Hahaha wow that is a super simple design there
Most residential hot water heaters have a flu that goes through the middle of the tank. In order to increase the amount of heat transferred trough the wall to the water a ‘spinner’ is placed in the flu. This spinner is a simple piece of twisted sheet metal. It makes the hot combustion gasses swirl. The hot gasses follow a longer, spiral shaped path and they move faster which creates turbulence. Both encourage heat transfer.
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Video is A little long but does it ever work.
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That design there would let me burn the same wood chunks as I would burn from a gasifier once it’s going.
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Yes, the “pocket rocket” is the same arrangement I used in the tall propane tank to heat my pool. The cement ballasted tank rested on the pool bottom. The commercial snorkel stove has a couple of extra advantages. It has horizontal tubes passing through the under water flue section. Also it is made of aluminum for high heat transfer and no rusting.
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Interesting. Was the exhaust hot? I would have put some sort of spiral shaped baffle in it so that more heat would be transferred to the water.
Rindert
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In my setup, the flue and the fuel tube were both welded into the top of the propane tank which was above the water line. Adjusting a damper in the 4 inch flue pipe and covering the 4 inch fuel tube/draft offered good fire control. For my purposes, I just kept the fire as hot as possible in the tank to bring the pool temp up as fast as possible. A hot fire deep in this skinny immersed wood stove gives off a lot of heat to the surrounding water.
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Just convert a gas (natural or propane) water heater to fire wood. They’re plentiful, simple and have safety pop valves already in them. I did it:
You would need a circulating pump, these are also relatively inexpensive and easily available.
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Unfortunately up here in Canada natural gas is not widely available so there are very few gas water heaters.
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That’s right, I remember now–Canada has a good bit of hydro. But it still does make more sense to just heat the water directly with a wood burner. Electric elements could be convenient, but I would tend to want to then capture the heat from the exhaust from the engine and do something (heat water) with it. You need power at your cabin anyway huh?
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Yeah it’s funny you say that about Hydro. I am going to have a 4-foot overshot water wheel turning a DC generator for power at my cabin.
I really like that submerged rocket stove pipe setup. I think that is probably the most efficient use of heat. And if there’s any smoke from the stove at all it’ll help keep the bugs away. LOL
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Actually the rocket stove will burn clean releasing CO2 and probably draw in the bugs. That is his the bug magnets I think they where called that burn propane work biting insects use our breath to find us and any CO2 supply draws them in. Smoke only drive them off because of the other toxic byproducts of a poor quality burn.
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I’m guessing the trace amounts of combustion byproducts would be enough to deter the bugs, it would be very hard to achieve perfect combustion. Also the heat plume should take the gases skyward.
That’s my theory anyways.
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Well once he builds it we will know.
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