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    Rocket Mass Heater Workshop Including Materials List

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    godfrey73
    The document announces a workshop on building rocket mass heaters, highly efficient wood-burning heating systems, to be taught by Ernie and Erica Wisner, who will cover the planning, design, and construction of a rocket mass heater through hands-on lessons over a weekend. The workshop will provide instruction on masonry skills and working with metal ducting through demonstrations and the building of a heater, and is aimed at a broad audience from engineers to survivalists.

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    Rocket Mass Heater Workshop Including Materials List

    Uploaded by

    godfrey73
    426 views3 pages
    The document announces a workshop on building rocket mass heaters, highly efficient wood-burning heating systems, to be taught by Ernie and Erica Wisner, who will cover the planning, design, and construction of a rocket mass heater through hands-on lessons over a weekend. The workshop will provide instruction on masonry skills and working with metal ducting through demonstrations and the building of a heater, and is aimed at a broad audience from engineers to survivalists.

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    principles and construction of rocket mass wood stoves

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    The document announces a workshop on building rocket mass heaters, highly efficient wood-burning heating systems, to be taught by Ernie and Erica Wisner, who will cover the planning, design, and construction of a rocket mass heater through hands-on lessons over a weekend. The workshop will provide instruction on masonry skills and working with metal ducting through demonstrations and the building of a heater, and is aimed at a broad audience from engineers to survivalists.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    426 views3 pages

    Rocket Mass Heater Workshop Including Materials List

    Uploaded by

    godfrey73
    The document announces a workshop on building rocket mass heaters, highly efficient wood-burning heating systems, to be taught by Ernie and Erica Wisner, who will cover the planning, design, and construction of a rocket mass heater through hands-on lessons over a weekend. The workshop will provide instruction on masonry skills and working with metal ducting through demonstrations and the building of a heater, and is aimed at a broad audience from engineers to survivalists.

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    Rocket Mass Heater Workshop with Ernie & Erica Wisner

    Rocket Mass Heaters are a highly efficient, wood powered, pollution free heating system.
    Designed to use materials from the waste stream, and burning up to 90% less wood than conventional wood heaters, they are the alternative heating answer to fossil fuels and a popular addition to passive-solar homes, permaculture designs, off-grid shelters and natural buildings. Conventional heating requires a lot of energy to trap and heat air in homes that are poorly designed. Rocket Mass Heaters use thermal mass to heat the home and body. They stabilise indoor temperatures and humidity to keep your home comfortable and dry, all year round. How it works Wood is gravity fed into a 'J shaped' combustion chamber, and the hot gases draft upwards through a heavilyinsulated, vertical secondary combustion chamber. After complete combustion, the exhaust then passes down a radiant bell and through horizontal metal ducting embedded in a massive cob thermal store. The thermal store is large enough to retain heat for many hours, and often forms part of the structure of the building or built-in furniture. The special combustion design requires no fans or electricity, yet ensures an efficient high-temperature burn and creates enough draft to push exhaust gases though the rest of the system. Flue gases are cooled to a relatively low temperature within the thermal store (50C or less), conserving most of the fires heat within the building for release over the following 24 hours or more.

    Who should attend a workshop? The audience is broad. Past workshops have included Engineers, Building Code Officials, Survivalists, Hippies, School Teachers, Transition Town groups, Fire Marshals, Hikers, Trekkers, Empty Nesters and School Leavers.
    These workshops will enable even the most novice non-builder to gain the skills to effectively build one themselves. This course will cover: Planning Designing Constructing a Rocket Mass Heater Brick masonry and earthen masonry skills Working with metal ducting and/or stovepipe (hand tools only) Some resources to get you thinking: http://www.richsoil.com/rocket-stove-mass-heater.jsp http://www.ernieanderica.info/ http://healthyharvestnsw.wordpress.com/2012/03/25/interview-with-ernie-and-erica/ Course Outline/Agenda: Friday start 5pm: Fire Science Demonstration Erica and Ernie showcase the fire science principles that led to the rocket mass heater, using bricks and flame to demonstrate historic and modern methods. Planning , designing and hands-on construction of Rocket Mass Heater. Includes practical experience with masonry, metal and cob making skills.

    Saturday and Sunday:

    About the teachers


    Erica and Ernie Wisner are hands-on teachers of creative, ecological and practical skills. Erica is a science and art educator with a degree in Physics and Art. She also has architectural, drafting and engineering knowledge, and loves wildcrafting and outdoor recreation. For 5 years she taught chemistry for all ages in the worlds first public wet science lab (at OMSI in Oregon). She has always been interested in how things work, and is highly skilled at explaining science ideas in fun and useful ways. In the late 1990s Erica began to use non-toxic, recycled, and sustainable materials from the natural world in her art and science projects. In 2005-6 Erica worked for the City Repair Project in Portland, Oregon USA. City Repair promotes ecological and natural building methods in several ways, including a yearly Village Building Convergence which attracts people from around the world. Its here that Erica and Ernie met. Ernie is hands on, versatile and self sufficient. Hes a trained fire fighter, mariner, botanist, an excellent cook, and a handy man. He can fix practically anything. His motivation in learning many of these skills was to stay alive. Growing up on commercial fishing boats, a kid learns to watch everything, and maintain all the equipment, in order to get home again. On a boat voyage in 1996 that reached the North Pole, Ernie realised that fossil-fueled lifestyles wont last forever. After casting around for more sustainable options, in 2004 he joined the Cob Cottage team, working with Ianto Evans and builders from around the world. One of their projects was researching and testing approx 700 stove designs for the 2006 book, Rocket Mass Heaters. In 2006, Erica and Ernie starting teaching workshops together. Ernies practical knowledge and Ericas teaching skills combined beautifully. From 2007 to 2010 they co-taught Pyromania! workshops for Cob Cottage Company. Together this dynamic couple have led workshops across the US and Canada, and consulted on projects in Argentina, Costa Rica, France, Germany, Ireland, NZ, Mongolia, Kenya, and South Africa. The next exciting leg of their journey is Australia.

    Materials and site preparation list


    Rocket Mass Heater Installation

    Materials
    For Heater: Prepared Base (drained, compacted gravel footing; or 120-150mm concrete slab. Or cleared, level earth can be used for temporary prototypes ) Insulation: Perlite (Two 100 L bags), (or larger/more costly quantities of vermiculite, light pumice, light kiln bricks, refractory insulation, etc.) Bricks - firebrick or old reclaimed bricks; enough to make floor, combustion unit, and (ideally) heat riser (about 40 to 90 depending on size and design) Sand / aggregates (quarry fines, crushed-rock fines, etc) - approx. same amount as total planned volume (about 3 cu meters) Clay (2 cubic meters of clay-rich local soil, or 200 L of recycled pottery clay, or 2 20-K bags of powdered fireclay) Local subsoil (can be substituted for the sand, clay, or both, depending on composition) Straw (1 full bale, more for seats if desired) Ducting / Stovepipe / Flue Liners: 15 cm or 20 cm diameter (same throughout entire system), enough for entire heat-exchange system, through-roof or through-wall fittings, and heat riser if applicable. Barrel(s) (55-g (200L) drum, or similar barrel (at least 1/2 meter across, 60 cm is easier to work with. Up to 1 meter tall.) Get a matched pair if available, and bring any lids/clamps that fit them. Decorative materials: Lime, pigments, chopped straw/rope fibers (or horse dung), etc. If time allows, we will prepare a demonstration batch of earthen plasters, for final coating after the core has dried hard. For demonstrations: Firewood (about 20 kilos of dry local firewood, plus kindling / newspaper) Optional: cardboard carpet tube, metal buckets with spare stovepipe, camp stoves, stump plus chainsaw; or other demonstration materials as desired) Bricks and earthen materials will also be used in demonstrations.

    Tools:
    Shovels / spades Buckets (5gallon= 20-25L) - at least 5, up to 15 is helpful; can be square or round Tarps for mixing cob (roughly 2m x 3m) - at least 3 tarps Wheelbarrow(s) Large paintbrushes / sponges Circular saw with masonry blade (for trimming brick), or hammer & cold chisel / brick-sets and file Tinsnips (and crimpers if available) for ducting Masonry trowels / floats / any available plaster or brick-and-mortar tools. Easel or wall for Burning Questions board

    Site Preparation
    Oven Location: For best results, any cob structure should have a good hat, and a good pair of boots. With good weather protection, earthen masonry can last for centuries; without it, the cob returns to the earth within a few months or years. While traditional Chinese villages may re-build an oven annually (thereby enriching local soils with charred straw and porous, fired clay), most modern communities prefer a more permanent installation. Minimal: A level space, cleared of all flammable material, where a demonstration system can be built. Any overhanging structure should be sturdy and at standard ceiling heights or higher (3-4 meters is great). Preferred: A level, sheltered space, such as a greenhouse, outdoor kitchen, or natural building. Area for heater can be sub-floor or atop an existing level surface. Base should be well drained, and designed to support 3-5 tons of masonry distributed as a low mass (similar to waterbed or storage area flooring: a 120 to 150 mm concrete slab is plenty). Through-roof or through-wall chimney fittings in accordance with design).

    Other Workshop Space:


    Covered area for meals and question-and-answer sessions; Shaded or open areas near the oven site for staging ingredients and mixing mud; a fire pit or sandbox for Fridays evening demonstration good access to water for both mud and people. On-site camping is convenient, but not necessary; the only necessity is to be clear with participants about what hospitality is provided.

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