Alex Klohe

We’ve been off grid since 2014, family of 4. Our best water heating has proven to be a 50 gallon electric hot water heater plumbed to our old kitchen queen cook stove heater coil, then a mixing valve, then to a propane fired on demand hot water heater.

In the deep winter the propane never kicked on because the incoming water was already hot. Shoulder seasons it would heat minimally until the summer when it did all the work.

We have since built a walker continental rocket stove and LOVE IT. The only setback is no water coil. Since we only run it a couple hours a day on average it doesn’t pay to put one in. OUR PROPANE USAGE IS CRAZY.

Next step is to hook up the panels we just got directly to the water heater coils in the tank (which have never been used) and crank up the temperature. Hopefully that will help with the propane usage.


Our two cents.

Cheap welding gloves are good to have if you can find a pair that fits. Most bottled gas/welding suppliers have them with their logo by the counter.

I just cleared a 80’x20’ area around our young chestnuts with just a pair of atlas knit gloves and chaps. I walked down the canes with my boots then grabbed the base near the root and pulled.

If you take them out with roots and there’s less to deal with next season.

The best advice we have is to make sure you have the best materials possible for your core. Don’t skimp! It will keep you from having to tear it apart and rebuild it multiple times.

First mistake was we used second hand ceramic fiber board that turned out not to have fibers so it flaked and crumbled into dust.

Second mistake was we used the crappy pink insulated fire bricks that turned greenish and flaked apart.

Finally we used 2600 degree white firebrick and that was the ticket!

Since the first cooktop cracked because we didn’t give it enough room for expansion the second cooktop now floats on a gasket bed and allows for easy access to the top of the core for cleaning and replacing bricks.

The other piece of advice is to mock up the stove in cardboard so you can have a feel for how it will live with you.

There’s always someone sitting on it and if we had the room, we would have made the bench a twin bed size!

Action shot! It’s been an amazing heating season. Here we’re just making some tacos with sticks from the yard and it’s 24 degrees outside and we’re wearing t-shirts inside.

Loving our modified Walker Continental!

thomas rubino wrote:Alex;
Superb build!  Looks great!
Have any pictures and tips to share from your build?

We are working on a video. Rest assured it will be posted here and on Matt’s customer build page. Thank you much for your kind words!

We just finished ours. It’s awesome. Beats the 48” kitchen queen by miles!

I’m just a mechanic, not an engineer.
This is something I would try. It’s probably wrong in some orthodox way. I apologize to all the electrical engineers that cringe when they see this. Hopefully they can teach me something.
I don’t think you can hurt anything by doing this however.
Maybe it needs diodes?
Not sure on the fuse size, maybe 20 amps is too much? What’s the wattage of the motor?

Gerry,
Sorry about that. My misunderstanding.
How about putting in two relays onto the control wires in order to input onto the motor bus? That way the supposed good used controller is protected.
Basically use the controller circuit to switch the relays instead of directly running the motor.