I ve recently been thinking of building a new house and using a rocket stove to heat it.
Rocket mass heater insulate concrete floor.
Rocket mass heater runs along the 40 back wall.
Insulation laid against the floor has no where for the heat to go so it saturates the insulation.
You can build a rocket stove from concrete blocks.
55 gal drum for outer containment.
To be extremely resilient to the uncertainties of life you should invest in a small portable rocket stove and a large rocket mass heater as well.
The change with rmh is that the fireplace itself is insulated so the fire reach higher temperatures 1000 c than a standard fireplace or stove.
If you could put supportive pilings at a similar depth to your current pilings and put a load bearing concrete slab on top of them you should be able to put a stove on top of that but having it outside the building envelope well i probably wouldn t bother with a rmh.
I should add that you should have at least one or more other ways to heat the space preferably automatic like when the temp hits 60 a propane heater comes on.
The stove body an insulated surround for the elbow.
2 they are insanely efficient maximizing your fuel.
Every four feet has two 8x8x16 concrete blocks to allow flow of cool floor air through the mass.
The principle of the rocket stove itself is logical.
Insulation does not stop the transfer of heat it only slows it down.
After that we can couple the rmhs thermal mass with the concrete.
If the heat is not removed the heat increases.
The whole point of a rocket mass heater is to keep that hot mass inside the building so putting it outside is counter intuitive.
A rocket stove mass heater is definitely appropriate for this type of thing.
Concrete mass is 15 deep and 20 high.
A 6 rocket mass heater system can do most of what you want however the rmh will have a keyhole shaped foot print of nearly 4 x 6.
Most installations i ve seen discussed use the exhaust pipe to heat the thermal mass.
This is why walls floors etc may reach unsafe temperatures even with a layer of insulation between them and the heat source.
Within this space no concrete made from portland cement is safe from total distraction due to the wickedly high combustion temperatures.
35 gal drum containing pearlite insulation.