Rocket stoves are an excellent alternative to traditional fires because they are small, generate high heat and can be transported easily. However, despite their popularity and the various ways that rocket stoves can be made from items that are readily-available, many people don’t take advantage of their benefits. If you’re one of them, here are a few reasons why you may want to reconsider incorporating them into your preparedness efforts.
Cooking
Rocket stoves are primarily used for cooking, and they are highly-efficient alternatives to building and feeding fires. They allow you to scale up or down, depending on your needs at the time, and this helps to conserve fuel while directing heat toward what is being cooked. Most stoves are made from cans, and the tops make for excellent surfaces for cups, pots and pans. This virtually eliminates the need to create a grill or rig some type of system to hold items as they are cooking. You can also step away from the fire and do other things while you wait. In terms of practicality and convenience when cooking, few methods are as beneficial as a rocket stove.
Boiling Water
Rocket stoves are also an efficient way to boil water, whether you use it for cooking or purification. Even a small stove made from a used beer can will produce enough heat to boil a small pot of water in just a few minutes, and you only need a little bit of fuel to get the job done. This is a fast and easy way to replenish supplies of drinking water, and you don’t have to go through the hassle of building a fire just to make a cop of coffee.
Smoker
You can fill an empty pot with wet leaves and branches and place it over the stove to create an improvised smoker. This can be a highly-effective way to repel insects when they start to overrun your site. This is particularly true if you’re in an area that happens to contain a lot of foliage that acts as a natural repellent, such as sage or yarrow. To use this method, fill the stove with wood, let it burn down to embers, and then add in bunches of moist foliage. The moisture will produce an enormous amount of smoke and slow the rate in which the material will be consumed by the fire.
Heat Generator
You can use a rocket stove indoors to create a decent amount of heat as long as you have a way to safely vent the smoke. This is particularly useful if you have a fireplace or exhaust fan nearby, and you’ll be surprised at how warm the surrounding area can get once the fire is going. While it won’t produce as much heat as a regular fireplace fire, the reality is that fires often produce too much heat, and a lot of that energy, and fuel, goes to waste.
Using a rocket stove can help you to better-regulate temperatures while conserving wood at the same time. Best of all, there’s not a lot of cleanup involved, and there’s less risk associated with flying embers shooting from the fireplace and creating a safety hazard.
These are just a few examples of how a rocket stove can be useful during an off-grid situation. Think of other ways that you can put these ingenious devices to work for you, and chances are that you’ll quickly start to appreciate their benefits.
