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rocket stove

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Homesteading with a family

rocketmassheater

Winter is just around the corner, I’m sitting here tonight, with drops of rain falling on the roof, it’s a chilly 55 degrees F outside, not much warmer inside, it’s not cold enough for the woodstove yet, though we have been enjoying the fireplace PB is building on the semi-enclosed deck.

This yet again stirred my interest in thermal mass rocket stove heaters, you know the one I’m talking about I’m sure, the one built into the cob bench, the idea is using a rocket stove for efficient burning, using less wood, heating a thermal mass (the cob bench)… I have little hope of having one in our current living space, mainly because of the weight, we “live” on the second floor of the SkyCastle. BUT there is a ground floor level that will someday be finished, becoming a bedroom, that space is perfect for a thermal mass rocket stove heater, I’m just biding my time until PB begins to finish that part of the house.
Rocket Mass Heaters
Lessons from Our Rocket Mass Heater: This book is bursting with photos, tips and resources all from our own build! A companion guide to the experts manuals you’ll get a personal look at a real build.

Meanwhile, I will watch and learn from other folk who build and use these, I REALLY appreciate the ones who post follow up videos or blogs showing their experiences over the years, the good and the bad. While looking for such a video, I found the most adorable homesteading family, a mom, dad and 4 kids. They moved from the city to the country, jumping in with both feet, I have enjoyed watching their videos, especially the ones from the kids, they are truly learning here and sharing this experience with the rest of us.

Here are the videos about cob building and thermal mass rocket heaters. Links to their YouTube and webpage to follow.

This first video shows a really interesting floor treatment as well as a thermal mass rocket stove heater

https://youtu.be/Yei0a6OeRbo

This shows the thermal mass rocket stove heater with cob bench.

https://youtu.be/NYJyxptclos

This shows the thermal mass rocket stove heater some 3 years later, an improvement they made and how well it is doing.

https://youtu.be/nG9-hyg7r4k

MyLittleHomestead YouTube page
MyLittleHomestead webpage




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Rocket stove updates

I am really excited about the improvements people have been making on rocket stove ovens and thermal mass rocket stove heaters. All you need do is go to YouTube and do a search for rocket stoves and you will quickly see dozens of really great videos. With winter approaching, keeping warm and cooking efficiently is foremost on my mind.

This one is one of my favorites, I want to make a rocket stove oven like this

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Community

Sky castle in early fall

PICT0566

It’s Sept 1, summer is all but over, the days are still warm but the nights are cooling off quite a bit, I notice the cottonwood trees in town are starting to turn that crisp yellow color, in a few more weeks it will be a riot of yellow with some reds, rusts and burgundy from some of the other trees.

The animals are putting on their fall into winter coats, adding weight to make it through the cold winter that is about to beset us. I just saw a fluffy squirrel looking in the window at me, this year has been a banner year for the squirrels, they are still fearful of us, but don’t get too concerned over our daily coming and going.

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Community

Thermal mass rocket heaters

rocket-mass-heater-warm
With it still being winter time, and with many mega-blizzards going on though out the USA, there will always be a need for alternative ways of keeping warm and cooking. Rocket stoves and rocket mass heaters neatly fit the bill here, what is really great about them is they don’t use up loads and loads of wood, in fact you can burn twigs in them quite nicely. Since I first wrote about rocket stoves, there have been many experiments and improvements made by industrious tinkerers, and fortunately for us, these tinkerers also have cameras and are putting up videos of their progress.

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Community

Keeping it real – keeping it warm

Fall is here, that means winter is just around the proverbial corner. For most of us, that means having to keep our homes warm in some manner. For us, that means using our wood burning stove that PB designed and built himself when we lived back in the city and had access to a friend’s metal shop. It’s all made out of 3/16 plate steel with schedule 40 steel pipe for the flue (we aren’t afraid of flue fires). He poured about an inch and a half of refractory cement in the bottom. It serves double duty when I want to cook something on top of it, it makes great tortillas and pizza.  The whole thing weighs in at around 200 pounds, I am still amazed at the fact that PB managed to get it inside the skycastle without any help, up to the second floor (our living space) that didn’t have steps yet, we used a ladder to get in and out.

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Community

DIY rocket stove

kent-ivey-diy-rocket-stove

I like rocket stoves, these are usually small, usually portable, mini-cooking-heating devices that are very efficient. You can use twigs instead of larger pieces of wood, these tend to be safer since you aren’t using a lot of fuel (twigs) and it goes out if you aren’t there to feed the wood into the stove. I have seen a lot of different methods of building a rocket stove, from simple bricks without mortar to very elaborate and expensive rigs.

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Community

Rocket Stove Video

Vavrek rocket stoveRocket 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.

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