle in the layout though is that since the bell chamber is at the “back” of the firebox we have to be careful when we put wood in.

I had to re-learn how to start a fire though, the draw in the smokebox is so strong it can burn up paper before it will ignite the wood.

I did make a change to the general solution to putting in shield bricks above the door. I choose to put a couple of steel bars in to hold up the brick and eliminate the gap caused by the steel flanges.

The corbeling and working up the side channels is fairly straight forward. I have a pile of aggregate on the property. As soon as the concrete was set each piece what put in place; this usually meant about 24 hours. The indentation you see in the concrete is from tree bark pushed into the surface. I was after a fairly raw, primitive look of asymetrical interconnected blocks. I had anticipated this so each piece is shaped to stay in place dry laid. Thus the top of the each is covered in sand, about a foot thick. The heater does indeed perform well enough to replace the oil heater which was the objective. Hungary we are exploring masonry heaters and are working on ways to make this knowledge and skills more accessible. But the better place to start is, why do you suspect the flue would have fires?

The side openings are ash clean-outs. You can’t reach all the areas through the firebox- to clean out that ash as it builds up, it’s necessary to have a little access door.

There’s another place that sells beautiful antique brick, or if i want to go on the cheap (or have to), there’s plenty of flat faced stone around (and i do have some experience building dry work terraces).

and although much of my house is on pillars, it so happens that the best place for the stove is a place which has slab underneath.

My biggest concern for you would be that the slab is thick enough, wide enough, strong enough, etc. If the existing pad is inadequate you may need to dig part of it up and build a stronger pad, or pick a new location and start from scratch.

Which brings me to my next question, will it be centrally located and is the floor plan open? We are toying with the same idea but we may be limited to a small contraflow in a finished basement. The house plan is pretty open, except for the bedrooms. The facing is ultimately just decorative and adds some additional heat storage. The core is very stressed because of the thermal cycles and will fail if one uses the wrong materials, technique or mortar. It will also give you a good idea about whether you would feel in over your head on something like this. You may have seen my recent post on that. It’s a top exit which means the downdraft channels are divided in half so the gases go down the front two and up the back two, entering the chimney on top.

The environmental side of it appeals to me a lot, and there’s a growing green awareness here might provide a market. I have a friend who built the whole thing himself (also a temp-cast). I have a detailed post under “my masonry heater” that goes into greater detail about the cost and construction. A masonry stove needs a long enough baffle system to efficiently extract most of the heat from the exhaust, but not so long that the smoke doesn’t immediately rise through the system when you light the fire.

Switzerland, it might be best to have a tailor make you a pair, bring a pic of old style high waisted pants made to be worn with suspenders.

The “new” stove looks like it will do the trick. I know you look forward to having an oven once again to make your delicious bread!

Hum, did anyone ever tell you that you are a good writer? I thought you might want to check out this method of clinching nails. I also appreciate your willingness to post your successes as well as mishaps, so that others can learn from your wide range of experiences.

Keep your head up and know your work is valued by many.

Natural Building Basics

That helps the rest of us avoid mistakes, although no doubt, we each will find our own failures and learn from them as well. After a year of rough use, the metal buttons started rusting however, as did the metal on my first suspenders. I cut off and replaced all the metal buttons with non metallic ones, and my wife began sewing me custom suspenders. Im sure thats all you ever wanted to know about pants haha. There is one hotel / restaurant that is the oldest building in the city. July 8, 2016 at 2:04 pm yeah they are great, thats what we modeled our workshop after, the style. U value, they are like a slim stone or brick wall, when its -20 outside they are frozen cold. The masonry heater delivers a lot of heat, but the building could not contain it, so if heat loss is infinite, it just won’t work.

In summation, not the stoves fault the buildings lack of insulation. He studied the book carefully, and although up to that time he had never laid a single brick or seen it done, he announced that he would build the stove.

We did the inside with soft garden brick (cheaper and easier to cut). For the outside shell, we used a hard brick (expensive and much harder to cut). After we got through the ceiling, we saw no reason to go to all the work to build clear through the roof with brick, so we installed a metal chimney, which can hardly be seen outside anyway.

I don’t believe a professional would have done a better job. This traps the hot air in the stove, and it stays hot for about 24 hours and warm for 48 hours. When you have reached the maximum heat, additional burning mostly puts heat up the chimney. The firebox is 40 inches long, making the ideal firewood length about 36 inches. Thinnings from those areas fit the stove very well. The smaller the diameter of the wood, the faster (and therefore more efficiently) it burns. By the time the flue gasses have traveled about 35 feet from the firebox to the ceiling, they are barely warm. I sit with my back to that hot brick and soak up the heat. The in-floor heat distribution has not worked as well as expected. Soapstone is beautiful and absorbs heat better than steel or cast iron. These furnaces are still in much use in the villages and very old houses. We also have a pellet stove that helps the bedrooms.

The Basics Of How A Masonry Heater Works

How A Masonry Heater Works from the inside out.