wood stove as combustion chamber

[danielpriest]

First post on this forum, just getting into rocket stoves...

Curious to know if anyone has any experience or insights with using a boxwood syle wood stove as the combustion chamber for a rocket stove. Example here: www.northerntool.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product_6970_796_796

My thought is that you could pop out the front lift off lid and easily fashion a feed chute there, run the heat riser out the hole at the back, stack a water heater core over the back and weld it to the surface of the stove, then run your exhaust out of a hole in the bottom/back of the water heater. This would facilitate ash cleanout, and might help mollify skeptical spouses as well...

From my entirely theoretical understanding of these stoves, the only other modification might be to arrange firebrick inside the stove so as to restrict the diameter of the stove. What else am I missing?

[canyon]

Check out past threads on this topic. There is also a picture of a conversion I did of a box style stove under "water heater by canyon" I think anyway. I didn't click on your link to the stove but it sounds like one of the thin stamped steel numbers. Might be a little thin for the welds to hold up to the stresses of expansion/contraction but I don't know. Firebricking a burn tunnel is very important in order to insulate the combustion (restriction is not necessarily necessary). The heat riser needs to be insulated as well (usually perlite/clay). I did my box to rocket conversion so I could have a relatively portable unit that I could test different mass and/or heat exchanger assemblies with but have not gotten to building the real unit in place yet. So, my experience is that it works and is handy but I can't compare it yet to a "traditional" firebrick build up. As for the spouse, you're on your own, mine remained skeptical and couldn't wait for the "door with a window to see the fire" among many other unfinished things around the house and left!