Hi, I'm from Sydney Australia.
I have joined this forum as I have always had an interest in clean burning wood fires, stoves and combustion in general.
In my childhood our family had a shack at the beach with an old cast iron wood stove under an outside covered area because of summer heat and smoke. It had a water tank on the side and I spent many blissful hours cutting up wood, splitting it and feeding the fire. Grandma was the best firelighter in the family she would just put a match to a small pile of mixed twigs and walk away and it would always be well alight when she next passed to add some thicker pieces. She never fussed with it. I was enthralled and motivated.
When I was aged 9-10 I discovered a book in the local library on fireplace design by a British author with lots of clear diagrams of air flow, combustion and hot gases/smoke rising in fireplace and then what happens as they rise up the back of the hearth go into the smoke chamber and then up a well-designed flue.
What I found intriguing was how shallow/deep, wide and high a well-designed hearth could be to get optimum radiant heat into room from the fire and hot back wall of hearth (proportions roughly = 1d, 2w, 3h if I remember correctly ). By understanding airflow, the buoyancy of hot gasses, and therefor getting the correct flow through the grate, up the back of the fireplace and transition past the damper into the smoke chamber and exit via the flue.
Since then I have travelled allot and observed many interesting designs and badly functioning fireplaces all over the world. The problem is, they look so simple to design, but if the basics are not understood they are often difficult or dangerous to use (smoke and gasses into room) or just very inefficient.
Recently I have followed allot of the Utube video's on Rocket Stoves (RS) and find it frustrating that many who post videos and comment don't seem to understand the first principles of the RS and the importance of the secondary combustion processes in the insulated riser that make it so efficient (close to 100% combustion = no smoke or tar/resin deposits in chimney).
Having said that, there is also allot of design freedom depending on one’s materials and individual applications and those constraints on the eventual design.
This all leads to some unique and inspired solutions to the various problems. Hence my interest in this wonderfully open forum of ideas. I am further intrigued by some of the designs progressing from purely RS to a hybrid gassifier as the heated secondary air changes the way the firebox functions. Truly inspirational.
Even the less successful builds can inspire that designer, and others of us, to think of possible solutions and at the very least help us avoid wasting time & money.
The internet has enabled many of us from diverse backgrounds and different countries to interact and feed off each other’s ideas like a worldwide ‘think-tank’
We all stand on the shoulders of those that have gone before us
regards
S
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