5 block outdoor rocket stove

Hi,

We live in Spain and had a day long, unexplained, power outage on Monday.

Most stuff was covered (thanks permies!) but I couldn't heat water or food as all our cooking is currently electric.

I'm not going to be caught out again (need my morning coffee!)

I've been looking at the basic 5 block rocket stoves, which I could make today from what's available around the garden.

But, looking at the comments, lots of people were concerned about the fireproof-ness of the (concrete) blocks.

Should I be worried, or can I just go ahead?  I value the opinions in this wonderful forum!

Many thanks

Helen
Veganpermaculturespain.com

If you need something quick, concrete blocks will probably make it through a power cut of a few days and then when you've got the time and energy to make something more robust, you can get proper firebricks. Don't let perfect stand in the way of good enough, especially when it involves coffee.

Haha!  You made me spit my coffee out!!!

Thank you!  We have new blocks around the place, so hopefully they'd be stronger, and we don't get a lot of rain, so the moisture content shouldn't be too much of a factor...  so if it happens again soon I'll be okay.

But I'm now actually thinking I should do a proper job with fire brick, sooner rather than later, while I can easily obtain materials and have the capacity to build... then I can use it in the winter while I'm working outside, even if I don't 'need' it for a crisis...

Portugal was out too on Monday.

We have a gas stove and dug out the old whistling kettle, which seems to have lost its whistle. And we built the rocket mass heater last year which has a cooktop and a bypass so if it had been a colder day we could have lit that up to cook on.

My son was working on a renovation site. Usually they work on off-grid places, but this one was on-grid and they had no back up generator there for the cement mixer. Guess who got to mix concrete in the wheelbarrow by hand all day!

Also, just seen this, by Yura Brezytskiy, which seems as likely an explanation for the blackout as any I've seen so far... ;)

I have friends at Quinta de Chumberia and couldn't believe the extent of the outage when I heard they were off too 😳

Great cartoon... and yes, one to add to the myriad of (many highly implausible) 'possibilities' for what happened!

Ah!  Camping gaz!  I wonder if I still have mine, and if so, what state it's in!  I'll go and root around in the store/junk room to see if I can find it!

At least with all the physical activity you kept warm!!

It's certainly given us stuff to think about.  Who knows if it will happen again, but I'd like to be fully prepared next time if it does...

Always try to keep an outdoor Rocket stove covered when not in use.
A tarp or a piece of wood, anything to keep water from the inside of the bricks.

Plain (solid) clay bricks will work fine if firebricks are hard to locate or cost-prohibitive.

Concrete block will work when it is all you have.

Thanks Thomas!

Yes, definitely will aim to keep it covered... although I'm expecting this drizzle today to be the last moisture we see from the sky until October, if last year is anything to go by.

I'm going to have a look around various suppliers to see what options they might have for fire or clay bricks... if I don't need many, I might be better to buy them new.

Lots to consider!