The stove

Power output: 3 to 4 kW. System size: 115 mm (4,5”). Depending on insulation, the Roquetinho can heat a room from 20 to 35 m2.

In larger rooms it can serve as main heating: e.g. in combination with an existing central heating system.


Dimensions:

60 x 60 x 173 cm


Weight: about 530 kg


The core stove is made of refractory bricks. Concrete tiles are used for the stove’s casing; the top two layers are made of fire concrete. The top is a

6 mm thick steel plate, and the door is made out of

4 mm thick steel, having a refractory glass window of 175 x 220 mm.


Fuel: any well dried wood, cut in logs of max. 30 cm length. One batch is between 1,5 and 3 kg.


Testrun of the first prototype at Casal do Abade, Portugal,

Febr 13 2017

It’s quite an impressive view - the extremely strong draft pulling the flames into the riser, together with the roaring sound! Temperature can go up to almost 1200º C.

Rocket Stove, Batch Rocket, Roquetinho


In the 1980's, when the Rocket Stove was invented, it was a cooker that was very easy and cheap to build, needing very little wood to get water cooking and producing hardly any smoke. It went all over the world, and from that time many people started to think about how they could use this simple but genius technique not only to cook, but also to heat spaces.

Much of this development was published on the Rocket Stove Forum donkey32.proboards.com where a lot of people delivered contributions. In 2012 Lasse Holmes from Alaska started an experiment - a rocketstove with a "horizontal feed". Peter van den Berg took that concept further, developing and optimizing. At the end of 2012 he was rewarded for his dedication: he had found the right dimensions, and even he himself was amazed about how good it worked. No valves, ventilators or whatever. Just bricks and natural principles in an optimized configuration resulted in the high efficient and super clean woodstove that was then called the "Batch box rocket".

By now, many Batch rocket applications have been build. Mainly as “mass heaters” - making it very heavy, so heat is stored in the bricks, gradually releasing it to the space.

For Portugal’s climate, we thought, it would be better to have a “fast stove”: having the concrete casing only 5 cm thick, and with a steel top. Already within an hour it heats up the room (initially by convection). After an hour the stove will radiate another 3 - 4 hours. Other than with a mass heater, at that point you can decide whether or not you light another batch of wood.