“East Coast Eric” over at Gardenfork did a variation on our five gallon bucket rocket stove. Eric’s version uses a much easier to find plastic bucket and it seems to work without melting. He’s also promising a sequel to this video featuring a unique egg-in-a-hole grilled cheese sandwich!
Unfortunately, he makes the common mistake of using thermal mass where rocket stoves need insulation.
The great benefit of rocket stoves comes when they burn clean. This allows them to use fuel most efficiently, which reduces the amount you need, and it reduces harmful air pollutants.
In order to burn clean, they must burn very hot.The best way to do this is to insulate the burn chamber. Otherwise, the rocket stove has to heat up all the sand or gravel to a very high temperature, and, if it ever reaches that temperature, it is burning dirty and poorly the whole time.
So, the burn chamber should be insulated, with vermiculite, say, or rock wool, or wood ash. If you want a mass heater, you run the chimney through the mass AFTER the insulated burn chamber.