Sustainable Heating and Cooking Technology Part 1 - Stoves for Heating Homes

Besides building igloos in the snow, winter is a great time for thinking about heat!

Sustainability takes many forms. The question of sustainable heating technology is a serious one, especially (obviously) for cold climates.

Good insulation will make the most of the heat we have, but we must still generate heat somehow. Heaters that function with the greatest efficiency and the least amount of fuel may provide us with the ability to use fuel at a rate of consumption that is manageable from an ecological standpoint.

First, a book about rocket stoves:


Rocket Mass Heaters

This book explains the prinicples and construction of Rocket stoves for heating houses. They work well in buildings made of material that can heat up and convert the walls themselves into a mass, radiant heater. Of course, these walls must be fireproof. Stone would probably work, but these heaters have been used to good effect in cob buildings.



Here is a video of some rocket stoves in action. I visited Dancing Rabbit a year and a half ago, and I was really impressed with the second stove in the video. It heats the bench that runs along the wall. It heats the upstairs too. It is super, super neat!

Dancing Rabbit Rocket Stoves on You Tube (DRTV)

Of course, sometimes rocket stoves don't work to good effect, and since we can learn from our failures (and even more comfortably from a distance, from the failures of others) here is an explanation of a rocket stove that isn't working as it should:

Rocket Stove Heater for Cob House is Failing

And a later post, in which the stove is declared a failure:

Rocket Stove Heater for Cob House has Failed

Many people have chimed in with suggestions, and I learned something from this:

Bloggers try to help Ziggy fix his Rocket Stove

The next link is to a very interesting heating stove from Max Edleson of Firespeaking.com

There used to be more photos, including a finished photo of this mass heater and some other examples, but he is changing his site around so quickly I can't keep up with him. I actually suspect that he is, at this very moment, changing everything around as I sit here trying to link to his site.

Mass Heater, Staricase, Oven, Water Heater, Fireplace



What does any of this have to do with my apartment in Chicago?



It reinforces just how ridiculously unsustainable this conventional structure is. For one thing, I understand that our floor joists are just about an inch narrower than standard - 3 instead of four inches, or something like that. That means I have to consider the weight of a massive mass heater like the one in the above link

As for a rocket stove - I don't see how this would work. My building is flammable - very much so.

I could put in a wood stove - but I don't have information to suggest that this is any better than our current setup in terms of efficiency or ecological impact.

And as a testiment to how little thought the builders of this house put into this type of thing, our apartment isn't insulated. Insulating it would be a massive cash outlay that we just don't have right now, even with the Obama tax credit. It would basically be a rehab - tearing out and replacing all the walls. This I do not see happening.