N. Taylor : I promise I am not being smart mouth here, when I say that building
Rocket Mass Heaters RMHs is a lot like giving birth to babies, And the general rule is that 1st
builds and 1st babies take the longest ! and that no matter how well prepared you are for the first its never like you expected !
I want to send you to a separate
RMH thread - ' Two more great working
heaters in upstate N.Y. - - - ' - in the upper left where it says permies>> forums>> Rocket stoves
click on 'rocket stoves' and find the thread I am sending you to ! Mostly, I want you to watch the first
video of the results of a RMH Work Shop that went from late friday morning
to monday afternoon! My wife Martha and I assisted Ernie and Erica at this build we also had a Cob specialist who dropped in to work with E + E, and we had a mason there who
had just taught himself how to build his own Russian Masonry Stove, a brick/stone mason an Industrial Arts Teacher, plumbers and the guy who ran the cut off wheel and chop
saws with masonry blades and free hand cut the second barrel to fit for the barrel and a half RMH required for this site, and the whole build was made with a previously prepared
cement pad and chimney in place for the build! The rest of the paying attendees were an outstanding cross section of mostly blue collar workers, We also had rain, and lots
of it, materials carefully spotted on the driveway were shifted by the stream that ran down thru the center of it and formed a dam holding
water 6'' deep !
Cob was made under a huge tarp a football field away, and trucked by 5 gal
bucket and wheel barrow directly through the flood and then into the Owners Home/indoor worksite!
I literally could go on with event after event and not talk about the entire
Roofed Cob Oven on a trailer that set in the middle of our flood, and produced endless pizzas -it
turns out our Russian masonry stove guy who brought the pizzeria on wheels and three other people were old pros at working at hot pizza ovens, this could have been a disaster!
After paying attendees pronounced themselfs satisfied and left Sunday as we were starting the Structural Cob, Ernie And Erica stayed around one more day, and we finished the
structural cob and worked on the finish cob on the sides better than a 1/2 day on Monday !
I have nothing but high regards for E + E , they went to Montana by car monday evening to instruct at a
Workshop that Friday and it snowed so hard that the fire brick built up steam
pressure and spalled off little pieces of fire brick shrapnel while the stove was going! Did I mentioned it snowed !? I spite of worse weather than ours and with more management
than labor it got built in the field and in the home on time !
How do I explain it? I can't, by all reckoning the second week
should have been harder, it wasn't, by all reckoning Ernie and Erica dragged their tails in there and should have had
a week to rest, they did get to work with some people they knew, and they certainly came away from Us with several new ideas about equipment, materials, and
Adult Education !
Watch the Film, Chellies' rocket - - - this woman had a Company of men and women in her house for 4 days plus, I took a week off before I came back to get my tents ! Does she
sound upset that things did not go smoothly ?
Finnally, a good well run workshop SHOULD produce a working RMH over a 2.5 day weekend, other wise if you are going to be your own contractor on your own job, it is entirely
dependent on the skill set you bring to the Job, and the amount of skilled help you can get from friends ! Every build like every baby is different, generally first builds like first
babies are the hardest !
Cob drying time, for mine I was a big
chicken, and built in stages over 9 days, for the built that this video was made after, 80 percent of the cob was PROBABLY laid between Noon
Saturday and Noon sunday and with every door and window that would open we tried to crank the RMH to speed drying !
I am eagerly waiting to see what other answers you get ! For the Crafts ! Big AL !
