Woodstove Water Heater

or years, we’ve been experimenting with different ways to heat water using our woodburning stove. Initially, we had a small woodstove into which I plumbed a copper pipe from an old metal mortar box that I bought at an Army surplus store. It held about 8 gallons of water and worked great as a stand-alone system for baths for our young children, and it provided enough water to pour over ourselves during a shower. After we built our minimasonry heater (see “The Mini-Masonry Heater” on ), we switched to heating water in big pots on our large cooktop, and we put the hot water into a watering can mounted ⁄2 gallons of hot water. It worked fine for a while, but, like so many things that change as your children become teenagers, we needed an upgrade to keep hygiene and morale up on our urban homestead.