A Rocket Stove Made From a Five Gallon Metal Bucket. The principle behind a rocket stove is simple–rather than cooking on an open fire, you burn wood in an insulated chimney. Rocket stoves are highly efficient and easy to make. They run on twigs, so you can avoid cutting down a whole tree just to cook dinner. We’ve had a rocket stove made out of brick in our backyard for several years. The post we wrote on it in 2007 is–oddly–the most frequently searched post on this site. I figured that since there was so much interest in the topic it would be good to offer one that didn’t require masonry work. Using a piece of 4″ vent pipe and a 90º elbow, I made the chimney.
I traced the outline of the vent pipe on to the lid of the bucket and cut this hole out with a jig saw. Using the vent pipe as a guide again, I cut out a 4″ hole near the bottom of the bucket. I used one part clay (harvested from the yard) to six parts vermiculite as my insulation material. I found a barbecue grill at Home Depot that rests on the top of the bucket to support a pot. Going Off-grid. Off grid and homesteading. Build your own solar-powered water pumping station by Jeffrey Yago, P.E., CEM.
In the last issue, there was an excellent article by Dorothy Ainsworth on water pumping using mechanical windmills. In this issue I will address another form of "free" water pumping. There are many remote applications where a solar-powered water pump is more cost effective than installing a conventional grid-connected AC pump. I recently designed a solar-powered pumping system for a local farmer wanting to pump water from a lake up to a watering trough for cattle in a distant fenced field. We have also designed larger systems to pump directly from drilled wells up to elevated storage tanks, which provide gravity-fed water back down to remote ranch buildings.
Basic system description These solar applications made economic sense because the location was too remote to run a long power line. By adding a storage tank and increasing the size of the pumping system, excess pumped water can be stored, which can continue to supply water during the night or when it's cloudy and the pump is off. Getting off the Grid. Plug ‘N Save Energy Products uses Cali Bamboo Plywood in PV Solar Shutters. Fireplaces, Heating Stoves, Flues & Chimneys Forums.