Rocket Mass Heater/ Rocket Stoves Project in North India - Kashmir Valley, Upper Himalayas.

I was born in Northern India (Kashmir), up in the Himalayan Mountains. Live in Calgary Alberta, Canada now. I am an Industrial Electrician , a PLC Programmer and fix manufacturing machines for a living.
I am fascinated by Rocket Stoves. I am planning to do a Project in August 2015 when I am on a vacation to my birthplace. Heating houses is a HUGE problem there!
Limited Electricity and limited access to Fossil fuels is an every day problem.
I have started on working on designs that will work in a place like remote India.
I have bought some books from Scubbly. Ericas - The Art of Fire was nice. Watched tons of videos on youtube. I have started to build a small pipe rocket stove.

I thought this forum is really good for the kind of work I want to do.

My real challenge is going to be to find insulating material that is easily available there.

My questions are:
1: How good are ordinary construction bricks compared to special furnace bricks.
2: What can be an alternative to Perlite? Clay mixed with charcoal dust / wood ash ??
3: What are the most important things to consider to make sure no smoke gets into the space room rocket heater?

Thanks

Burhan.

Burhan : please don't wait, the time to do your practice builds is now !The time to have your 1st test fires is as soon as you can get outdoors in the spring !

Here in North America we are blessed/cursed with an overabundance of things! Here virtually every thing you need to make a rocket stove can be found in our
waste stream! Any failures to find a given material that way you can simply go to a builders supply store, or order it online. Buy building your 1st rockets here
you are assured of ample help and success.

Then when you construct your next rocket in India, you will know what actually will work and as the most knowledgable person there explain how it was done
before and someone will then be able to say -o.k. we don't have any -? can we try - X

As a fellow member Permies.com is giving away free sets of plans that have produced scores of working Rocket Mass Heaters See Link below :


http://www.richsoil.com/email.jsp

This is where I recommend going to Rocketstoves.com To Download a PDF Copy(s) of Rocket Mass Heaters

second Please view everything you see on You-tube with extreme prejudice ! There is a lot of stinking crap on U-tube !

3rd, anywhere within the Combustion zone, the Feed Tube, Burn Tunnel, and Heat Riser Any metal pie will fail -

Please Google 'High Temperature Hydrogen Attack ' To get an understanding of why iron and steel will not survive in this location !

Q1) Fire bricks are to be preferred , failing in that, a reasonable substitute that will work is 100 year old, dead soft House Brick-
Red, or dark orange red, when I say soft I mean that if you rub it on concrete or on blacktop it will leave a red mark behind similar to sidewalk chalk

Q2)If you can get ether Sodium silicate or potassium silicate (Water glass) You should be able to mix Clay slip and wood sawdust and use the (water glass)
as a hardener Then when you fire the Heat riser it will harden even as the sawdust burns up leaving you a light Heat Riser !

Q3) A tall final vertical chimney that end 1.5 meters above the peak of your roof or any there object within 10 '

Burhan, there's been a few builds made out of adobes.

Notably, a mud batch box.

http://donkey32.proboards.com/thread/850/mud-batch-box