The Barrel Stoves:
A Smaller Heater for Passive-Haus and Room Warming
The K-1 Barrel Stoves began development in 2008 as an exercise to develop a simple, inexpensive masonry heater for those building homes either too small or too well insulated for a typical 5-7" thick American masonry heater.
The design challenge was creating a fully functional masonry heater that would be lighter and more responsive while retaining durability and longevity. Traditional German 3-4" thick Tiled-Stoves utilize a labor-intensive post-tensioning system in which the shell of the stove is clipped together. (see video: here) This allows the shell to "hug" the inner channel system together, ensuring structural integrity during heating and cooling.
After several channel layouts were tried, I decided on the slightly modified traditional Swedish Five Channel that you see depicted. At this point we have iterated to the point that we have a pre-cast system that makes installing this stove easy and fast.
A Smaller Heater for Passive-Haus and Room Warming
The Barrel Stove marries the traditional Swedish Five Channel design with the German "post-tensioned shell" technique. The barrel supplies post-tensioning, air tightness, and durability to the stove, while the firebrick walls and inner dividing walls add thermal mass, allowing an even thinner wall to remain robust and long lasting through many years of warming your space.
The barrel is wrapped in metal lath and plastered. At this point, with the use of chopped straw as a reinforcement, the clay/sand mix can be built out to give depth and texture to the final stove, or tiles can be added to the cob plaster to give a more durable, warmer feeling surface.
