Rocket stoves, have you heard about them? If you have then I’m preaching to the choir, if you haven’t, then it’s high time you learned about how great these little (and sometimes big) stoves can be.
Basically a rocket stove is a very efficient heater that can be used to cook/heat food, heat water, heat spaces… It typically uses much less fuel (wood) to create heat, and it’s often made from recycled materials.
With rocket stoves, you can use smaller diameter wood, twigs, to burn, usually when people are using wood to cook and/or heat, they usually use the larger diameter wood, logs and such. Rocket stoves can use what is normally unusable and is thrown away. This saves resources, it saves time and work, you don’t have to cut down a whole tree or have to spend the time and effort to cut up larger logs. You can almost always find twigs or scrap wood, and you don’t have to work too hard to find them.
You can make a rocket stove out of scrap material, the small ones can be made from recycled tin cans, coffee cans, soup cans and such. To make the larger ones, you will have to look around a bit more, but you should be able to find the materials fairly easily, if you do have to purchase the materials, it will be on the inexpensive side.
I found a great video that shows how to make a medium sized rocket stove.
This video is made by and stars Vavrek, he is vibrant, adorable, and pretty handy with tools too.
Here is another, more extensive rocket stove design
Here is another
So go out, build a rocket stove, stop using your big wasteful grill, tell your friends, family, neighbors, and co-workers about the joys of using a rocket stove. :)
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_stove
https://donkey32.proboards.com/index.cgi
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=rocket+stove&aq=f
https://www.youtube.com/user/JanetinTenn
13 Responses
I have a fueloil smoker and want to turn it into a rocket grill. if I drill holes in horizontal pipe after j-tube to match feed diameter and cap the end would this still work as a smoker
I really liked the idea of rocket stoves so my brother and I started having them made so that they can be carried easily and durable for those who are interested. These are nice little stoves and we have had a lot of fun cooking our meals in our backyard and other outdoor activities that we have used them with. You can go to our website found at http://www.stockstorage.com if wanting to learn more and get one for yourself.
Hi Vavrek, no problem, your video was the first one I found on the internet, and IMHO it’s one of the best ones out there. :)
Wretha
thanks so much for posting this….
touching.
:)
Leif, I was (mostly) kidding with you, it sounds like you are a very conscientious person about fire, I don’t have a good answer for you about the hardware screen, I suppose it would last for a while, but if it were exposed to the flame it would eventually be destroyed. You might want to talk to Dragon about this, he has experience with using a rocket stove and would probably be able to give you a better answer than I could.
We use mainly propane for cooking and heating water, we have an on demand portable water heater and love it. I cook on a small 3 burner cook stove that came out of an ancient travel trailer, we had to remove all of the fiberglass out of it and replace it, mice had gotten in and made nests in it, wow did it stink the first time I tried to use it!
hi. after i posted, i realized what i said needed a bit better context. the backcountry locale where i would be likely to use this is dry and hasn’t had a fire for at least 115 years (possibly longer… need to do some cores), and is also very dear to me. thus i restrict any fires i build, to ones that will safely sit on the bed of my truck and won’t let cinders fly (read: propane). perhaps i’m being a bit over-careful, but i just can’t take the risk. so even though the design contains it nicely, it’s a bit more risk than i’m interested in assuming.
that said… the ‘bad enough’ scenario is what i mean to prepare for, in suburbia, by building one at some point. and yes, getting comfortable with its proper and safe use is important. actually, here’s a question. do you think that a tough hardware cloth screen would take the heat without destructive amounts of oxidation? my thought there would be to block fly ash and cinders. i suppose too, one could get a bit more elaborate with containment than that, too. ideas? sand pit, dome, etc.
thanks again
Thanks Leif, glad you enjoyed it. :) And what do you mean, should the time ever come??? ;) Why not use it now? You don’t have to wait for some distant thing to happen, heck if things get bad enough to change the way we cook, believe me you will probably be scrambling around trying to take care of a lot of other things, how much better would it be if you were already comfortable with cooking on a rocket stove? just a thought… hmmm I think I have the subject of my next (or near future) article. :)
thanks for the post. i enjoyed the vid as well. something good to understand how to do, should the time ever come.
Thanks Dragon, very nice! Hope you are feeling better. :)
I have some pictures here on the way back section of the blog.
https://circleoftheoroborous-dragon.blogspot.com/search/label/Rocketstove
There is also the “Kelly kettle” that is a portable version for heating water: https://www.kellykettle.com/ and uses the same “rocket”/”volcano” principle…
Dragon, got any pix on your blog of your rocket stove? I would love to see it! :)
I love my rocket stove. Though the portable ones don’t last long.
the ones made from masonry or cobb are great but not portable.
I’ve tried out a new version made from schedule 80 steam pipe.
It solves the durability but adds alot of weight to the design