Rocket Stove (home heating, water heating and cooking)

[Catfishnut]

Has anyone heard of a Rocket Stove before? I did a long while back, but they were not labeled as "Rocket Stoves" but something like a "Swiss Stove" for survival camping and they were made small and compact for backpacking.

A coworker dropped this item into our conversation at work and so when I got home, I looked it up in more depth.

This has serious potential as the best way to beat the utility rates! I found videos where people burned their trash paper, dried grass and straw, regular wood, sticks that just drop out of the trees, wood pellets and I am sure you could use coal or cardboard boxes or whatever you wish that will burn.

The firebox is actually open to the room, but no smoke vents from here and virtually no smoke vents from the exhaust either. This is amazing and it does work.

I am really excited about it as its operation is akin to one of my water filter designs that I am currently working on.
It is not the same principle, but it is similar.

Here is a website for you to view to getsome information so that I don't have to try to explain it. Check out the videos they have on this site and then you can take off on other informational search missions if you are so inclined.

I was thinking that this might be really great for a greenhouse in the colder climes, not to mention a house or a cabin. I am certainly going to be investigating this stove design heavily for my cabin.

Here is the website: http://www.richsoil.com/rocket-stove-mass-heater.jsp

It is touted as being 90% effecient regardless of what you burn in it. Basically, it is akin to a catalytic converter on a vehicle.

Gordy

 

[j.w]

Neat idea but bet the insurance companies won't like them. Anything new or out of the ordinary they will poo poo. I didn't look at all the vids but this thing looks promising. Would be nice to use in a shop also. If you end up making one I would love to see it step by step on video. I'm sending this upstairs by email to my hubby. Thanks for posting

 

[sissy]

They still have something similar in Germany .My friends hubby got transferred over there and she says she loves her rocket stove more than her hubby .

 

[HARO]

Does she love her stove more than her hubby loves it, or does she love her stove more than she loves her hubby??????
John

 

[sissy]

Believe me he is no rocket ,skinny geeky guy,even his voice is flat ,no emotion at all .A personality of a fly .He has a good heart but the rest can go .When you talk to him you have to get past the way he talks .He sounds like one of those automated computer answering things .Yes ,no and no in between .It can get on your nerves if you are not used to it .I actually grew up with him so I am used to it .

 

[Catfishnut]

One idea I was toying with regarding this rocket stove design was to modify it to heat a pond during winter just enough to keep it from freezing over. There may be several ways to accomplish this, but I thought of two methods which would be feasible. The second one would probably the easiest, most manageable and maintenance friendly, but the first would be more efficient.

1. Place the heat bunker underground, below the pond or along the side of the pond and allow the heat to rise up through the ground and heat the pond.

2. Plumb heat exchanging water lines through the heat bunker and circulate the pond water through them with the pond's circulation pump.

The heat bunker is the term I am using to describe the big mass of vermiculite, clay, cobbing and rock that the exhausting stovepipe goes through. That is the area that serves as the heat "reservoir" The folks in some of the videos are shown using it as a part of their furniture, like a bench seating area. Therefore it obviously doesn't get extremely hot if they can sit on it, but it holds all that heat in for a long, long time after the fire has gone out.

For instance, at my cabin, I am not there everyday during winter. But I could go out there on the coldest of winter days and start a fire for a few hours and let that heat up the bunker and store that heat for 2-5 days. It wouldn't require much as I would just be trying to keep the pond water temperature above say 38-40 degrees.

Or, I could design a wood pellet feeder system and let it burn for several days until the pellet supply ran out and then I would come back out to refill it and relight it.

Since it requires so little fuel to operate, is so efficient and stores the heat is the bunker's "reservoir" it would be an extremely inexpensive way to keep the pond deiced.

A person could just save up cardboard boxes, paper bags from the grocerie store, old newspapers, fallen twigs from fall lawn cleanup work, toilet paper and paper towel rollers, junk mail, old catalogs, etc. No fuel costs whatsoever. You could essentially convert it to a trash burner to get rid of your waste products and heat your pond or greenhouse with it during the winter months.

i always burn this trash anyway, so why not harness its energy and use it instead of electric pond deicers?

Gordy

 

[MitchM]

I have heard of these units and looked into them before.
I think these work well if you are in a milder climate, have short periods of cold weather, and have easy access to fresh air when needed.
Getting one started can produce some smoke which will remain in the living space and the cooler exhaust temperatures could lead to creosote buildup. The moisture would be a problem indoors where it would condense quickly or completely freeze up on an exterior exhaust pipe.
For combustion you will still need a supply of air, so that would need to draw in extremely cold air from the outside.

 

[Catfishnut]

Hi Mitch,

I actually had you in mind when I began this post. I was thinking of this more along the lines of a heating source for something like a greenhouse, aquaponics shop or garage/workshop where a person wouldn't quibble about a little bit of wood smoke while starting the combustion process.

I personally wouldn't want to set up this in my living room at home. But, I might be able to modify it for use at my cabin. A little woodsmoke in a rustic river cabin is no big deal and there may be ways to engineer it differently to avoid that altogether. And, as well, I am in zone 5 here, so it isn't an extremely cold temperature normally.

Anyway, a short while ago you had a thread about your setup (an aquaponics sort of system) and spoke of the heating of the area, so I was thinking along the lines of that discussion here.

My idea is to place the actual combustion chamber OUTSIDE or in a closed off or partitioned room and then construct the heat reservoir or bunker underneath whatever structure I wanted to heat.

The whole notion is simply food for thought at this point. I would have to do a lot of design and engineering tests and trials to see if I could make this work for my cabin or my pond effectively. But, I sincerely see the benefits in how this thing works and I like the overall concept a lot.

Gordy

 

[Catfishnut]

Here are a couple more videos on the subject...

(part 1)

(part 2)

Gordy

 

[Catfishnut]

 

[MitchM]

I really enjoy exploring different building systems here in our climate.
I worked as a carpenter for 10 years in and around Calgary building new homes and renovating old ones.
We all know the danger of interior mould so it's a topic near and dear to me.

I find people in general underestimate the power of extended cold periods and I'm constantly looking for ways to be more energy efficient.
I put in a German built 90% efficiency boiler for our in-floor heating and even though it has an interior flap for preventing cold air from entering the home when the furnace isn't running, that flap will freeze shut when it's really cold out and the furnace will shut off until it's reset.
It has a side vent like a rocket stove and it will expel a lot of moisture but the result is a 10' icicle that hangs from it.

I also put in an HRV for controlling home interior moisture but again, in really cold weather, the intake screen will frost over rendering it useless until it either warms up or I scrape it clean. It's 15 feet up the side of the building so I need a really long stick to accomplish that.

I haven't seen any commercially built rocket stoves which means they're all home built which means experimentation which means trial and error.
Trial and error is not fun when everything is frozen solid.

With a rocket stove you would also need to let the fire go out every now and then to clean out the ashes. That would probably happen in the middle of a 2 week cold spell.
Sounds like a fun outdoor project though.

 

[Catfishnut]

Mitch,

Yes, as I started to read all the info on the web and watch all the videos on You-tube, It became apparent to me that this was a project of folks who were living life "off-the-grid" entirely and doing everything totally possible to avoid reliance on any means of monetary support or at least doing it on an extremely low budget. It is kind of a "cult" sort of lifestyle and some folks just want to do these things because they have a desire to be totally independant and totally isolated (not meaning that they are hermits or antisocial) but they desire to be segregated from the general norm or population for some reason of their own chosing. Whether that be an economic or monetary reason, religious belief, political beliefs, ecological motivation or just plain sick and tired of the rat race and wish to escape the normal craziness of everday life and governmental control or they are really brilliant minded and understand something that the regular Joe doesn't know. Maybe they may be conspiracy theorists and waiting for the end of the world and trying to find the best methods and resouces to survive some major catostrophic event or calamit or war. Whatever their reasoning, I have to admit that there are some great ideas coming from these types of people.

Personally, I just want to build a big pond to put bait in so that I can go fishing in the summer and drink beer and hang out with my family and friends, but I will certainly look into their survival ideas if it helps me in my projects!

Any idea that is cool and can save me money and make life easier, well doogone right I want to investigate that!

Gordy

 

[MitchM]

After re-reading my last post, to clarify- I wasn't referring to you, Gordy, about underestimating cold weather effects.
I was referring to manufacturers, building codes and people that make videos describing how well things work well in cold weather, then I find out they live in California.
Sorry about that.

 

[Catfishnut]

Mitch,

Ha, don't worry about that, I didn't take it that way in the first place. I thought you were just responding with constructive advise and I certainly appreciated it. This is just a discussion about something I just sort of became aware of, so there is a lot I don't know just yet. I thought that the overall subject was really neat and possibly very beneficial to some applications.

I was writing up my response when you posted before I was done. That happens often.

Gordy

 

[sissy]

I saw on this new house show where they wrapped pipes around the septic tank and the swimming pool to provide heat .Here the sell a lot of those wood stoves for out side and some are adapted to be water stoves and heat water in the winter when there solar system cannot provide enough hot water ..I wonder if you could run hose off a water stove around your pond that would work with them .I have 2 neighbors that have these water stoves out side .They use coal also .Marty has 1 on his cattle farm across from my house