Please visit “Provitaz” here:

• Small mass (300 kg) with quick response (sunny days in the winter can get quite warm and heating a big mass is not always desiered) It can be put on a wood floor without reinforcements.
• Instant heat.  It can throw off a signifficant amount of heat directly from the coocktopp. This heat comes instantly after the fire is going.
• Effecient for cooking. The coocktop is ready in two minutes! It boiled 3 liters of water in 12 minutes.
• Burnchamber suitable for baking one bread after burn. Grills can be done on the coals to.
• Clean-effecient burn with secondary air provided in the back.
• Movable ( it can be carried by four men or slided on the floor to be put in a corner of the room for the summer)
• Cheap! This stove costs 35 azn  in materials, that is less than 50 $. It can be builded in one day!
• Chimney temperature is low, but increases significantly if you burn it more than 1-2 hours. Mabe it can be completed with a bench to extract more heat.
• Works with the standard 4″ chimney that they use here.
• It can be suited with a small water-heatexchanger.

The family that are testing it lives in a mountain village where the winter is hard. They are reporting that it so far works great, heats much better than their old stove, uses significantly less wood, burns cleaner. It hardly neads any atention to continue burning. It is much better to cook on. It dosent nead to be cleaned often ( the old stove neaded chimeny sweep every month!) The draft is much better ,the door can be opened for fire gazing (and provide light when the electric is gone) It retains the heat pretty much through the night and leave some glowing coals to the morning so it is easy to light it up again. It makes the room dryer as it is provided with a more stable heat-source   It will last longer before they nead to change it. We would say 10 years with minor maintainance.

I like this heater, because it is small and cheap to build and heats one normal sized uninsulated room in Azerbaijan. And it has a quite effective small cooktop that also can have a door for doing small bakeries.

If floor structures are up to EU-standards it can go on top of a wooden floor. (remember to use some type of insulative bricks at the bottom.) In this case we had to strengthen the structure, because it was a weaker structure.

The black spots above the door are because of the draft was a little insufficient in the beginning when it was wet. When the stove dried up it was just ok. But it is connected to a 1,5 m 10cm diameter horizontal uninsulated flue, then a 90 degree elbow that brings it up just 1,5 meters.  From the bottom to the top of the chimney it is less than three meters. So it is quite impressive that it is burning nicely now !. We are now planning for a better chimney, to have cold start up being easier.

The owner agreed to take notes on its performance, so we will have some data on how it works in reality after the winter. For now, read this article to learn how dual fuel hvac systems work. And if you’re having issues with your heating system, you may contact a professional service that offers residential heater repair services. Also, make sure to contact a professional heat pump repair service to ensure proper air circulation. Then for cooling systems, you will need to call an ac repair contractor indianapolis. Schedule an appointment with HVAC techs for professional ac maintenance services. Torn between ac unit vs heat pump? Click the link if you want additional info on which one you should choose. For professional ac repair and maintenance services, make sure to hire the experts.

We used:

about 570 red bricks 100$

10 sacks of mud !! Free 0$

3 sacks of sand     9$

50 used firebricks 30$

2 local made doors 10$

1 local made cook-top and damper 30$

Chimney: 50$

It took us 10 days to finish the whole process with means a local could build it for around 200$ In sum that makes a local business  able to install a heater like this for about 430$ . Thats pretty impressive when you think of that this heater might last a lifetime !

I will soon publish drawings and more pictures. But first I want to test it more. If you are trying to build from my drawings I don’t take any responsibility for the outcome, and I strongly recommend to do a workshop before you try it.

One pound of dry wood releases about  8,600 btu’s of energy when burned. Gasoline
is only about twice as concentrated. It took a long time for the tree to grow. The daily
amount of sunlight was captured and changed into chemical energy. In fact, trees
are very much like batteries, storing energy. Wood is like a battery that has been storing
energy for decades. The energy is concentrated and ready for use at any rate, depend-
ing on need. Also, this “battery” does not lose its charge while sitting, cannot spill acid on
your pants, and usually smells good!

Burning wood or any biomass also has a great advantage over burning petroleum products. Trees absorb carbon dioxide while growing and release the same amount when burned. The tree reduces the amount of C02 in the atmosphere and then replaces it. Burning fossil fuels, made from plants millions of years old, can only increase the amount of atmospheric C02, since absorption done by
the plants happened so long ago. Burning biomass does not increase the amount of C02
in the atmosphere in the same way that burning petroleum can.

What about deforestation?

Deforestation due in part to fuel needs
represents a major threat to ecosystems in
many developing countries. Obviously, the
answer to threatened forests is to grow trees
at a faster rate than forest products are con-
sumed. Wood can then be used at a sustain-
able rate, where less is taken than produced.
Taking a greater amount insures a diminished
resource and, if the trend continues, an even-
tual loss. Many countries in the world will
run out of wood, long before they run out of
gasoline and oil! (But eventually oil will be out aswell)

 Cook your food on growing trees

 If you’ve got it, in rural areas wood is a
powerful, convenient source of fuel.
By using wood efficiently, people can cook
food using branches and twigs instead of split
logs. Gathering fallen branches can bring
people firewood without killing the trees, if
the rate of use matches the resource. The
branches are already a handy size so people
can be spared the labor of splitting logs as
well. The trees continue to grow while people
cook with wood.

This text is manly extracted from the book “Capturing HEAT” by Dean Still and Jim Kness

I rebuilded the firebox four times, and there is some critical things to consider. The airgap in the back of the burn chamber should be thin enough to shoot the air as a laminar flow along the back edge of the chamber for secondary burn of the gases up in the tube. (Thanks to both Alex Chernov and Ekonomka for learning more about that) Thats why it doesnt work as well having the exit at the front or middle position over the chamber. This setup showed in the movie works ok, but I think it will work better if I make the chamber deaper and have the wood laying dow keaping the airgap in the back clear through the whole burn. The burn dosent nead a lot of air to maintain combustion. Ratio 1/3 or 1/4  compared to firebox exit seams ok including gaps around door.

Cleaning it is also an issue. The best way seams to be knocking on the barrel now and then and vacuming at the flue exit. But probably once a year it is good to take out the rocks and clean it throughly. That means that constructing it with a removeable lid seams  necessary.

Compared to the rocket mass heater we here have a stove that dosent nead to be constructed permanently in a house. And it dosent nead a special foundation. It will work with a standard 4″ flue that they use here. It burns down the wood in one go with minimal maintainance of the fire. It burns almost as clean as the RMH? It gives a very hot cooking surface.Its total cost for a selfbuilder is about 20$!
On the down side it “only” retains heat for about 8 hours after the burn. Other negatives??

Some questions to be answered. Will it be sufficient to heat a livingroom space throught the winter in this climate? Will it give the fuel savings that we are hoping for?

I will have this construction tested through winter to heat a friends livingroom, and come back with some reports on its performance.

If you ever do this construction yourself, I would love to hear about your experience with it.

When it came to a passive solar solution for hot water he was very interested, and when I explained about improoved wood-stoves and mass-heaters he was eager to do something before the winter. I hope I can come back and do a workshop with the village later. I hope you enjoy the views of the Talysj mountains, the tucked away treasure of Azerbaijan!! This is the area we want to protect from deforresting!

Rafael in front of his home that he builded him self!

Here you see the framework before the mudd is applied…

Still some snow left in the mountains at the Iranian border.

Deap Hirkan national forrest, the leopard was seen here as late as 2007

A closer look…

Beautifull and fertile !

Just wanted to show you our latest creation under testing. It is a portable type of “rocket-stove” or “zimmovar sobase” that we call it in Azeri. It burns fairly effecient. It dosent have a bench connected yet, only about 5 meters of horisontal pipe working as convectors. It is not enough to take out all the heat from the smoke, but i guess it is down to about 70 celcius. The system is a 4″ system. It has a heat riser  ratio of 1 to 3. It is insulated with sawdust-clay and has some thermal mass. Total weight more than 50 kg.  It burns about 7 kilos of wood through a 12 hour burn. It heats a fairly poor insulated kitchen with high sealing (about 75 kubik meters of air). I have an electric heater doing the same job pulling 2,5 kw. For being the first prototype we are quite happy with its performance, it still need some changes in design, but overall very happy!! The best thing is the stove price 50-70 manat ! It will pay back its cost easely in one winter! For the market in Azerbaijan we think it is important to come up with this portable model since many people live on limited space and like to move their stove in the warmer seasons. We still do expect to build more mass heaters in the mountains.

Here is a good article on rocket mass heaters at richsoil.com by Paul Wheaton