Rocket Mass Stove

Ive mentioned this before, but this is such a neat way to heat that I wanted to make an entry just for Rocket Mass Stoves and include the best videos and links I have found.  

Paul Wheaton from Permies.com demonstrates in this first 2 minute video just how efficient the Rocket Mass Stove is.  You see this video frame here where this lady has her face over the flue pipe.  The heat and fumes from the flue are warm not hot and very clean.  I hope you will explore the videos at  Permies.com.  It is one of my favorite sites!

 

Efficiency is the key to heating a green house.

This simple low tech stove with exceptionally high efficiency is something anybody could build.

Why do we continue the spend thousands on air tight stoves that pollute and burn more wood?

http://tinygreenlove.blogspot.com/2012/02/amazing-rocket-mass-heater.html

Below is another favorite video educator.  Rob Torcellini shows the details of how he built a Rocket Mass Stove to heat his greenhouse.  The same stove could heat your house.

Add a self feed bin for pellets!  This is how Rob did it.

Rob has taken the Rocket Mass Stove to a very sophisticated level. His excellent engineering skills and preparations while building his green house have payed off well.

Hear are some more ideas

Ive included this video because it demonstrates the effectiveness of a rocket mass stove

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Filtering Poo with Continous Flow Media Bed

My indoor system started out with a gravel bed. After repairing a leak in the 45 mil EPDM liner of that grow bed, I decided to go with a Deep Water Culture (DWC) raft.  With only one 10 wall glazed my grow bed is 30"x10 long which is a rather small 25 sq ft..  I found it easier to utilize that precious space with a  raft system.

A panoramic view inside grow room.  800 gal fish tank on left grow bed on right

But loosing the large media bed meant that I would also lose the filtering capability of the 3/4" rock media.   So I decided to build a filter using evaporative cooler pads.   This works great at first, but after a few months the fish population began to grow and the fish got bigger.   The filter could no longer keep up with the poo.   Cleaning filters everyday was more work than I was willing to do.

So I decided to return part of the bed to a gravel media, and keep the rest as a DWC grow tank.

The DWC tank with gravel to the right of a plastic fence partition

I built a partition out of plastic fencing and PVC pipe.  Filled one side with 3/4" gravel and extended the return water pipe from the fish tank so that it dumps on top of the gravel.   One thing Id like to say about that is I also used 2" pipe rather than 1-1/4" because the smaller pipe tends to clog.

At this point I began to have concerns about a continuous flood gravel bed.  RupertofOZ was kind enough to dispel my fears by pointing me toward a very good experiment done by backyardaquaponics.com.  

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