My Mother's House Part VI
(Page 5 of 5)
July/August 1982
By the Mother Earth News editors
We also decided to experiment with the root cellar's vent pipe . . . by simply painting it black and wrapping it in glazing. This tower operates on the same principle as does the larger rectangular chimney, but uses the PVC vent pipe itself as the heat absorber.
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Both of the thermal towers work quite well and have increased the potential flow rate through the house considerably. We can easily control the volume by adjusting the registers on the cool-tube manifold that runs the length of the building, and it'll be interesting to see just how comfortable we can keep our earth shelter through the long hot summer.
THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING
TANK SUPPORTS TEMPLATE, 1 SQUARE PER INCH
click here to enlarge
As hot as it is now, though, by the time September rolls around, we'll all be (somewhat reluctantly) giving thought to staying warm through another winter . . . so in our next issue we'll show you how we went about building a backup heater for our dwelling. The high-mass, convoluted-passage masonry unit (often called a Russian fireplace) is curing now, and we should be able to fire it within a few weeks. This woodburning device departs significantly from conventional woodstove design and promises to be much cleaner and a good deal more effective (in fact, total efficiencies of as high as 90% have been reported by some users!) than are the familiar metal boxes.
Don't miss it!
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