Rob Torcellini

Part 3 of the stove upgrade...adding a boiler!

I didn't think the air intake on the secondary burners would heat the air enough as it traveled to the burners. I think i was mistaken on that thought!

Here's the latest mods made to our wood burning stove - secondary burners!

I've been modifying an old Shenandoah stove and thought you may like to watch the progress. Technically, not a rocket stove….yet

Randy Voss wrote:I have a question , how hot are your Exhaust temps ?? I.e. hot much of the heat are you capturing Vs. how much loss goes out the chimney .
The reason i ask is i was thinking of building a gravity feed pellet stove/RMH to put in the basement in the other half of my building (i love the idea of a pellet stove that needs no electricity to run)

It's around 125-150F, depending on how long I've been running it for.

We're nearing the end of the heating season and I had to rebuild the heat riser. The stainless steel made it through about 1000 hours before it just fell apart.

Den Stou wrote:I love your videos!
That auger chip cutting is a great idea, it looked as though it was making smaller chips pretty slow though. How long does it take to get say a 5gal bucket of the finer cut chips?

It probably takes a few hours to make a 5 gallon bucket full. For now, I've abandoned the auger project and am working on a new heater design that can burn full sized chips.

John Adamz wrote:Rob T.-
Thanks for the update. I have seen all your videos on the rocket heater as well as some of your others. I am ready to try a pellet grate myself as I just talked my step-brother (who is a stainless fabricator) into making me one. But it will be a week or so before he can get to it.
With the wider gaps in the grate don't you see more unburned pellets falling into the ash pit? Do they burn up OK there? How long have you had a continuous burn without problems clogging up anywhere?
I noticed you commented on ZeroFossilFuels (my original design inspiration for a rocket heater) latest youtube vid on his rocket heater grate/basket.
Do you think the simple stainless wire "basket" would last in the short run?

I do get a few more unburned pellets falling through, but they just burn up in the ash pan. I did a basket design last year like ZeroFossilFuels and it does work well. But I found that the wire burns out fairly quickly and as it does, the gaps get wider and more pellets fall through. It's the main reason why I used the grate instead because the slats seem to last a bit longer. I think part of my issue is my heater is larger than his and burns at a higher temperature. His is still new so we'll see how long it lasts.

It's been nearly a year since I've done any updates for our heater. I've done some fine tuning this winter and really have it running great! Almost too hot now..

Hi everyone....I've been quietly busy working over here on a new enhancement for my rocket mass heater. One of my goals is to come up with a way to heat the greenhouse with bio-waste, mainly wood chips, without the need and expense of making actual pellets. This is the first step towards that goal....