I’m a Rocket Stove Man

Construction of chimney and other parts.

My latest CHE test project has been to construct a “rocket stove” of the type that aid workers in Haiti developed to help cut a family’s firewood consumption in half. The rocket stove is designed to maximize the heat you get out of burning wood by insulating the area around the pot, getting higher temperatures in a “combustion chamber” to burn more of the gases, and using a chimney and “grille” to provide the right amount of draft without letting ash block the airway. This has been shown to use up to 60% less wood to cook a meal. In Haiti they are making them out of locally available clay, but here clay is much rarer. Later I hope to try with the local mud-brick if we can locate a good source, but to test the usefulness I decided to start by making one of out of cement. 

The first lighting by our guard's family.

Our guard’s family is going to test it out for us and so our guard helped in the construction, especially the pouring of cement. He teased me that I have a lot of wisdom, but it’s wisdom about how to eat food and not how to mix cement! We made the molds for the different parts of the furnace out of scrap boards left over from construction, and then a plastic bucket and large plastic bowl. There were many modifications needed to make it fit together sturdily with a tongue and groove technique, but it worked out well. The guard’s wife was very excited to receive one to test and really liked it, at least the first day of testing! I am interested to hear her feedback because it’s usually very difficult to get people to change these types of basic habits. But I can already see that it’s easier to start the fire and control the draft than it is for their normal method of putting a pot on three big stones and letting the fire be very open underneath. Hopefully it will reduce their firewood costs, which they told me are usually about $10 a month or 10% of their monthly salary.

-- El Padre