Rocket Stove Fuel Alternative

A rocket stove can burn just about anything, including your furniture if need be!

Like any cooking appliance, it needs fuel of some sort. The Rocket Stove is no exception. For me, when a hurricane brushes by my coast and dumps 4-10 inches of rain, there are no dry branches or twigs to gather, light and cook dinner with! I found it difficult to long-term store dry twigs and small branches for its’ fuel, until this week. I found that the Preppers favorite long-term storage container, the 5-gallon bucket, works perfectly!

Wood Fuel for the Rocket Stove:

Here are two buckets, one has split wood in it (about ½ to ¾ inch square by 12-13 inches long) ready to use. The other bucket has scrap 2x4’s and 2x6’s in it, I had this wood on my fireplace wood pile and because of rains, it is too wet to easily split with a hand ax so I’ll get to it in a couple weeks. The nice thing about using 5-gallon bucket for the wood storage is just snap a lid on it and it is neat, dry, bug-free, and clean in your closet or pantry storage.

If you live in an apartment or condo and have a patio or balcony it is easy to store a couple buckets of Rocket Stove wood for disaster event cooking.

BBQ Charcoal Briquets as a Rocket Stove Fuel:

This week I thought I’d try using BBQ charcoal and see how well it does in my stove. As with any fuel for the rocket stove it needs to be kept dry and easy to store. What I found is BBQ charcoal is a very good fuel for the rocket stove, however, the stove needs a slight modification, see below.

A typical 16 lb. bag of BBQ charcoal.

A 16-lb bag of charcoal fits nicely into a 5-gallon bucket. Dump the charcoal into a bucket, snap the lid on and you’re all set for a future grid-down event.

Here’s a 5-Gallon bucket with 16lbs of charcoal in it. Snap on the lid and it will stay dry forever, and ready to use for emergency cooking or baking.

I purchased a standard Weber BBQ Kettle charcoal grate, about 13 inches in diameter. The modifications I found needed to make to my Rocket Stove to burn charcoal (hot) was to fabricate a charcoal grate similar to the Weber grates. The reason is I needed to get more fresh air under the charcoal to burn hot and get the charcoal heat closer to the cooking pots for more heat.

I cut the Weber grate to fit inside my Rocket Stone feed throat. The bolt and fender washer is used to secure the grate to the top of the stove’s wood feed throat.

Looking down into the stove you can see the new charcoal grate in its’ permanent position.

The bolt used to hold the grate to the top of the stoves wood feed port. The grate and bolt are not in the way where it restricts feeding wood into the stove. In other words, I can use either wood or charcoal without having to change anything.

Here’s 16 Briquets on the new grate in the Rocket Stove. The top of the 16 Briquets is now 2 inches from the top cooking grate.

A perfect charcoal fire uses 16 Briquets and weighs almost 15 ounces, I figure one pound of charcoal per fire or 16 fires per bag.

Warning:

DO NOT BURN CHARCOAL INDOORS. IT PRODUCES CARBON MONOXIDE AND IT CAN KILL YOU!!!!

Summary:

• This is an excellent cooking alternative especially when you run out of propane for cooking.
• Charcoal will last forever if kept dry such as in the buckets.
• Clean almost smoke-free heat so when baking bread the bread won’t have the smoky taste as with wood twigs etc.
• What’s interesting is that 3-buckets of briquettes will make over 48, 2 hour long cooking fires!
• The excess charcoal burn time after meal preparations can be used to boil water for drinking or keeping your coffee hot!

Where to buy this Rocket Stove?

Deadwood Stove Company link http://www.deadwoodstove.com/

Blog Links to using the Rocket Stove:

https://livingprepared.blogspot.com/2013/03/rocket-stoves.html

https://livingprepared.blogspot.com/2016/04/rocket-stove-using-camp-stove-oven.html

https://livingprepared.blogspot.com/2013/03/rocket-stoves.html

Rocket Stove using a Camp Stove Oven

In a disaster aftermath when no stores are open and no utilities operating it would be nice to have some baked bread, cookies and PIZZA along with other goodies we would be craving. If you’re out of propane, charcoal or other cooking fuels what do you do? The Rocket Stove will be your family savior.

A few months ago I tested my Coleman ‘camp stove oven’ on my rocket stove and found it was no problem to maintain a baking temperature (325f-375f). So I had confidence I could bake using the rocket stove, just needed to actually bake something and confirm it.

The only concern I had about baking using a wood fire was how much smoke would enter the oven and would the baked goods be overpowered with smoke smell/taste. With dry clean, dry wood that didn’t happen, the baked goods turned out just fine.

I made 8 dinner rolls for the test baking and here I’m waiting for them to rise.

After an hour they’re ready for the oven.

Getting the fire going.

Preheating the oven. Note that with a clean fire/flame there is no smoke.

In go the dinner rolls.

Fresh out of the oven.

Out of the pan and you can see the sides browned just like in a regular oven but the top appears to be discolored like a smoke gray.

Conclusion:

You can easily bake using a Coleman camp stove oven on your rocket stove. A rocket stove and a camp stove oven are truly viable disaster survival tools that will make cooking and eating possible in the worst of conditions.

The baked dinner rolls did have a very slight smokiness to them but no different than your fried eggs or fish cooked over a campfire. The bake time was comparable to the home oven. These took just 35 minutes to bake.

Rocket Stoves

I purchased a Rocket Stove to add to my Survival cooking gear. I had planned on making my own and was just about to order the steel tubing I needed when a reader asked me if I knew anything about the Deadwood Stove they were thinking about buying. I never heard of it before so I researched them and wow what a strong, heavy duty, well built stove. After reading the spec’s I immediately made up my mind to buy the Deadwood Stove and not make my own. This is a stove that can be used everyday for years, a true long term Survival tool.

What is a Rocket Stove?

Rocket stoves are very simple. They are normally home made, constructed of sheet metal pipes or cans about 4 inches in diameter and with some permanent stoves constructed of brick. The operating principle is simple; a horizontal pipe attached to a vertical pipe. Inside the horizontal pipe the sticks or twigs (fuel) are placed with the ends inside the vertical pipe are then lit on fire. The heat created from the fire creates a draft traveling up the vertical pipe and while doing so draws more fresh cold air into the horizontal pipe adding more oxygen to the fire making it burn completely and very hot, like a rocket engine. A cooking pot is placed on top the vertical pipe is heated like a burner on your kitchen stove.

The stoves fuels are simple twigs and small branches or split wood about the size of kindling. A handful of sticks will cook continuously for 30-45 minutes.

The rocket stove we see and use today began being perfected in the late 1970’s although the concept was discovered much earlier. Today it is widely used in third world counties especially where cooking fuels are scarce. Rocket stoves are becoming popular in the USA for the same reason they’re used in third world countries, minimum fuel consumption for cooking food especially during disaster aftermaths when there’s no utilities available. A Rocket Stove is a true Survival stove. You can run out of propane, gas, fuel oil and electricity but to run out of wood used in this small amount is not likely to ever happen.

Below is a diagram of a rocket stove. (source Wikipedia)

Want to heat your home using the rocket stove principle? Check out this link it’s pretty interesting: Rocket Stove Mass Heater link.

http://www.richsoil.com/rocket-stove-mass-heater.jsp

Why did I purchase a rocket stove?

To survive comfortably you need to be able to cook food and drink safe water. The aftermath of a large disaster event could last for months and it could be months before food, fuels and utilities are re-supplied and restored to your area. I stock a reasonable amount to cooking fuels but with friends being under or not prepared it would be used up much sooner than planned.

Fortunately I live in a forested area so there is more wood within walking distance than my neighborhood could ever use up. Campfires are a waste of wood if used only for cooking and they’re not fun to cook on everyday, especially in the rain. Also most people can not have a campfire like apartment or condo dwellers.

A rocket stove uses very little wood to cook a meal or just as important boil water for safe drinking water! The rocket stove is the best cooking appliance insurance policy a Survivalist/Prepper can have. Even those who live in apartments or condo’s, if you have a balcony or patio space you can cook just use a cookie sheet under it incase any hot coals fall out they won’t start your balcony deck on fire!

The first fire and test of my new Rocket Stove:

I thought a good test would be making coffee! One because I like coffee and the other to give me an idea just how hot the fire is and how long it would take to boil water to sterilize it for safe drinking water. It worked out well. The fire was easy to start and keep burning. 10 cups of coffee took 15 minutes to begin perking and another 10 minutes to brew the pot. Just like on my propane camp stove.

Deadwood Stove Company link http://www.deadwoodstove.com/

Here are some photos:

When the Deadwood Stove arrived it made me wonder if they sent the wrong thing to me with “FRAGILE” prominently labeled on it. The stove is anything but fragile!!

The stove unpacked. It comes with legs, nice leather gloves and detailed instructions. My first impression was, I’m impressed, which is not easy to do! This is a quality product, everything is welded together so nothing will ever fall apart and the welding is beautiful, no hack job here, all the edges and corners have been ground smooth so there are no burrs or sharp edges to cut yourself on. The only parts to assemble are the legs and that would be your choice if you intend to use it on the ground use the legs or if using it on a table remove the leg extensions and use the welded on stub legs. The metal used is 1/8 inch thick steel everywhere including the heavy duty hinge.

The fuel, just twigs and dead branches from my yard. I get about this much every week

To start the fire just wad up some newspaper or pine needles or leaves or grass etc. and place it in the bottom.

Toss in a handful of twigs and light the paper.

Once the twigs ignite begin pushing in the larger twigs in from the side.

Fire starting to burn the larger wood.

Made in the USA.

Coffee’s on!

Almost done!

The cooking surface is large and very stable. No need to worry about the cast iron fry pan or cast iron pot falling off.

Fresh coffee, yum!

Survival Cooking

In a disaster aftermath Survival Cooking is something you must be able to do and do possibly for an extended amount of time, maybe months. At the very least you must have the ability to boil water for drinking and cooking while living from your survival pantry stocks.

The first cooking appliance that comes to mind is a two burner Coleman type camping stove. These camp stoves work great, it is just like cooking on your home range. The only draw back is fuel…… Eventually you will run out if re-supply is not available. Propane may not be available or simply unaffordable because the banks have shut-down without notice and you only have the small amount of cash in your pocket to buy important life sustaining items with.

The second thought is a camp fire! This will work if you have a good supply of wood to keep yourself supplied. Camp fires consume a lot of wood to cook a one pot meal. This probably is not an option if you’re an apartment dweller with a balcony or simply a deep city dweller like in New York, Chicago, LA, etc.

What’s Your Best Option? It’s called a “Rocket Stove”.

These stoves originated to the best of my knowledge in third world countries with limited available firewood and primitive living conditions. It is simply a pipe that you place just “twigs” into the bottom and light them. The fire is concentrated into the pipe that has a single pot sitting on top of using all the heat that is generated by the small twigs burning. This is the beauty of a rocket stove; it only takes a handful of small twigs to create a fire hot enough to cook meals on!

If you want to build your own rocket stove there are many plans on the internet to show you how.

Thanks to a reader of ours, Georgie and his wife who are new to prepping, sent me an e-mail asking about the “Deadwood” rocket stove and what I thought about it. Here's the link to my Dead Wood Stove http://livingprepared.blogspot.com/search/label/Kitchen%20Gear%20Rocket%20Stove ) an awesome piece of cooking equipment that is built like a tank and will last for many, many years of hard use.

The website is http://www.deadwoodstove.com/ check it out!

The next two photo’s are corporate website photo’s:

In a return e-mail I asked Georgie to send me some pictures and let me know what they thought about it, here’s what they had to say:

“Hi Mike,
We actually took pictures when we cooked our fried chicken so I sent you those.

The stove came with a set of gloves that you see in one of the pictures but so far we haven’t needed them. There is a port in the back of the stove that is shown in the second picture and that is so you can easily light the tinder. There was virtually no learning curve with this stove as the tinder caught and we had it burning in just a few minutes. We adjusted the heat with the size of the sticks we used and it was just really fun! I really liked that this stove is made in the USA which is one of the reasons we chose it. We also checked out tons of YouTube videos of people cooking on it to make sure it worked really well before we ordered it. The simple design is super appealing because it just looks really cool and is really solid! I know many rocket stoves have insulation but the lack of insulation on the Deadwood does not seem to be a problem at all. I don’t know if insulation would deteriorate over a long period of time or not, but it just seems like the less stuff on the stove, the less stuff to break or fall apart over the long term. It doesn’t seem like this little fella could ever fall apart and it actually has an heirloom quality feel to it. Is that weird to say about a cookstove? It is heavy (about 18 lbs.) so that could possibly bother some people. Overall, we are just thrilled with the Deadwood stove and I’m super happy we ordered it!

Sincerely, Georgie”

Here are Georgie’s pictures frying chicken dinner on his new Deadwood Stove!