Rocket stoves

Matchmaker · 15 Oct 2015

Rocket stove
Has anyone had experience of these clever looking diy stoves. Can be seen on youtube.
They appear to burn wood very efficiently. Seems an ideal solution for keeping warm in the shed and getting shot of offcuts. Although a wood burner in a wood shed with sawdust and shavings for a carpet. Hmmm.

Monkey Mark · 15 Oct 2015

I've made a small one before. Work well and easy enough to make, especially if you can weld as an empty gas bottle is ideal.

Another type to consider is a wood gas stove, check YouTube. Again easy to make but these are supposed to be more efficient as they get a second burn from the wood gas meaning more heat and a cleaner burn.

Phil Hansen · 17 Oct 2015

Made one from an old gas cylinder.
Works well but I find you have be regularly tending the feed box or it clogs and the fire goes out.
Maybe the box needs to be bigger. Will experiment again next winter.
Phil

bugbear · 17 Oct 2015

Matchmaker":k3g2u5jr said:
Rocket stove
Has anyone had experience of these clever looking diy stoves. Can be seen on youtube.
They appear to burn wood very efficiently. Seems an ideal solution for keeping warm in the shed and getting shot of offcuts. Although a wood burner in a wood shed with sawdust and shavings for a carpet. Hmmm.

They seem to be a bit of a cult, complete with fervent true believers!

BugBear

cammy9r · 18 Oct 2015

Hi I have a 20' by 15' insulated workshop and thought a rocket stove was a good idea, heat from scrap wood.....great.
So I set about building one from an old gas bottle from the '50s.
Turned out to work well once I got the hang of lighting it. Bottle surface temp could be in excess of 350C at the top the burn chamber was over 500C but the flue temp was only in the region of 60C - 70C. it reached full gasification in around 40 mins which meant no smoke.
In the end I removed it from the workshop as I found it was warm enough with a 10min blast with my SIP fireball, the small one.
The rocket heater was a pain to keep feeding and heated the room to too high a temp. I did control the heat output by varying the amount of wood it burned but it also cooled the burn chamber and to it smoking again.
When I get round to it I will make it into a patio heater, should be great for that.

In the photo you can see I made it before insulating the workshop and I could keep it running full pelt all day. It could get through 2 bags of thin offcuts a day, a bag being a standard b&q 20kg gravel bag.
So PROS- free heat (kind of)
no smoke
flue temp no more than a hot cup of tea
CONS- can be gusty for fuel requiring regular checking/feeding
takes up a chunk of space as it is static and needs space around to stop burning its surroundings
lack of heat control coupled with gasification heat up time no use for me.
Again this was my first design of a rocket heater and with more footering my have worked better.

Matchmaker · 19 Oct 2015

Thanks for your responses guys, especially Phil and Cammy for the photos. Nobody has suggested they may be a fire hazard which was my main concern so the project has been promoted to my "to do" list. Regards Ron.