Vickey McDonald

This is a fantastic thread to stumble on! Now we need to get it active again. There is so little information available for those of us growing in the "FAR" north.

Happy to see there are some other Alaskan gardeners and others in extreme temperature or low winter light areas. We are in the Talkeetna area (South Central Alaska) not as warm as Palmer but not as cold as Fairbank or Delta Junction areas.

Would love to hear from anyone who has built a walipini in Alaska, or hugelculture beds, or heating a greenhouse with RMH and such. Hoping to add a RMH/Stove when we add the addition (my new kitchen) to our cabin. But also grow as much of our produce and fruits as possible here. Not looking to grow all winter but would love to extend our growing on both ends of the season.

As others have mentioned the sunlight is a major issue, but if we could add even several weeks to either or both ends of the season it would be a blessing. Hate having to wait so late to start things in our small cabin for lack of space or to have to toss things that are doing well, because we have run out of time and the cold temperatures came early.

Thomas Rubino and Cristobal Cristo, thank you both for the information. Sounds like we need to rethink our plans and figure out how to incorporate two stoves instead of trying to combine everything into one stove.  In some ways that makes the separation of the heat source and our cold room we are building a bit easier.  Thank you again for your help.  

My idea was for something I could bake in without it tasting like wood smoke, as well as having a cooking surface on top that got hot enough to use a 30 quart pressure canner and even better if it could handle that and a 21 quart at the same time.

We have a camp wood cook stove that we don't use. Our thought is to take the cast iron cook top off it and use it for the top of the rocket stove. Being able to incorporate the mass when we are not necessarily cooking is our hope using the bypass.

If we use the batchbox and leave the bypass open in the winter the extra heat may be useful for heating the house, but it sounds like not as good for cooking, except on the surface when pans could be moved to a cooler area of the stovetop.

Just hoping to find a setup that would not require two different stoves in our place which will take a lot of room.

We will be starting on our house this spring. Wanting to add a walker style cook stove and/or a batch stove style. My husband wants it combined with the mass for heating the house with a way to close off the mass when we don't want to heat the house up, but just use the cooking portion.

My question is about the oven insert, or actually two questions.
Where can you source the oven insert?
Would it be possible to use the oven insert from a propane cook stove?

Most of what I have seen as the inserts are fairly small and if they have a rack there is only room for one. I do a lot of larger items, half or 3/4 sheet cake size and wondering about cooking on the holidays... large turkeys, multiple pies and cakes, large batches of cookies, breads etc. The small oven box would take me weeks of cooking to get the same amount ready.

Anyone have a solution for this issue?

This is good to know, I'm in South Central Alaska and would very much like to grow peanuts. I grew up in the South and one thing I really miss is a good boiled peanut.

We live off grid and freezer runs on a generator run several hours a day. So we often have the same issues of things freezing to the walls and floor of the freezer. We are planning to add some of the thin foam board insulation to put a layer around the sides and bottom of the freezer then put everything back in.

Might be worth a try. Or even some of the Reflectix insulation used the same way.

I love sourdough and will definitely be backing if the timing is right for my social security check. I have to pay bills first. Nice to see the loaves are not the dark brown burnt looking bread so many are proud of because the crust is so crispy. I have never liked the look of those.

Would love to see a golden brown sandwich loaf. Something to show it doesn't "have" to be the dark, crispy crusted round loaves and that you don't need a big cast iron dutch oven to bake good sourdough bread.

Liv Smith wrote:

Luetta Robinson wrote:Hi Paul,

Since you're coming this direction, how about visiting Alaska?? We'd love to have you here! Rocket Mass Stove Heaters would be a great topic.

Luetta

Alaska, as good as it sounds, is a little far. Paul is willing to drive 7 or 8 hours from his Montana home.

Let’s see what he has to say about it, though!

Liv- I agree. Would love to have him come to Alaska. Not sure what area your in but there are plenty of us here who would love some time with his knowledge. I bet just out here in the upper valley we could come up with at least a dozen.

Bumped mine up. I'm sure the kickstarter will at least meet its goal. Hope it does more than that.  

For everyone who has not donated or upper their donation... I have a challenge, If an old lady living on Social Security in an expensive place like Alaska can donate and increase my donation, knowing I will likely never build one of these. I challenge you all to pledge at least a dollar, more if you can. That's  not much, probably less than a cup of coffee even where you are.  Let's make this happen.

Got an email about increasing our pledge. How do we go about doing that?