Lessons from Our Rocket Mass Heater

By Ray Dudley and Randi Dudley

A companion guide to the manuals about how to build a rocket mass heater. This book gives tips, lessons and resources acquired from an actual heater build. More of a "How we…" rather than a "How to…" type of book the reader will see dozens of photos, get links to blogs, forums, manuals, etc.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ray Dudley
• Release date: Apr 8, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312068322

Book preview

To my wife and kids.

LESSONS FROM OUR ROCKET MASS HEATER

Preface

If you’re purchasing this booklet we’re assuming you have some rudimentary knowledge of rocket mass heaters. After all you didn’t find the booklet by searching for cute bunnies around the globe. Our assumption carries with it the presupposition that you have a basic idea of what they are, how they work and perhaps have seen pictures or watched videos of them. And since there really is a ton of information out there about how to build them we felt it wasn’t necessary to write another how-to manual. This little booklet is more along the lines of the a Gee, we’d wished we’d have know that BEFORE we finished... or a Where did they find that... manual.

We bought the books and videos and visited the forums (multiple times) and finally took the plunge and built our heater. But, along the path of building it we found that we still had a lot of questions that we had no easy answers for. For instance, we knew we’d be building a cob bench, but, we didn’t have a clue what cob really was and no one really talked about how to make it. No one spoke about how to get those nice tiles into the cob. We were stumped about coloring the cob as well as how to actually build the bench. We didn’t know that wet cob has a tendency to flare out at the bottom when stacked too high too soon. Would’ve been nice to know.

And so we decided not to write a step by step here’s how to do it book. We decided to compile a list of the blank areas which we struggled with and try to cut down on the research time others would have to put in looking for answers we already found.

We hope you find this book enlightening and entertaining. It’s not written with the hope of making anyones top ten list and it certainly isn’t written like some scholarly tome. It’s laid back and filled with tips, pictures and resources as best as two non-writers could do it.

We absolutely love our rocket mass heater and have given many tours to folks that hear about it and need to wrap their heads around the dirt pile with a 55 gallon drum stuck in our living room. It’s warm both in looks and in the heat it provides and we’re ecstatic to take frequent naps on it.

Lastly, we’re proud of it. My wife and I did 97% of the work required to build it with curious friends sometimes jumping in help us out. It took us months to accomplish and at times the pace was frustrating. But, it’s not everyday (at least in New England) that you get to stomp clay and create something so unique. And each one that’s built IS unique. You’ll be proud of yours as well.

There are several resources mentioned throughout the book, but, we made a quick reference list after the last chapter.

A little bit of upfront candor here from us: Some of our links have affiliate codes attached to them. This means that should you purchase something using one of our links we could receive a referral fee. Use them or not, we just wanted to keep things out in the