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Thanks for sharing those links. It looks like it would be hard to start the rocket action correctly. You would have to preheat the circulator "chimney" somehow.

Thanks for sharing those links. It looks like it would be hard to start the rocket action correctly. You would have to preheat the circulator "chimney" somehow. Until then, smoke would pour into your house. This is a problem with normal wood-burning cooking stoves as well. Smoke doesn't go into the chimney until you establish a convection draft or the wind creates a venturi effect.

schiffern 10y ago
Thanks! Great points. Smoke free startup is an important design/operational consideration. There are lots of videos demonstrating startup technique (search "rocket stove starting"). Here's a couple good ones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ls_eqNB6d0Y&t=1m23s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ls_eqNB6d0Y&t=1m23s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSkUquOQt5w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSkUquOQt5w Note that the goal of the drafting chimney is not to soak up a lot of heat, but rather to be insulated and have low thermal mass to minimize heat loss. The higher the air exit temperature from the riser, the stronger the draft. The important thing for self-drafting is to heat the air in the riser, and only secondarily heat the riser material itself. A good design should make startup as "idiot proof" as possible. I've seen a few builds that use a 12V case fan on the air intake. Since the goal is to heat up the air in the riser (and that heating the riser... draws hot air into the riser), all you have to do is "tip it over" into that stable equilibrium. Imo there's a market opportunity for an inexpensive, compact, nice looking, and easy to operate rocket stove. The open source (and excellently documented) "batch rocket" design seems a good place to start. http://batchrocket.eu/en/ http://batchrocket.eu/en/