Annual Cleanout of RMH - PEP BB rocket.sand.clean

Get ALL the Ash!


I'm using an Ash Vacuum, and cleaning the Rocket Mass Heater in the Fisher Price house at Basecamp. Everyone agreed that it'd been over a year since its last cleaning. I got so wrapped up with things, that I forgot to get a good picture of the manifold covered in ash.

Thanks for the reminder Lee!  I cleaned out the red cabin's batch box heater when I was at the PEP1 event.  It wasn't running very well so I broke loose the elbow per Paul's suggestion and found it nearly completely blocked off with ash.  So I replaced it with a "T" and cleaned out the vertical stovepipe.  I vacuumed out the side port and scooped and vacuumed out the batch box.  After doing that it drafted much better and didn't smoke out the door nearly as much.  It was still a tricky stove to keep from smoking but it went from impossible to reasonably possible after cleaning.  

I started the video with the kindling fire going.  I pan around to any spot where smoke might come out, then open the door and load the batch box up for the night.

I did my second clean out of my RMH a while back.  I happened to take some photos thinking of a second blog post about it, but it seems I didn't take everything required for this BB at the time.  (I hadn't read the BB yet!)  However, between my first blog post about that clean out and this time I do have everything.  Tonight I just started the first burn for the season and so tried taking the short video to show no smoke from the clean outs.  I will submit it all here hoping it will be accepted though I admit the photos are from 2 different clean out times.


This is a photo of my RMH that I will be cleaning the ash out of.


This is a pretty good shot of the build up in the barrel after I took the lid off.


Here is a view in one of the clean out ports prior to cleaning.


This is in the barrel after the cleaning.


This is a shot of the tubes after cleaning.


Hmmm....  it seems I can't just attach a video file to this.  I'm going to post this as is for the time being while I try to figure out how to attach a video file.

Edited to add that as Mike noted below I need to upload the video to YouTube or Vimeo and then link to here.  I believe I did that.  Here is my link attempt.  Fingers crossed it works.

To do videos, I have to load them on YouTube and post the link to YouTube in my submission.  You can set a video to Unlisted so that it's only findable by folks with the link if you don't want to share it with the world directly.

Thanks Mike!  I did try YouTube but it refused to play with me for some reason.  So I went to Vimeo and their interface worked just fine.  I'll now go try and edit my submission to add the video link.

Yesterday I performed an ash cleanout for the wheaton labs shower hot water heater. It was a doozy! It is a fully enclosed barrel housing a water tank with little to no access, and delicate baffling inside. So what I was able to do was remove one side of the corrugated tin paneling, fold down the fiberglass batting, unscrew the small cap in the barrel lid, and clean much of the ash out of the accessible area of the barrel with the ash vac. By contrast, cleaning the j-tube and the duct cleanout was pretty cut and dry, as you’ll see in the pictures below.

Here's my rocket mass heater clean out.

Link to starting RMH after clean out
https://youtu.be/ItIeakChkAc

Link to more of RMH after cleaning
https://youtu.be/9_emcfplvn8

Here is my submission for the Rocket - Sand - Annual Cleanout of a Rocket Mass Heater BB.

I cleaned out the RMH in the Fisher Price House.

To document the completion of the BB, I have provided the following:
       o pic of rocket mass heater
       o pic of ash in the general barrel area
       o pic of general barrel area with significantly less ash
       o pic of ash in ducts or stratification chamber
       o pic of ducts or stratification chamber with significantly less ash
       o pic of restored rocket mass heater
          and a video of starting a fire in rocket mass heater after cleaning with no smoke coming from cleanout points