Rocket Stove!

This summer the ADG completed a project that's been on my wish list for some time; he built a rocket stove! 

Basically, a rocket stove is an insulated fire that burns efficiently and hot, releasing very little smoke or particulate matter and uses minimal amounts of small wood fuel. It's a fire that burns clean and runs on twigs. They come in all shapes and sizes and some are adapted as thermal mass heaters to heat homes.

The version that the ADG built comes from Root Simple's design, using a 5 gallon metal bucket, which I just happened to have on hand.

We finally got around to firing it up for the first time last week.  Carrying it to the edge of the river, in a secluded area, we proceeded to light the inaugural fire.  This took a few false starts and some time before we got the fire going, but eventually it ignited and started to burn.

As you can see, the horizontal fuel chamber is near the bottom of the bucket. Once the fire was going, we had to keep it constantly fed with twigs and sticks, because they burn very quickly.  My plan is to use the dried stalks of invasive Japanese knotweed as fuel.

We didn't cook anything this time around, but a rocket stove is best suited to things that you can cook quickly with high heat.  We'll probably end up trimming the stove pipe coming out of the top and fit a wire cooking rack over it, and then we'll be set.  I hope to offer a cooking demo sometime in the spring for any locals who are interested in seeing how it works first hand.

I'm really excited to combine rocket stove use with my solar oven cum haybox cooker, for some majorly low-energy, fossil fuel free cooking!

Thanks ADG for making this happen.  Yer awesome dude!