Rocket Stove
Zero Fossil Rocket Stove
A zero rocket stove is generally a wood-fired heater with an internal flue or riser covered by a barrel. With a long exhaust pipe that runs through a cob (mixture of clay and straw), thermal mass acts as a heat battery, giving off stored heat in between burns, usually between evenings and mornings when the family is asleep, and you don’t want to be burning wood then anyway. Key benefits of a Rocket Stove over traditional wood stoves are:
- As little as 1/10 the consumption rate for the same effective heating to your living space,
- Virtually no smoke or carbon monoxide by-products, just carbon dioxide and steam,
- Minimal ash build-up with easy clean-out.
Key features that truly define a Rocket Stove are:
- Vertical wood inlet to a small firebox,
- Horizontal burn chamber,
- Insulated internal flue or riser,
- A drum or barrel over the riser for gases to cool and give off heat,
- An exhaust at the bottom that often extends through a cob bench to slowly store & release heat.
Operation
It takes about 30 minutes to get the stove up to temperature. Accordingly, it raises my 2150 cu-ft of shop space from there to about 15-20*F/hour. Consequently, based on the rate of temperature rise and heat losses through four exterior walls, it is estimated that my stove is putting out between 30,000 and 35,000 BTU/hour. Correspondingly, it does this with a wood consumption rate of only about 70 cu-in/hour.
Zero Fossil Plans
The ZeroFossilFuel basic plans are here and are free to download.
Deluxe Plans For Zero’s Rocket Stove
The 30-page set of measured blueprints, animated 3D Solidworks model, and photos from start to finish is only $20. Additionally, information is contained in a single zip file of about 65MB. Blueprints are PDFs. Photos are JPG. The video is Mpeg4. Click Here!