Building a rocket stove oven in Portland, OR

I'm not dreaming of a white Christmas, I'm dreaming of a rocket powered oven!


I found this picture here at Jon and Flip's website, rechorocket.com

Has anybody here built a rocket powered oven similar to this? Or, different than this and better because. . . (explain why it's better) . . ?

I'm getting a stack of firebricks for Christmas, and I'm scheming what to do. I have access to great mass quantities of sticks, so a rocket stove seems like the way to go. I can't convince my family to go for a RMH in the house, and anyway it's good to practice with outdoor projects, right?

My plan is to build some simple dry stack rocket stoves with just the bricks, but soon I'd like to copy the stove pictured here, more or less.

Nice concept. I have this in my budget and I wonder if it can be scaled up.

I am building one like this:
http://permaculturenews.org/2012/11/08/rocket-oven-nitty-gritty/

I plan on putting mine on top of a barrel with an adjustable vent between the oven and the top if the barrel,an idea I got from Matt Walker.

The Flip oven runs off of a rather simple rocket and yet gets decent temperatures.
I want 500 degrees to be mid range in my oven so I am building a six inch "L" to fit .

You know, that link is not working for me. . . can you describe the oven design?

I searched for the key words in the link and came up with these images on Pinterest, I think it's the right thing-

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/151926187403977523/

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/321514860870487095/

Sorry about that .Try this :

http://www.koanga.org.nz/rocket-stove-nitty-gritty/

That looks like a cool oven (constructed from a 55G barrel, with two layers so the combustion gases pass between) but my steel cutting and welding skills are nonexistent, whereas I have some years experience with pottery and ceramics, so I think I'm going to go for a clay based solution. Jon and Flip's recipes seem to be using potter's clay, so what I need to find is something to substitute in for their "seed cleaning debris." I think chopped straw should work. . .

Hi Doug, thanks for reviving this thread! Did you have a question that got left off your post?

I did try building some dry stack rocket stoves, but I didn't have a lot of success, mostly because it was Portland in the winter and NOTHING was dry.

It's super dry right now, but of course it's also really hot, and I don't feel like making things hotter. I am collecting kindling (I read about using citrus peels, sans the white pith, for fire starting, so during citrus season I collected and dried lots of peels) and hopefully soon we will have an actual hard roof built off the back of our house. The plan is for the roof to be maybe twice as big as our little deck, so we will have some dry space where I can build a wood burning implement.

This space will be reasonably close to our ductless mini-split heat pump, which "harvests" heat from its surroundings. I wonder if heating the area around the heat pump will help it heat the house?

I'm getting used to my phone, accidentally hit send. I hate touch screens 😒. I'm wanting to build an outside rocket stove kitchen and I'm looking for idea's.I'm leaning towards a rocket oven and a two pot stove.

For lots of info and pictures of rocket stove and oven setups, see this thread on Donkey's forum:
http://donkey32.proboards.com/thread/1301/all-adobe-mud-cookstoves-ovens

Thanks for the link, Glenn! That is an awesome set of cookers!

So, they started with a rocket stove in a sturdy base made of adobe bricks and cob:


Built this lovely complicated floor heating contraption, to heat the oven floor evenly:


Built a pretty standard cob oven on top:


And decorated it to make it gorgeous!


(They also attached a hot water system, to harvest excess heat from the oven - please, follow the link. There are many more pictures and more detail on what they did.)

And I just have to share the other cooker in this thread, because it's so beautiful: