Tha advantage by constructing it like this is that the user can move away both the flue and the stove in the warm season, and by that have only a nice bench left.

The whole setup costs about 100 dollars, and will make a huge difference in wood consumption. Initial testing shows that consumption can be redused with 70% compared to the local stove. That means payback time for the investment can happen within one winter!! Additionally, considering hiring a plumbing service to ensure optimal efficiency and maintenance could further enhance the savings and longevity of the plumbing system.

A lot of locals have been resistant to the thought of having a big bench that cant be moved in their house. Ofcourse this is a new concept to them, they are used to instant radiant heat, not the kind of heat you get by conduction sitting on a heated bench. Our hope is that by trying it, more people will be convinced of the comfort it gives them.

I will post some pictures later, with some construction detail.

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.

Solar collectors are almost unheard of, even thoe the climate is mild enough for large solar fractions to cover the heating bill. The picture shows an experimental unit made with only local supplies. We believe we can produse these localy at a resonable cost. As in any design or new construction there are compromises and these criterias are set to guide us in the development. It is possible to end up with a very good system that just a few can afford, we could still might have a great buisness, but then the environmental impact would be small. Our dream is to see these around everywhere around here, and therefore it is crusial that we devlop it under criterias guided by our local knowledge.

• Price equal to two year payback potential. ( 500 manat for a small system for domestic hotwater)
• Made of local available materials.
• Manifacture as much as we can of it in sothern Azerbaijan.
• A simple design
• A robust design
• An estetic design (in Azerbaijan people are in general more conserned with appearence than in feks. scandinavia)

This is not a complete list, some would might ask:

“Why isnt high efficency in that list?”

simply because it is not our main priority. Solar collector design can improove efficency by using more expensive materials. But with price beeing such a big deal we can rather increase the effect of a solar collector simply by adding square meeters. So spending a lot of money to increase efficency dosent make sence if  the cost for adding 10% area costs much less. Solar collectors have been developed before, so there is nothing new to it, the difficult thing is to make it cheap enough and simple enough so that it can be a “nobrainer” to implement it when you are planing to build your house. It is at that point our company have the desired effect. So our main challenge in this is not to make it work, but to balance our criterias and do our compromises well so we get a product that will be selling enough to make an impact.

“Why not import something from china or Iran?”

This has been concidered, and we might still do so. But at this point there seem to be enough good reasons to do avoid it:

• The pricetag is to high (1000 manat and up)
• They will not be easy to maintain and tend to be more sofisticated.
• It will generate less local jobs.
• It will not contribute less to local knowledge and knowhow.
• Importing stuff to Azerbaijan is in general not at all effortless.
• Most of them dosent look nice.