Hey, so nice to see someone here post a link to my good friends at
Himalayan Rocket Stoves!
That is delicious roasting and slight charring, not soot at all. Chozang, the Ladakhi guy in that video gave me
chicken roasted in the same
rocket stove a week ago. Delicious! (He's an excellent cook, so it was spiced perfectly, too). He roasts tandoori kebabs in the heat riser, not in the
feed box; in the second video I thought it looked like you were roasting in the feed box, but I'm not sure. Chozang also uses the top of the feed box / burn tunnel for cooking chapatis and pots of food.
Chozang, the Ladakhi seen in the video, and Russell, the Australian voice heard in the video, have been fabricating and selling these for the past two winters. They sold a few dozen last year, and the word of mouth is great, so they sold out earlier than expected this autumn. The
local custom is to bring your woodstove inside in the autumn and set it up, and remove it for summer storage. So, although Russell has made some rocket mass
heaters, their business here is metal rocket stoves.
They use high-temperature rated stainless steel (SS310) for the hexagonal heat riser, and some kind of ceramic wool for the insulation. The stove you see in the video is in its second winter of use, and seems not to have suffered any destruction of the metal. It gets heavy use -- when it's -20 to -25C (-4 to -13F) outside, Chozang likes to crank it up to +25C (77F) indoors with the
rocket stove. It gets regular use from October through March or April.
The stove in the video is their first model, but this year they've introduced taller ones that
should be even more efficient.
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