Homemade Rocket Stove Heater

-•  It Works Well •-

Building a rocket stove has been an elusive goal of mine for some time. My original attempts at building a stove were solely for the purpose of boiling maple syrup and the effort I put forth was always a little incomplete and hurried. This time around I decided to build something worthy of my time.

The overall rocket stove design is based on Zero Fossil Fuels design. If you're serious about building a stove like this (or anything similar), I highly recommend checking out his video tutorials for more build details.

This video is a look at my final stove and the process of lighting.


I built this rocket stove to heat my very small 12' x 18' (216 sq. ft.) woodworking shop. The shop has vaulted ceilings with a R-36 roof and a very porous R-13 wall system. On a typical winter morning here in the Adirondacks, the inside temperature can be anywhere from 10º below to 20º above F. Once the stove is lit, it typically takes about an hour and a half to bring the temperature to above freezing. In about 2-3 hours, the inside temperature will rise to 45º - 55º, and towards the end of the work day I usually stop feeding the stove altogether - sometimes I'll even open a window.

The rocket stove burns about 3 1/2 lbs of pellets per 1/2 hour when running on maximum. That number drops considerably when the air intake is throttled back. On average I burn about 17 pounds per day. At $5 per 50lb bag, that equals roughly $1.66 a day to heat my workshop. Not bad for a small off-grid workshop.

This stove is also designed to burn scrap wood. With the cover/ hopper removed, wood can be burned like any rocket stove with a J shape configuration.

There are many small details to building this stove so please feel free to ask in the comments below or visit Zero Fossil Fuels YouTube build page.