Firespeaking

What is a Rocket Stove?  A Rocket Stove is a wood-fired device which is clean burning, affordable to build, uses local and recycled materials, and creates a wonderful kind of warmth for heating cottages and small homes.  In a very unique way, the Rocket Stove combines both the immediate heat offered by regular woodstoves with both the clean-burning and mass-accumulating features of masonry heaters.

As part of a phenomenal event called Bioconstruyendo held in February of 2010 in Patagonia, Argentina, Max led this very successful hands-on project of building a Rocket stove in a beautiful cabin framed from recycled barn timbers and in-filled with straw bale and adobe to create a very tight passive solar building.  Considerations in the design included: having the firebox relatively near the door in order to be able to stack and dry the wood just inside the door, creating a daybed that would accomodate a twin sized mattress to act as a day-bed in the solar windows and as a sleep-over pad!

The first photo clearly shows the combination of the metal surface of a polished 55-gallon drum which radiates immediate heat to the space along with the “massive” day-bed made out of adobe bricks which stores the heat that the flue gases give off as they travel down and back the full length of channels inside the day-bed before exiting out the side wall.  The second photo shows where you load the wood into the unique down-draft combustion chamber of the Rocket Stove.

If you’re interested in learning about how to build your own rocket stove, Rocket Mass Heaters is the definitive guide and a good place to start.  We look forward to developing more information on our site about rocket stove building so stay tuned.  It is quite a new technology so it is an extremely exciting area for research and investigation.  I have been doing some interesting experiments in trying to refine the rocket stove by combining it with elements of masonry heater construction.  Take a look at these two projects built as workshops at Wildacres documented on the MHA website:

• The Rocket Bell Heater – a spontaneous and very rewarding result of combining the rocket and bell heater designs
• Experimental Heater Design – combining elements of the rocket mass stove with the more classic Finnish Contraflow design.

Links to come:

-Process of building this Rocket Stove.

Read More….

• A Discussion Comparing Rocket Mass Heaters and Masonry Heaters 

This is the masonry heater that we built in the central community building of the Rio Azul community outside of El Bolson, Patagonia, Argentina in March of 2010.  This heater can act as an open fireplace to provide the magic of fire and cut the chill in the late Spring or early Fall… but it really shines through the cold months when you close the first damper and send all the hot gases through a full round-trip in the day bed before they leave through the chimney.  When the fire has gone out, you close the second damper to keep all the accumulated heat in the stone and adobe inside the building which emanates until the next fire you make the following day.  There are pipes in the firebox that heat water in a hot water tank which is above the heater.

Most of the heater was built in our Naturally Building for Fire workshop that I led and then Eva and I did the finishing work afterward.  Here you can see a little more of the context in which the heater was built.  You can see the community kitchen in the background.  The heater helps to form the living room / hang-out area.  There is a sleeping loft in between.  The building currently acts as a barn as well which is why garlic and herbs are hanging and bins of seeds are all around.

This heater also represents a breakthrough for us is making our own hardware.  My old metalsmithing teacher let me build the firebox door, dampers and cleanouts in his shop.

More about masonry heaters….

I look forward to sharing more about the process on my personal blog so stay tuned….

We have a decade of experience with fine natural finishes including all kinds and colors of earthen plasters & paints, lime plaster, earthen floors, sculpture, mosaic, and tile.

These techniques can be applied to many surfaces including earthen buildings, cement, drywall, and latex paint.

Please contact us to discuss your projects and ideas!  We are also available to teach courses on how to use your local, natural materials to craft many types of beautiful and traditional finishes.

Spring is well on its way.  We’re back from Argentina and excited about all the possibilities that are abloom on the North American continent.  Check out our calendar of workshops to see how you might join us in creating beautiful, functional and inspiring artefacts for daily life.

We continue our commitment to growing our buisiness with a focus on masonry heater building, wood-fired cook stoves, ovens, natural finishes and round pole timber framing.  Are you interested in having a masonry heater built in your home?  Are you considering how you might do a naturally-based retrofit of your existing home, imagining how a new natural plaster might give it new life or dreaming of building an ecological home in the future?  Look at the products that we offer and our portfolio of past projects to familiarize yourself with what we do…

Feel free to call or email us to further discuss projects.

Earthen Oven Workshop

at Sacred Grove Retreat

Gold Hill, NC

April 16-18, 2010

Click to view event poster

Contact us now to reserve space, or with any questions:
www.sacredgroveretreat.com
info@sacredgroveretreat.com
704-463-0768

Hawthorn Farm is 10 minutes away from the town of Woodinville with several grocery stores, library with internet access, bookstore, restaurants etc. This three-acre farm is 20 miles northeast of Seattle. There is plenty of space to pitch tents, and the living room has lots of floor space if people prefer to be inside. The garden will contribute to our meals, including home-grown chicken and lamb.  Animals on the farm include bees, horses and pony, chickens and sheep.