Rocket Stove dimensional standards and ratios

Hi everyone. I know I'm dropping in here a bit relentlessly as I'm still figuring out exactly what I'm looking for. In essence I'm looking for any tried and true conventional practices, protocols, rules, formulas, ratios etc for making efficient rocket stoves or wood burning stoves. In particular I'm trying to figure out how to to determine proper size ratios between air intake, exhaust, and burn chamber. Effects of tapered or necked down burn chambers. Perhaps even a draft formula. I know wood burning stoves are an exercise in balance, I'd just hate to go about reinventing established standards that are already known.

My biggest hangup is just figuring out the terms to use to search for this information. Any suggestions there would be greatly appreciated. I feel like Ralph trying to describe the "hey don't touch that, it's hot" part.

Thanks very much in advance.

Hi M Merk,

For all of this you will need to read a several good heater building books. I keep a list of formulas, but they frequently may not work, because the movement of the gases is, I would say, least restricted from 3 primary states of matter and because of that most difficult to describe mathematically.
I think the best approach is to have good theoretical foundation (gas dynamics, material science, chemistry) and also experiment a lot, understand the mistakes and improve.

If you are concerned with rocket stoves, their dimensions and all good practices are well covered here:

Batch Rocket website
Rocket Stove forum

Thank you Cristobal,  Up until now I've more or less just built prototypes, observed and taken notes, changed a few things then built another.

Are you trying to become an innovator pushing the science and technology forward, or just build excellent wood-fired heating devices?

Rocket mass heaters as a subset of masonry heaters have been developed to be close to as efficient and effective as it is possible to be, and you can use this research as noted above and at donkey32.proboards.com to build many different styles of RMH reliably.

If you want to advance the technology, you will need serious study and expensive equipment like a Testo gas analyzer to be able to detect small differences in results of experiments.

Glenn... both really.

I've already designed and market a small wood burning stove, though not a rocket stove. I'm always seeking out more information and inspiration for future designs. I just don't want to start at the bottom as far as research. If the data is available I want to understand and use it then experiment and record my own observations. Perhaps I'll find something unexpected or unique.


A little bit more info: I've made gasifier stoves, spirit burners, simple braziers, anafres, fireboxes, and the last rocket stove concept with which I was experimenting melted in my drive way. In addition to what I've found online I have also purchased Paul Wheaton's series on rocket mass heaters a few years back. I'm just on another research kick and figured I'd see what's to learn here on the forums.

Thank you all for all the suggestions so far. I have a lot of reading to do it seems.