Homebuilt rocket stove,kind of.

Hi,im going to make a rocket stove to heat my greenhouse that i keep chickens and soon,quail. I have a stove tec rocket stove.My plan is to use it as a chamber with a stainless steel crockpot over it.Ill use one or two bricks butted up to it for the feeder.Then add some pipe for the exhaust. Im not sure how big the intake hole needs to be? and if the crockpot well take the heat? im trying to keep the whole thing on the small side,the greenhouse is ten by ten foot.Thoughts and ideas?

Ron Waters wrote: Hi,im going to make a rocket stove to heat my greenhouse that i keep chickens and soon,quail. I have a stove tec rocket stove.My plan is to use it as a chamber with a stainless steel crockpot over it.Ill use one or two bricks butted up to it for the feeder.Then add some pipe for the exhaust. Im not sure how big the intake hole needs to be? and if the crockpot well take the heat? im trying to keep the whole thing on the small side,the greenhouse is ten by ten foot.Thoughts and ideas?

Probably try a six inch system for medium overall capacity. I'd likely try to make the feed chute as large as possible to minimize maintenance of hand tending the input fuel. One thing to be concerned about is birds are VERY sensitive to any smoke or toxins in the air so a wood stove might not be ideal for birds in general. Ever heard the saying a canary in a coal mine? Right very small lungs and require FRESH air.. Just saying dead birds are a possible outcome of your idea.

Ive decided to use the rocket outside of the greenhouse and use copper coils to run a siphon system to heat a container of water in the green house.I hope the hot water would help warm the green house and add some humidity.Hows that for an idea?

better for air quality. You could run the chimney/exhaust through the greenhouse to get extra heat, too.

I personally like the stove feed being outside of a small greenhouse. Opening the door to tend the fire lets out more heat than you create.

Check the prices of flexible gas line--I have seen the stainless steel flex cheaper than copper.

Be very careful setting up a water heater--it is really easy to get a trapped air pocket that causing boiling and a big BOOM. Here is a link to an old book on wood stove water heaters: http://www.archive.org/stream/kitchenboilerco00unkngoog#page/n6/mode/2up