Benjamin Dinkel

Hi Austin.
Just to make sure I understand correctly. The inlet from the stove is higher than the bottom of the stratification chamber (bench)?
As far as I know all area/volume of the strat chamber that is above the outlet (chimney exit) counts.
Any area under that is just dead space. But no adverse effects to my knowledge either.

Hi Leonardo. And welcome to permies!
I’m sure you’ll get some answers soon.

Well, I can't guarantee anything. But try googling it, maybe it looks similar. How's the smell? Old basement (=mold) or something else?

Alexandra, tome it looks more like Kaam yeast than mold. Mold grows in spots (round colonies) most of the time, is thicker and hairier.
You can try to get rid of just the top layer, it often breaks apart and mixes in though. If it's what I often have in ferments it's harmless. Ruins the flavor though.

I agree Timothy. A good, hot compost pile (for example from humanure and kitchen scraps) will take care of smaller animal corpses.
I dig into the pile a bit and cover the corpse again afterwards. Everything disappears within weeks.
Jenkins also writes about that in the humanure handbook.
And my permaculture teacher talked about composting an entire goat.

The biggest difference I see is that the fire provides it's own method of "charging" the mass. It leads hot gases with some movement through the mass and has a lot of surface area to pass the heat energy on to the mass.
I don't see that when we're talking about a resistance heater. Unless we're talking a resistance and a fan, pushing hot air through the mass.

I'm not saying it's impossible. But it seems like no one here has tried it, which is what you were first asking for.
Please share your results once you have tested a system.

Robert Ray wrote:Finland's, "Polar Night Energy", has been online since 2022 and is heating a neighborhood. Their system is far larger than a home RMH but the use of the radiant heat from sand storage  seems to be a viable and proven heat storage source.

While heat storage in sand can be done, it's just not as simple as most people imagine.
I looked at the "Polar Night Energy". And their system of getting the heat into the sand is definitely more sophisticated than putting a resistance in a pile of sand.

Quote from their website:
"We use electricity from the grid or local renewable sources like wind and solar. The system charges when clean, low-cost electricity is available. Electrical energy is transferred to the storage via a closed-loop air-pipe system where air is heated by electrical resistors and circulated through heat transfer pipes."

Ok, I understand the use case.

How big is that heating element? I'm trying to figure out how much mass you could actually heat up with this setup. The ones I have in mind (for heating water) are like 8" long and 2" wide.

Turbulence is one of the „3 Ts“ for complete combustion that I consider the fundamentals for anything calling itself a rocket.
Time, temperature and turbulence that need to be high enough to ensure that all fuel (including smoke and creosote) is burnt before exhausting.
It’s fun to experiment. But it’s key to built on top what works and not repeat what has proven to not work.

Hey Amanda,
I have no experience with adding anything to the flour. So far organic whole grain flour and water (make sure it’s not too clorinated) worked for me every time.
When in doubt, stir the mix more than once a day.