2017 Rocket Mass Heater Workshop Jamboree

Check out the official web page for this event:



richsoil.com/rmh-workshop.jsp



A big part of the drive for this year's event, is that we want to have lots of people attend the actual five day innovators event. With lots of people here, we think the people will be able to largely assist the innovators and improve the overall forward velocity of global innovation.  

So, we want to price the innovators event portion quite low. Enough to be able to feed the paying students, the work traders, the innovators and all of the people needed to manage an event like this. And the materials. If we sell all the tickets, we should be able to cover some of the travel expenses for innovators, especially those that are coming here from Europe and Australia.

Next, we thought we would offer workshops immediately before the innovators event and immediately after the innovators event. The idea of this would be to help put some money in the pocket of the innovators so they can justify taking so much time away from their regular lives. Plus, this would also help bring people to the innovators event.

And we've chosen a new handle for this year's event:

The Rocket Mass Heater Workshop Jamboree!

Sounds festive, doesn't it? Read on to find out the what, where and when!

Come see what some of the best minds in the rocket mass heater field are cooking up!



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The whole event takes place at Wheaton Labs, from Friday, October 6 to Tuesday, October 17, 2017.
The event is broken down into 3 smaller events.


Rocket Mass Heater Workshop Jamboree - Part I

The event starts Friday night, October 6 at 6pm and runs through Sunday, October 8 at 5pm.
So it is a weekend, with "Fire Science Theater" thrown in on friday night.  

At any given time there will be different workshops happening simultaneously.  

  - a rocket mass heater build
  - four different sub workshops. One on Saturday morning, one Saturday afternoon, one Sunday morning and one Sunday afternoon


Rocket Mass Heater Workshop Jamboree - Part II
- the 5-day innovators event

Monday, October 9 through Friday, October 13

Rocket Mass Heater Workshop Jamboree - Part III

Saturday, October 14 through Tuesday, October 17

Peter van den Berg will lead a very detailed analysis, design and build for an off-grid structure.

We'll update this space as we learn what each innovator will be contributing to this workshop. Stay tuned!

This year's innovators:

Ernie and Erica Wisner



Ernie and Erica Wisner are a couple from Tonasket, WA. They learned about rocket stoves when Ernie apprenticed for Ianto Evans for about two years. Since then they have built over 700 rocket stoves worldwide.

Erica Wisner is the public face of their whole business. She is an experienced educator and project organizer so Ernie often refers to her as “the brains”. She is very passionate about making anything from scratch and helping other people to do so as well. She realizes it takes a while to gain confidence building with raw materials, but she is determined to teach people how to do so as quickly as possible. In her free time she enjoys art, masonry, baking, hiking, gardening, and aikido.

Ernie Wisner is semi-retired because of a disabling injury, but he still attends occasional workshops or special projects. He has extensive experience in everything you could think of regarding boats. He has built them, designed them, and competitively rowed them. Not only does Ernie have wide-range boat and rocket stove expertise, he also has been a firefighter, chocolatier, and ballet dancer.

This fabulous couple now makes their living by offering resources for practical projects. This includes free online information, design plans, and actual workshops on tons of different hands-on skills.


Peter van den Berg



Born 1st of March 1946 in The Hague, Netherlands. Lived in the same town since.
Formal education: Cabinet maker up to master.
Skills: Woodworking, bricklaying, plumbing, welding, plastering, electrical wiring, composites, making molds.
Work: Cabinet maker for 17 years; composite specialist and mold maker at Fokker Aircraft for 17 years; master of boats for Delft University among others, 14 years; retired since 2011.
Interested in efficient wood burning, mostly by way of masonry heaters for the last 30 years.  Tried to make a living building those heaters but gave up after 5 years.
Since 2007 investigating and developing rocket heater variants. Designed and built his own passive, energy neutral house.

Peter's devious plans for the innovators event

For the innovator's event: some experiments done by some people, including myself suggest the direction of the riser in a batchrocket core doesn't need to be vertically up. That is, as long as the flames coming from the firebox are going through a 90 degree turn. So I'd like to do a horizontal "riser" coupled to a batchrocket combustion core.

A "riser" going down from the firebox might be too much to ask but a definite conclusion could only be established through experimentation.

A second experiment, given there's enough time, could be a J-tube Evans' style with an added detail which make the batchrockets "tick".

The workshop after the event could be: a small kitchen heater with a cook top and hopefully also an oven. The heater core could be anything from a standard J-tube up to one of the experimental core mentioned above. This workshop would be taken place in Allerton Abbey, as off-grid as they come.


Tim Barker



Tim has come a long way since his days as a diesel fitter mechanic, and now spends his time between Australia and New Zealand (and sometimes the US), as a semi professional pyromaniac and mad scientist teaching people how to burn stuff and make really cool machines and devices for low carbon living. He currently teaches Appropriate technology for the Koanga institute in New Zealand and Very Edible Gardens (VEG) in Melbourne, to name a few.

He has previously been farm manager for the Permaculture research Institute of Australia, power station operator/mechanic, adventure guide and professional turtle wrestler. His rocket stove and char making powered hot water systems, ovens and cookers reflect his passion for elegant simple and durable combustion technologies. Other projects include gravity powered water pumps, solar thermal cookers and dryers, pedal powered washing machines, cargo bikes, hovercraft, wooden boats and aquaponics, to name a few. When he is not tinkering he can be found on Macleay Island off the coast of Queensland Australia, where he and his family live and are currently in the process of building a rammed earth house (with maybe a little sailing thrown in).

He is particularly well known for his safe and effective rocket hot water heating system.He brings practical, hands on experience with some truly fascinating projects to the table - this from the Koanga institute:

"He has the practical knowledge and skills to construct almost any project with limited resources."


Chris McClellan



Uncle Mud (aka Chris McClellan) raises free-range, organic children in the wilds of northeast Ohio. In his spare time he tinkers with, teaches, and publish books about cob building and Rocket Heaters.

Chris' devious plans for this year's innovators event

Greenhouse Heater
One particularly promising application for the RMH is the heating of greenhouses. Where I live in Cleveland a lot of growers install greenhouses but then can't afford the supplimental heat to keep them from freezing. There are challenges (such as damp conditions that limit our use of cob) but extending your growing season without breaking the bank is going to make a big difference at your homestead. We are going to be BOLD on this one. In fact, we are going to skip the greenhouse and build a RMHH (Rocket Mass Heated Hugelkultur) with a large barrel bell buried in the hugel bed just because we can. If we get enough folks helping we'll even add a bench-bell so we can have a place to warm our butts while we brag about our heated core season extender.

Cottage Rocket
Somewhere between a pocket-rocket and a full size RMH there is a thing I call a Cottage Rocket. Spaces like my double-wide trailer or my daughter's two-story treehouse or my friend's school bus need heat, but don't have the space or the support for a large mass. The quick and dirty pocket-rocket is too dirty and burns out too quickly and inefficiently for long term use. The Cottage Rocket uses cob and barrels to make a cheap, longer lasting stove with thermal storage in a small footprint. We will also make a quick-heating low mass bell-bench that gets a bit more heat out of the Cottage Rocket and deposit it right where it needs to be--in your buns.


Kirk Mobert



Kirk is a native Californian with a love of critters, fire, and mud. He's been a natural builder for some time, has taught with Cob Cottage Co. and around California for over a decade. For him, exploring the possibilities and pushing the boundries is where it's at. While Natural Building is ancient, for our culture it's new, and there's still a lot of room for discovery and experimentation.

Kirk's devious plans for this year's innovators event

For the workshops, I'll be building a 4-inch batch box for the Love Shack, and the Rocket Stove Canning Kitchen on a sled.

As an innovation, I want to do some experiments downstream, with the exhaust.

First, I'd like to figure out how fast the exhaust will cool, in masonry (cob) runs; to have a thumbnail rule about changing chimney sizes.
Second, I'd like to see if my idea for extracting the heat out of condensation of exhaust water can be made practical or even worth the trouble.

We will update this space with details on the projects the innovators will be working on.

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The official page, complete with payment stuff:

https://richsoil.com/rmh-workshop.jsp