Teeny Tiny Mass Heater for Kickstarter stretch goal

So I have 3 teeny-tiny mass heaters available to give out as plans for our Kickstarter stretch goal.
We are in good shape to make that goal - if everyone keeps supporting like they have been, thank you!

http://kck.st/229WnXq

Please up-vote the post for the one you most want to see.

(This is not a democracy, there are other factors affecting the final decision.)

Kiko's Mini Masonry Heater:


Takes some skill to build this from scratch, but it stores heat above a regular woodstove without much added space footprint, and includes a tiny oven.

The Nymph:
Like a pocket rocket on the outside, but 20x better on the inside:
Cut and dry-fit firebrick make this project cleaner, more durable, gentler and steadier heat. It's bottom-weighted so it will stand semi-submerged in a water tank like a snorkel heater.

The Shrimp:
This prototype is not finished yet, but it's planned as a stand-alone box, a little over one foot square.
One-loaf oven, 4-slice cooktop, and optional ceramic glass so you can see the crazy flame vortex.

Minor heat-storage capacity, but most of the emphasis is on cool cooking functions and insulation, so it burns clean at small scale, and you can fit it in tight spaces.
Add a stock pot for double the thermal mass.

Kiko's mini has probably the widest applicability, but I like the Shrimp best myself.

And then there's Peter's examples from this year, like the Minnie Mouse, or this one, the
Fat Rabbit: a little batch-box-in-a-bell, where you can fill the bell with bricks to store heat and control the surface temperature.

Glenn Herbert wrote:Kiko's mini has probably the widest applicability, but I like the Shrimp best myself.

Sounds good, doesn't it?

Of course, a few of those features may change as it hits reality.
Size is the big elusive target - I want the clean burn, and that's hard to do in small packages.

Here is an interior view of the Nymph, showing how the lining connects the two chambers through a slot down in the bottom.

(The main view is still in its test-bath, standing in a larger barrel full of water.)

Hi! Can someone please help me to pick a stove to vote on. I am going to stay in a Maasai village in Tanzania and would like to build
a cooking stove there - so the simplest model with and oven and exhaust pipe would be suitable (preferably made of cob or / and bricks).
Most of the Maasai women get problems with their eyes and lungs when they get older because they use open wood fires to cook on in the mud huts (houses).
So It would be absolutely fantastic If I could build a stove there that anyone could copy without needing to buy tons of material.

Thanks!

natascha riemsma wrote:Hi! Can someone please help me to pick a stove to vote on. I am going to stay in a Maasai village in Tanzania and would like to build
a cooking stove there - so the simplest model with and oven and exhaust pipe would be suitable (preferably made of cob or / and bricks).
Most of the Maasai women get problems with their eyes and lungs when they get older because they use open wood fires to cook on in the mud huts (houses).
So It would be absolutely fantastic If I could build a stove there that anyone could copy without needing to buy tons of material.

Thanks!

That is a great idea. I might suggest looking at The Good Stove (from India) which is an adobe stove, or I just saw a good one from Central America which is like a Lorena Stove, also adobe/earth.

I believe there is a tea stove which the Masai men make in a termite mound 'chimney,' we make a version we call the Jug Stove. It's part of the 3 stoves and 6 stoves instructions that are already on the Kickstarter ($3 and $5 reward levels, and up).

Do you know what kind of oven they are using, or for that matter, what kind are you accustomed to using yourself?

It helps if the stove is a good design for what people cook every day.

-Erica

The Nymph interests me most.

Thanks for your reply and congrads with the book! I signed up for the kickstarter $ 5,00. I've never used or built a rocket stove but I am very much DIY and I would really like to try and build one.
I already found some designs on the internet but I'm clueless which of the options you are giving would best suit the needs of the people who live there. Nobody I know has an oven there. Most of the mud huts use small open wood or charcoal fires and my friend has a small charcoal burner (which produces less smoke). But you can only cook one pan meals which is really ok except for the smoke. But for me personally (I love to cook) It would be great it if I could at least heat up 2 pans at the same time and have an oven and an exhaust pipe (so the house doesn't get filled up with smoke) and if it was a simple design that anyone there could copy it would be even more amazing... - so many wants But yes, that would be fantastic! Thanks.

My vote is for the Shrimp.

I'm looking for something that could be built for 1 room or a tent, Possible to move or made permanent. I'm thinking the one with water in another barrel?


But that shrimp sure looks great!!! if it could be used to hold mass heat some?

The nymph SOUNDs cool ... but I'm having trouble finding any actual photos of any of these... I see you are well above your Kickstarter "goal".

Sorry about the lack of pictures.

These are stretch goals because they are not done yet.
Documenting them would be ongoing work, which our lovely backers are supporting by helping us raise money on Kickstarter.


I didn't get a good exterior photo of the Nymph.
It's basically the same as a pocket rocket on the outside (a skinny barrel, with a chimney coming out the lid, and another hole in the lid where you put fuel in).
You'd need a special tool or vacuum to clean the ash out, or we'd need to add an ash-cleanout hatch, if it were used permanently in a space.
We have an offer of a tiny space where we can install it, and let people use it, and get more feedback about how it works on a longer-term basis.

The Shrimp is a half-finished prototype that I would need to go back to Montana and keep working on, ideally during the Appropriate Tech course this June.
If it performs as expected, it would look like a box, a little deeper front-to-back than it is wide. Maybe 15" by 24" - maybe 18" by 30" - the final insulation thickness is one thing still to prototype.
It would have a small fuel door in the lower front, about 6x6". The sides would be plain and flat. On top, the front is a roughly 11 x 16" grill, and a 4" chimney sticks up in back.
We are using a medium-density insulating brick, I would not make claims about thermal mass until I can test it. But you could heat a covered pot of water on the grill and just about double the thermal mass; it's small.

It is called the "Shrimp" not just because of its size, but because the flame path involves a main body in the oven/batch box, then a curled-over heat riser that comes back over the main body and splits into a "tail." It could look like a whale, but it would be silly to call a very tiny heater "the whale," or even "the dolphin." so it is "the shrimp."

If we are able to use ceramic glass for the grill, I hope to get photos of the flame path as it comes out and splits. I don't know if that would be part of a home-use version, or just for prototyping (not sure on the durability, or flame length when hooked up to a drafting chimney).

...

Regarding the oven for cooking Western-style instead of open-fire: I think an adobe stove is going to be your best option, if the local earth cooperates. Is there any earthen building in the area? If there is enough clay in the soil to do earth-block or clay-dung plasters, then you should be able to make bricks for a stove.

Here is a place you can look at the "Good Stove," a two-burner adobe stove developed in India. http://e-goodstove.blogspot.com/

Glad we're in the stretch zone, looking forward to the materials.

I vote for the nymph because I would like to heat water or oil.