Rocket stove mass heater

[LogHomeFeverDan]

Has anyone built one for the house? I'm speaking of incorporating it for heating the entire house. Anyone ever use one for a smoke house? I've been reading a lot about them for cooking but came across some information on the net about building one to heat. Feedback???

[ChainsawGrandpa]

Had planned to have mine installed by now but someone else has their RV right in
my way. Looks like I'll be paying for electricity & propane for the winter (Grrr....)

Mine is to be steel with an air to air heat exchanger. Properly loaded (the smoke passes through the fire) they supposedly don't put off any smoke after the initial firing.

Guess I can keep the forum informed on the progress next Spring.


G'pa

[LogHomeFeverDan]

Yeah I'll be looking forward to this ChainsawGrandpa. I like the idea. Small amount of wood for some decent heat and very efficient. I'm kinda toying with the idea of also incorporating a smokehouse.

[exsailor]

I am not sure a rocket stove would work for a smoke house. One of the reasons a rocket stove is so effieicient is it burns so completely and hotly there is little smoke. In a smoke house you need low heat around 140 degrees and a lot of smoke to slowly cure and flavor the meat. Seems to me the two are at the opposite ends of the spectrum.

[Timber]

Throw some water on the fire and let er smoke or soak some of the wood

[LogHomeFeverDan]

Yeah Exsailor, that's orginally what I thought as well. THen I saw a set up.

[exsailor]

So Log HomeFeverDan, what kind of setup uses high heat and no smoke produced to smoke meat. I can't see how it would work. I have looked at several Utube videos concerning rocket stoves and still don't see how it will work, because they essentially burn the gasses in the smoke to create their high efficiency.

[LogHomeFeverDan]

The setup I saw, and pardon me but I can't remember where it was, but they decreased the "combustion" chamber length. The longer that chamber is the more you create the vortex of reheat and thus higher combustion less smoke. If you decrease the length of the combustion chamber you have less efficient combustion and more smoke. The diagram I saw showed a "shorter" combustion area that still produced enough heat for a warmed seating area then directed the remaining smoke to an outdoor smoke house.

You are correct you can design a home rocket mass heater with a long enough/large enough combustion chamber/area that will create a natural vortex with such high efficiency only steam is emitted. Of course there's no way to utilize steam in a smoke house.

[LogHomeFeverDan]

I just read some more. I believe the point you were making that i'm too thick headed to grasp was a correct one. Thank you. Attempting to produce smoke from a rocket mass heater would be counter productive to the idea and thus efficiency of the rocket mass heater.

[TheBeak]

I've been looking at these. I've been reading here:

http://www.richsoil.com/rocket-stove-mass-heater.jsp

Apparently getting them to pass code is an issue. Any thought's on this?