November 24, 2024

VIDEO: Rocket Mass Stoves for Cooking & Home Heat Part 2


Rocket stoves are renowned for their clean burn and low fuel consumption and have a abundance of practical uses. Applying this technology to larger mass heaters conserves firewood and expands the stove’s range to serve a homestead or farm well. Living Web Farm’s Energy and Resource Coordinator, Richard Freudenberger, will show how us how to build a basic rocket heater using common and salvaged materials and how to apply the same fundamental principals to a variety of designs. We will work through planning, site prep, theory, function and construction of an 8-inch rocket mass heater at our North Mills River farm.

17 thoughts on “VIDEO: Rocket Mass Stoves for Cooking & Home Heat Part 2

  1. He needs to make a model out of LEGO and a soup tin and a piece of plastic tube for the chimney. I tried to explain a rocket stove and this way helped. I then made a mini one out of some soup tins and a coffee can and perlite. When people see it working like this they get the idea. Ceramic fibre board will up the price but increase the longevity.

  2. The answer to the question about the water coil in the venting is that it will work, but you have to install a valve on the water to adjust the flow rate of water thru coil, as to not take so much heat that gases can't flow and burn flue gases out the exhaust. Also, you don't want to put the coil in the secondary burn chamber, you want that as hot as possible. The secondary burn chamber should have perlite or something that insulates, you don't want to heat cob around the secondary burn chamber, you want perlite all around that to force it to get so hot it will burn anything going thru there. if done right, you could burn green wood, and there will be no smoke. Note: green wood is not going to burn easily, but it is the point of how it can burn anything up to nothing, no smoke, no soot.

    Get it hot enough and have heavy enough SS tube for the secondary chamber, and it could almost be an incinerator. Actually i might look those up right after this. Think of that, able to burn ANYHING in the incinerator. You could burn used motor oil and have no exhaust fumes in something like that. Also tires. lol

  3. a lot more rockets have horizontal feed ways. I wonder if this would affect the ratios 2 to 1 to 4.
    regarding cooking where the heat exits the barrel/bell. this area presumably the manifold. he says that this area would be plenty hot enough for cooking. would this include baking in oven temperatures? apologies for the question as the author does not respond to the comments

  4. Rocket mass heater stoves are much safer than conventional wood stoves not only because of the cooler flew gases but because, once the burn is over, the fire is out and its only the heated mass that radiates the heat into the house at night while you are asleep. Most owners of conventional wood burners will choke their fires down during the night so that they have heat all night until the next morning. While a slow burning smoldering fire sounds good it is in fact very bad because not only do you have a live fire while you are asleep, it also generates deadly CO and the incomplete combustion causes a buildup of creosote in the chimney which poses a high risk of a house fire. Bottom line is high temperature, clean and complete burning rocket mass heaters are the way to go.

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