rw gillman

Ron Waters wrote: Hi,im going to make a rocket stove to heat my greenhouse that i keep chickens and soon,quail. I have a stove tec rocket stove.My plan is to use it as a chamber with a stainless steel crockpot over it.Ill use one or two bricks butted up to it for the feeder.Then add some pipe for the exhaust. Im not sure how big the intake hole needs to be? and if the crockpot well take the heat? im trying to keep the whole thing on the small side,the greenhouse is ten by ten foot.Thoughts and ideas?

Probably try a six inch system for medium overall capacity. I'd likely try to make the feed chute as large as possible to minimize maintenance of hand tending the input fuel. One thing to be concerned about is birds are VERY sensitive to any smoke or toxins in the air so a wood stove might not be ideal for birds in general. Ever heard the saying a canary in a coal mine? Right very small lungs and require FRESH air.. Just saying dead birds are a possible outcome of your idea.

Reginald Morgandorfer wrote:I bought clay at the local art supply place. Probably not the cheapest solution but if you go and find out who their supplier is, you might be able to get a larger quantity for a more sensible price.

Otherwise make friends with someone who has heavy clay soils and get to digging!

Sand, silt, and clay make up up to 80 percent of ALL soil on earth. In places like Texas Clay makes up over half and up to 90% of some soils in many areas. Paying for clay seems ludicrous to me since it clearly makes up a huge percentage of the earth we have all around us. Here is a video about how to extract clay from earth.
http://www.ehow.com/video_4946364_using-natural-clay-pottery.html
webpage

Satamax Antone wrote:I raised the temp about four degrees yesterday. Suffering from insomnia now, so i fired it again, and it was down to 12C° so it droped 2C° in about four hours. May be i'm kind of sorted.  Otherwise i take the thing out and make it 6".

I'm very new to this hobby and want to build one of these stoves for my workshop/barn which is 30 feet long and am trying to understand if this sort of heater/rocket/fireplace might work well to warm things up sufficiently in the winter. I live in Texas which getds pretty cold and have a lot of wood on our land which can be cut for stove materials.

First question is what is meant by 4" 6" or 8" system in regards to rocket wood stoves? The size of the reburner vertical updraft heater recycler chamber width or the possibly the width of the 20-30 feet of duct tubing which will radiate the heat along after the reburner vertical updraft heater recycler chamber.

Second question - Is there a glossary of sorts for this science that might help me better understand and help to not use my own made up phrases like "reburner vertical updraft heater recycler chamber" - thanks for anything to help me talk intelligently about the science and better plan and design my system properly as a heating stove which requires the least maintenance would be perfect and much appreciated.

Final question - I noticed most of the systems shown seem to adhere to the "Jay style" burner - reburner unit. Would it not be useful to have a taller entry tube to allow more wood to be queued up or does this entry height need to be kept small to keep the air flowing down into the feed entrance?

Thank you in advance for any info!