Anomika Anderson

I made a square mold. (should have used a cylinder) put in down into the clay chimney and then poured and packed tight the insulting refractory cement. burn tunnel was made the same way with added fire brick. I don't know how hot it gets but it's pretty hot. wood ignites as i move it close to the bottom of the feed.
I can't remember why I made the riser so short, the project has taken a long time to build and now i'm depressed and going to undo it. remove the barrel which i don't need anyhow. lengthen the riser and add a secondary air injection. Because at this point, why not? It looks like it won't be done for this winter either.

Sorry. Cast-o-lite is a refractory. I took an old clay chimney and insulted the inside of it. I knew the riser was a bit short but I tried it anyways. It's burning correctly sideways and fairly rocket-y but it's not completely burning. Short of undoing soooo much work. Is there any danger in running a rocket stove that doesn't completely burn the fuel. The exhaust looks similar to my regular wood stove.
Not to be over dramatic but I am filling a large enclosed brick structure with barrel of wood gas. Someone asked about these things exploding and then answer you guys gave was "no way, all the wood gas gets burned up" Well, what if it doesn't because you built a small raiser for reasons you can't remember and bricked it in and can't change it now.

I had 2 small burns already and didn't smell anything. not sure it got hot enough to burn off. How long do you think it would take to burn off with this set up? The second barrel might never burn off as I can touch the top during a burn. I mean it's outside. If i pre-burn it, i would be outside too. Although, I would ware a vapor mask because i love my PPE.

The second case. I have a barrel over my riser like the standard rocket build. and it is bricked instead of cobbed. The good news is that it is outside, but in near proximity to my windows and other peoples breathing area.
There is 1 and 1/2 barrels inside the bricked area. Neither have been pre-burned. See attached photo.

I did not pre-burn my barrel. I didn't consider the paint and questioning if these shipping barrels are galvanized. It was previously used to ship maple syrup.
Is this a problem? taking it out now to burn it safely would be impossible as it's bricked in

Hi Everyone,

I just finished my rocket stove and it's not completely burning the fuel.

System is 5.5 inch diameter square made with clay chimney with a layer of cast-o-light inside. (the inside dimension is 5.5)
burn chamber is 16 inch (to the back, not the center point)
Heat raiser is 24 (to the bottom, not the center point)
3 inches space at the top.
The barrel has another barrel on top of it with stone dust in it containing a cooper pipe ( like a boiler or with stone) On top of that is insulated sand.
The whole thing is bricked in, with a 6 inch stove pipe chimney.
I have gray smoke coming out of my chimney which is clearly an incomplete burn.

What did i do wrong?

I have checked them, however it's very expensive. This is high quality pottery clay. i'm looking for cheap bags like 4 bucks of fire clay like they sell in the u.s. at their hardware stores. Perhaps I should call the manufactures and see if i can get a hardward store here to start carrying. I mean, i'm busy right. I don't have time dragging buckets of dirt home just to find out its slite. and i really don't have time call all these manufactures and hardward stores to try to get a product. So, i gave in and i'm building it out of brick. I too old and too busy to care anymore. if the brick manufactures have managed to make sure no one in canada gets their hands on clay so they can bind us to buying from them. i really don't care. they win. it's not exactly what i wanted. but hey, i'm learning how to lay brick. I"m still looking for bags of clay if anyone finds any, or if anyone else wants to go thru the effort of breaking the embargo on clay. I will gladly support you.

This is not fire clay. it's calcium aluminate cement. which is interesting, so thanks, but i'm really looking for the safe, plain old clay you pull out of the ground. I know it exists because you can buy truck loads of topsoil, sand, gravel, all which have had the clay removed. So where did it go? I contacted one company with this question and indicated they had clay to sell, but then refused to talk to me because i wasn't a company. It looks like if i want to buy clay here, i'll have to open a phony brick shell company.

Jordan Holland wrote:We use them because they are awesome! They do the job well, and they are free. (And there's nothing wrong with how they look.😂)

Trust me, i wasn't questioning them because i care about looks. lol. I just didn't want to waste if it wasn't needed, why put it in.
But after reading about the expansion joints, i realised that it might be good, to protect the bricks from quick heat up/cold down and probably worth throwing one in. You won't see it in mine. lol So, i don't care what it looks like anyhow. not that I would care what my heater looked like. It's a heater, not wall photo. But my stove will be all bricked in so you only see bricks no mater if i put a barrel in or not.

Great answers. Thanks. Because my stove is outside and the entire brick structure will be 3 walls of brick, i'm not concerned with a lot of the plus sides of the barrel. I see how it makes a lot of sense for indoors. I was planing on bricking around the barrel anyhow. And maybe i still will. I mean it doesn't hurt to have the barrel there and like you say it's free - 10 bucks per barrel. I find it interesting that cobbling around the barrel reduced draft. If that is true, i may run into this issue with my 3 layers of bricks. I"m building more of a traditional masonry heater then a rocket stove, but i'm using an insulated j-tube, so technically I think it's should be called a rocket stove. But then instead of the hot air going through a bench or a cob mass, it will zig-zag thru 3 walls of bricks before exiting. The last layer of brick might get insulation next year, but i want to test out my design this winter without it.
Anyhow, thanks for the info. It all made sense.