I have been experimenting with Rocket Stoves in an effort to build a rocket stove BBQ grill.  Well actually, I want to use it for a bunch of different types of outdoor cooking.  This post will be the first in a series of posts that walk you through my experimenting with the rocket stove.

A rocket stove is an efficient cooking stove using small diameter wood fuel which is burned in a simple high-temperature combustion chamber containing a vertical chimney, which ensures almost complete combustion prior to the flames reaching the cooking surface. Wikipedia

My ultimate goal is to build a permanent installation with a rocket stove as the heat source, but with a number of different options for cooking.  These options could include a BBQ grill, indirect heat grill, rotisserie, burner, and maybe even a pizza or bread oven.  To do this, I am going to have to start small and build my personal knowledge.  I have done a lot of research along the way, and looked at a lot of other people’s designs.  If you are interested, the Design Principles at rocketstove.org is a good place to begin.   I begin with a 4 brick stove that I will discuss in this article, and end up with a relatively flexible system that allows me to adjust bricks to customize the way I use the heat.  Along the way, I will have a handful of articles where I will share what I have done and learned.  I hope you enjoy.

Four Brick Basic Rocket Stove

Let’s start this out by saying that I did not have a budget for experimenting with rocket stoves.  That doesn’t mean I had an unlimited budget, it means I had no budget.  Most of what I do is done with bricks and cinder blocks (concrete blocks) I had around the house.

The most basic design can be built using 4 concrete blocks.  It is a basic design that requires either an “H” block or, as I did, knock one end off of one of the blocks.

The first brick is simply there as a base.  I placed it so the air chambers went from side to side.  On top of this, I placed another brick that I customized by knocking the end off so that I could create a right angle for the burn chamber.  In front of the first two bricks, another brick is placed standing on end so that the openings go from the front, forming the burn chamber with the section of the second brick with the end knocked off.  The fourth brick is used to create the chimney above the burn chamber.  In the picture I have it overlapping the second and third bricks.  I did this so that it stabilized all the bricks together.

In the image above, you can see the burn chamber.  The  wood is placed through the top hole in the brick placed on end and into the second brick through the space where the end was knocked off that brick.  From there, the heat and smoke go straight up the chimney and out the top of the stove.  In some of the things I have read and seen, they use a shelf that the wood sits on, and allows the air to go underneath the wood into the burn chamber.

In some of the things I have read and seen, they use a shelf that the wood sits on, and allows the air to go underneath the wood into the burn chamber.  This image and the next show this kind of design.  From what I have seen, there is some debate about whether this is the best way to do it.  I haven’t taken a scientific enough approach to this to be able to answer that question.  The important thing is that the air needs to have plenty of room to come into the burn chamber, past the ends of the wood that are burning in the burn chamber, then out through the chimney.

The key is to have enough air going through the burn chamber and chimney to burn very hot, and in the process burn the smoke so that almost no smoke ever comes out of the top of the chimney.  Again, there are a lot of opinions about the best way to do this, but the things that appear to be agreed on are that the burn chamber needs to get hot, and the fire needs to go up into a chimney and burn through the chimney.  In the best designs, most or all of the smoke will be burned, and that is where the efficiency comes from.  Smoke coming out the chimney represents wasted energy since it did not burn.

From what I have learned, this L shaped burn chamber with the air coming in under the shelf gives the person running the stove the greatest control of the burn, and subsequently also is the most efficient.  The draw back is that the wood has to be constantly shifted to keep fresh wood in the burn zone.  I think overall, that is one of the greatest issues with the rocket stove.  Not a problem, just something that needs to be considered when you are designing your stove.

One of the things that I found with the four brick stove is that it is hard to get the burn chamber hot enough to get to a point of efficiency.  In the next article, I will start working with the use of a tube inside the chimney to minimize the amount of block being heated up, and hopefully increasing the efficiency of the unit.

So, what I learned here, is that the most basic form of rocket stove will work.  I did not try using it for anything, but this model would be relatively limited, perhaps the best use would be for a burner.  It wouldn’t be big enough for grilling. In a later article I will build a prototype which will be  built around a J shaped intake, combustion chamber, and chimney.  In the next posting, we take a look at the role of the chimney.