Rocket Stove Cooker

[pa_friendly_guy]

When I 1st heard about Rocket Stoves and Rocket Mass heaters I was facinated by the idea. The Rocket Cook Stove was developed here in this country by Aprovecho Research Center in Oregan. It turns out that for 1/2 the people in the world the Kitchen is the place where they store their dishes, pots and pans, cook ware and appliances. For the other 1/2 of the people in the world the Kitchen is the place where they build the fire. Because of these open cooking fires woman and young children in 3rd world countrys get many health problems from breathing the smoke. It is estimated that some children breath in enough smoke to equal 3 packs of ciggarets per day. Woman have to walk for miles to collect fire wood because the forests have been all cut near the towns and citys. Buying wood or charcoal can be very expensive for people in the 3rd world countries. They need the money for food, not for fuel for the stove. A stove that uses less fuel is a Huge Deal for them.
http://www.aprovecho.org/lab/aboutarclist/arcstaff Here is a link to Aproecho center. As I read more and looked on the Net more and more to educate myself on the stoves I found a How to Video on Rocket Cook Stoves. It was in 2 parts, here they are.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeKcb-Fw-bo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=fv ... CwYlQ&NR=1

The Aproecho people want to make a stove that uses less fuel and gives off less smoke, and they want to make the stove for less than $10 so that it will be afforable to people in poor countries. After watching these videos a couple of years ago I decided to try and make one for myself. My neighbor got me 2 veggie oil cans from a local restaurant, I went down to the local Ace hardware store and bought the elbow and 4" stove pipe. The retail cost here in western Pa was $10.05, close to that they want but just a bit over budget. I had am old grate. Here is the can I used. My pictures show up small on here, click on them and they will be alot larger, if you click again you will see all of the details.





I then followed the video step by step and cut the holes, cut and installed the stove pipe and the tin can. I filled the stove with wood ashed and put on the top.





Today I decided to take some pictures and show you how it works. These are the sticks I used to boil a quart of water in my pot. I bought the pot just to use on the Rocket Stove.

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Lighting the fire.



Pot on the stove heating the water to a Boil.


Water started to boil in 3 min.


Water was at a full boil in 3 1/2 min.


It was a fun project to make, it did not take me long and it did not cost me much. I can't say that I have used it to cook much though, and I can probably tell you for sure that my wife will never cook on it, I feel it was still a very worth while experiment. They do work, and they work well and they cut down on pollution , and they are cheaper to operate. It seems like a win win win to me. By the way, the largest source of green house gas from Asia is coming from cook stoves. These Rocket cookers can make a huge difference.

[pa_friendly_guy]

Here is another link that talks about their stove projects.

http://www.aprovecho.org/lab/index.php

They started 30 years ago with a basic open air stove that was made on site out of concrete, its only advantage was that it had a chimney to get rid of the smoke. It still burned the same amount of fuel as an open fire though and it made the same amout of smoke. The Rocket Stove was a huge break through for them. Now they have developed a stove large enough for institusions like schools , orphanages, and Hospitals. Great tech for developing nations as well as places with natural disasters or wars where large numbers of people are displaced.

[matt walker]

That's a neat cook stove Guy. You did a nice job on it. Of course I'm thinking you could invert a small metal trash can or something over it and route the exhaust through a little seat and have yourself a tiny outdoor RMH. A hole in the top of the can and a baffle and you can control the heat like a burner, and use it as your barbeque grill, or tiny pizza oven, or whatever.

[pa_friendly_guy]

My stove is designed more as an out door cooker. It does smoke some when you light it up befor it gets going . I am surprised at how quickly it catches though and how quickly it starts to really draw. The very small amount of sticks used to bring the pot to a boil was pretty amazing to me. I have seem some people on the net use this kind of cooker in an outdoor summer kitchen as their main stove for cooking, and a cob oven for baking. The sides of the can do not really get as hot as I would expect. You can place the stove on a table and the bottom of the stove would be cool enough not to mark the table. When I 1st put a fire in it I was afraid that the can would be very hot and maybe mark what ever I set the thing on. It didn't cause any problems. It is much easier to work with and cook on when it is up off the ground. I had been thinking about a cobb pizza oven out back by the stone wall, but my wife thinks that is the craziest idea I have ever had. Maybe even stupid in her mind. So that idea is very much on hold. Why do all of the work to build it when you know she will never use it, and I might use it on occation, but I know that I would not use it often. I don't cook too much. I do all the BBQing though,

[matt walker]

You can put me on the list of folks who cook mostly outdoors in the summer. I would say over 80% of my meals in the last two months were cooked on that outdoor system I built. I haven't shown you guys my little cob oven yet, mostly because it's kind of embarrassing, but between that and the smoker/grill thingy I've been cooking up a storm out there. Last weekend some friends and I killed one of my roosters and made an amazing stew over the rocket stove. Sure was nice sitting around the warm barrel while that jerk rooster stewed away on top. Can you tell I don't miss him?

[pa_friendly_guy]

Cooking outside in the summer makes alot of sense if you have a convenient place to do it. If you have to haul things too far from the house it becomes inconvenient and people tend to not do things very long if they are inconvenient, Cooking outside helps to keep the house cool. Having all of that heat from a stove or oven outside makes a huge difference inside the house. It ties in with a thread that George started about heating and cooling in the South by using your house design. We have a very old convection oven that we sit out on the screened porch. It was Grandmas, so it is over 30 years old, but still works well. It holds a 9X13 inch pan so it is farly large. We use it alot in the summer to bake potatos, cassaroles, etc. It is right off the kitchen so it works well for us. I need to paint some numbers on the dials though, they have all faded and its hard to see if it is on or what temp it is set to, that is another thing on my list .

[Lollykoko]

I know I have a bucket of wood ash in the outhouse. But I also have this big old hill made of sandy clay, that would probably make good insulating material. Making this stove would be about as difficult as changing the propane tank. Maybe less, since the propane tank is under a bed on the pop-up.

[pa_friendly_guy]

Go for it Lolly. If you have the tools and the pipes and the can it should take you less than a mornings work. At that point you have it and can use it for years. The stove burns like a burner on your regular stove, direct heat to the bottom of your pan. You can regulat the heat by pulling the sticks back a bit, or by not adding as many sticks. I loaded it full for my water boiling test, but you could just as easily had the pot simmer.

[Lollykoko]

That was sort of what I was thinking, Guy. I have some left over parts from a ductwork project a couple of years ago and there are grill grates hanging on the camper that would be useful.I'll text my son tonight to see if the restaurant has any metal cans I can pick up before I leave town tomorrow. If nothing else, I have some metal coffee cans I could sacrifice for the cause.

I've been putting off changing that propane tank because of all the work involved in closing the bed compared to the discomfort of working on hands and knees in a confined space. I have a space heater, but with weather getting colder, a cooking surface is needed.

[pa_friendly_guy]

A bigger can is more stable and the insulation allowed by the large can helps direct the heat. A 3lb coffee can might work, but I am afraid it might be tippy, depending on the size of your cooking pot. Go for the 5 gal size if you can fine them. I am not sure what size can I have, about 5 gal I would guess, maybe a bit smaller. The pipe is 4" and that makes a nice burner size of flame for your pot or pan. The 4" pipe does direct the flame to the pot very well. A bigger pipe might be too big a flame unless you had a huge pot of corn to boil, or something like that. The 4" elbow and the 4" section of pipe was only about $10 at the local hardware store here. I am sure there are cheaper places to get those items. If you have the grate already that is Great, that could be a large part of the cost if you had to buy one. You will have ththe stove made by the time you take your trip.