Using items from an old castiron stove is an exellent and sheap solution. Using the doors demands some work, but the cooctop is easy to use. You can weld a door from normal iron, it want bend much because it get cooled down by the air that comes in there. But the coocktop is much better if it is castiron. This stove can be used. It is free from ekonmka in Sweden where I did a workshop. It will heat well as well as good for coocking.

So sorry for not responding sooner, we got side tracked 🙂
Yes, we need to do things as cheap as possible, or actually with things we can find, not buy. Situation is pretty desperate.
We do have clay soil but unfortunately it is polluted by the last owner. Oil, chemicals, etc. Not good for heating up and then having inside the home with children. However, we do have lots of free red bricks, as well as a couple of hundred lime-sandstone bricks we took out of the building. These bricks are made from calcium oxide (quicklime) and sand (ratio 92:7 with water) and then formed by pressure and steam. We also have chamotte brick, or heat resistant bricks.
What we would love is a kitchen mass stove that also retains heat during the day. Your model looks great but we would need to find a way to fabricate the cook top and the door. However, I do have a very small old iron stove which we might use parts of, i.e. the cook top with 3 cooking rings (they consist of several rings which cause the cook spot to become larger as you take more rings out).
I did look at your rock bucket and left a comment there as well. I guess you haven’t seen it yet 🙂

Could we discuss some more options? You sound like you have a lot of hands-on experience!

Kind regards, Saskia

Hi !

It seams like you face some of the same issues that we do trying to make things as cheap as possible 🙂 My first question is if there is any good clay-soil near you. (Shake the mud in a jar with water and see if it wont settle for a long time) If you have sticky clay mud. Then you can build a great heater with just a few bricks for the burn chamber. I would also recomend you to take a look at the rock bucket heater I tested earlyer, it is a feasable solution if you can get an old barrel. If you have a massonry stove a simple old iron pipe can be used safely for taking the smoke out, because it burns clean with a low smoke temperature and it doesnt nead more than 15cm diameter. This does demand that the operator uses the stove properly to be safe. (no wet wood, not smoldering burns, check it for soot buildups etc). But there are regulations for such things in Europe… The wool is specially for reinforcing the clay when you build.

Kind regards, Saskia

I am curious about the wool-clay mixture. We don’t have any money to make an oven but do need to spend next winter a “little” warmer than the previous ones (it was only 15 degrees Celsius in the house). I happen to have 7 bags of wool which I would like to use both for insulation but maybe also for building a stove. Could you please explain? Also, do you have any ideas of making a chimney?

With friendly greetings,

Saskia Steinhorst
Fryslân, The Netherlands