Improvised, poorly built dry stacked mixed brick rocket stove works nevertheless.

I got the refractory bricks a year ago when I worked for a day with the great San Antonio house recycler and unbuilder, Mike Lowry. I intended to do something with them but didn't. I ran across a video showing how to make rocket stove from adobe bricks months ago and intended to write about it.

My intention to write about it and my intention to do something with the bricks came together today and I stacked the refractory bricks and some others I had in the yard. I flattened a Dr Pepper can to form the platform on which the wood was placed.

It actually worked. I even cooked a steak on it, which is not what rocket stoves are intended to cook. Real rocket stoves have a grid with a skirt going up from the chimney so that the gasses heat a pot on the sides as well as on the bottom.

But, if this improvised dry stacked version of a rocket stove works just imagine how a properly built one would work.

This video of Dr. Larry Winiarski shows one of many variations on rocket stoves.