Making an insulated rocket stove hot water system 

You're the neatest welder I've ever seen on RU-vid.

The Rescuers Down Under reference "I didn't make it all the way through third grade for nothing" is pure gold, especially from an Australian.

Very well done. Appropriate music, solid edits, no overwhelming dialog, subtle humor.

I assume you are a professional welder - but given that - your work is superb . It is very satisfying & calming to watch . First class in every way .

I always keep the leftover discs for small space cutting and fine grinding! Also I approve of the music choice and volume!😀

The only thing i could think of to get more thermal transfer is to put some fins on the inside of the vertical pipe. You only have a flat surface there so a lot of the heat is leaving the stove without impacting the water temperature at all. So basically a heatsink in reverse. Stainless is a terrible thermal conductor, so anything added to increase surface area of fire exhaust to stainless to the water would increase its thermal efficiency. You basically want the exhaust to come out as cool as possible, treating the water as "liquid cooling the exhaust".

I always appreciate your work, both with metal and video documentation. We need more folks like you in the world. 😃

I think I’m in love at first I was thinking it was over engineering but now I can see it’s a work of art it’s beautifully designed

The combination of your skills, humor, editing and 'enthusiasm makes for entertaining and informative viewing. Great stuff. Cheers for sharing.

appreciate all the work you put into filming this and sharing it with YT, living vicariously.

Beautiful workmanship! Thermosiphon is cool, but it does not like horizontal runs or drooping lines. If the heat collector was configured so its line exited the top of the sidearm box and went up thru the chimney at as steep an angle as possible, this would insure no air pockets(more water in contact with metal) and with no drooping in the line up to the top of the tank, it will flow much faster. What faster flow gets you is cooler water in the heat collector sidearm, which = greater delta and overall faster heat transfer to the water. Heat transfer is mainly about temp difference and surface area. The pipe being cool at the bottom means the tank has not completely heated and still has cool fluid at the bottom. Since the tank heats top down, Are you measuring water temp at the bottom of the tank also? Gauging average water tank rise(difference between top and bottom tank temp) in an hour can get you average BTU/hr collected, compared with weight and type fuel used in an hour can get you BTU burnt to gauge overall heater efficiency… if I were doing this to heat a water tank, I think I would build it right alongside the tank and plumb it to angled fittings no less than 45 deg up into the top port of the tank. This would allow for a heatex that is longer. You could also add vertical fins welded to the inner wall of the heatex/chimney wall for additional surface area. And you could add some small spot welds to creat turbulence/breakup laminar flow(improve transfer efficiency)…

You've always been fun to watch but you've stepped up the entertainment value and it works.

42 years ago I wrapped as much 3/8" microbore copper pipe as possible tightly around the circular 6" steel chimney pipe coming out of the top of our home made woodburning stove/cooker. In all I covered the whole 30 inches of the chimney pipe before it turned and went through the wall. I plumbed the copper pipe into the indirect side of our copper hot water tank in the bathroom which was directly above the kitchen. After successful initial trials I then insulated the copper pipe, but had to remove it soon after because it was then producing too much hot water and it was venting into the expansion tank. It has since given us all the hot water we have ever needed, and for no extra cost.

Finally someone who uses cut off discs down to the nub like the rest of us do! None of this throwing it away after a quarter inch has gone nonsense!

If I lived in Australia, I'd love to buy a unit. Well built and a pleasure to watch. All the best from Indonesia.

Jeez those tig beads are bloody perfect mate! Great stove, I really enjoy watching these. Keep it up 👍👍

This is surprisingly powerful! To take 80L of water from 30 to 70C in 1.2 Hours is an energy input of 2.7Kw. Total energy input is about 3.7 KWH. TBH looking at it I would have never thought it would do that. Figures don't lie however and I'd say that's a fantastic result. I think some sort of baffles in the riser of the burn chamber to pusht the hot gasses out to the sides would help transfer with more heat and efficiency but putting the pipes across to break up the boundary layer gasses was a great idea. VERY well done. Good and useful amount of heating power here .

I've made another observation of your setup. It would be more efficient to use convection currents to your advantage. Plumb the top of the heat exchanger to the bottom of the tank, and plumb the top of the tank to the bottom of the heat exchanger. This lets the hot water rise through the tank setting up convection currents, and heating the whole tank of water more evenly. As you have it in the video it is just heating the water in the tank from the top down.

Ein wahrer Meister seines Faches. Meine tiefste Verehrung!! Auch die Videodokumentation ist vorbildlich. Es gibt viel zu lernen von diesem Mann.

Ive had my EMU a couple years. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 10/10 Highly recommend. Its a fantastic edition to the back yard. Lets me turn my apple-tree branches/twigs into summer night fires the family, roast a couple marsh mellows; or just enjoy the heat. Little mess, lots of heat, and just an enjoyable time. Worth every dollar. Dont need to cook on it, can use it on a balcony or backyard. Amazing.

That is some expert level bead work; really tight pattern. You sir are a prolific welder!

Awesome project! Those welds are a thing of beauty!

Welders are my favorite kind of rockstar. And tailors too.

Great build! If you wanted it to heat the water faster you could put a thermostat valve on the outlet so the tank holds the water till it gets to your desired temp then let's the hot water out repeating the process

Reminds me of grandpa's old chip heater - so efficient!

Great build. I really enjoyed your process, your skill and the design. I appreciate that you went back and completed the ash diverter. Good for you your wife has such integrity to encourage the remedy. When I was younger I had this skill set, I should revive it.

For the first four years of my working life I made wood fired boilers for domestic and commercial use , it’s interesting that we are gravitating back to this old tek . My first home had a briquette HWS

I'm not a welder, but I've seen a lot of welds in my day. A lot of what I've done in my life has relied on quality welds. Those welds are CLEAN. Unless you're somehow doing some video editing/AI magic, they are VERY impressive.

I can’t believe the # of talented RU-vid builders that use abrasive cutting wheels with no mask 😷 Nice welding work!

👋👋👋You make great rocket stoves but you're really a bloody good engineer under that Aussie skin !! Praise from a Pom !!!👋👋👋

You got some real sheet metal skills! You can see your attention to detail.

This is some world class welding, sir!

I always love watching a craftsman ply their trades. Excellent job. I have a rocket stove..........Well not really. When I want hot water I put a 2.5 Gallon pail of water on top of the woodstove, in about 15 minutes I have water that is near boiling and I just take it off and use it. Same when camping, put it next to the fire and let it sit. I think rocket stoves are cool and I will eventually make one.

A master of your trade mate. Nice workmanship. I own a machine shop and I relish good engineering and workmanship. Well done.

Really nice build, pleasure to watch you. I love these type of projects.

3:14 welds looking damn good. And as we all know, the inside corners are the most important. Tough to sand/grind. You have a void/bubble on the outside edge, but even if you drop another bead over that, you can easily reach it. So yeah.. Noice

This seems like the guy to learn welding from. tHanks for the video!

As an enginee4 and designer I'm miles behind you what a talent and artist .thank you son.. Mike Scotland

Awesome video! Since you're using convection and no pump.... But if you did use a pump, flow direction can help depending on heating or cooling. Ideally you would want to draw from the bottom as the outlet and inlet at the top. Sometimes convection can reverse this but the idea with flow from the bottom will produce a hotter temperature. The top inlet begins to heat the water and as the temp rises you get closer to the hottest thermal source.

VERY NICELY DONE SIR! as a fabricatior i can say this is premo. I have cheaply played around with my own versions of fire powered water heaters but this is straight to the business. ill have to model my next one off of this for sure. Well done

I always enjoy it when you put a little TOT in your videos. Just a little, but the flavour is still yours. And "not happy, Jan" is such a nice touch. I am definitely interested in one of these. As a bonus, I am local! 🙂 We have a bush block out at Leyburn that needs a hot water system of some sort, and I was thinking of a donkey, but this would be much better.

Excellent work! I also really like that you show your mistakes and then you show how you fixed them. You have a new subscriber!

Excellent build, I was a toolmaker 30 years ago in aircraft manufacturing and your skills are as good. To increase heat transfer more surface area within the box section, fins for example, however, the down side to that is the drag on the water flow, which means the need to pump the water through it on a slow flow rate, it’s a balance as the slower flow, will increase the heat and that will increase the pressure, so a low flow pump could help with more even heat distribution into the water.

This is definitely the best video for content and production values you’ve done so far, LOVE IT

Real pleasure to watch you working, your wife is right, keep going on, UR the best!

I would love love love! a break down video that goes over all of the versions you have made so far and why you changed the designs for each, what went wrong with each and how you ended up at this final design. kinda just an overview of the evolution from your trial and error. I would like to take your findings and take it in my own direction.

My grandfather built something pretty similar in the late 40s after he returned from ww2 for the old homestead he was building, and it worked so well that he never really changed it out till the early 90s mainly because my grandmother wanted something a bit easier, but still kept it as a back up when the power would go off. Its definitely a handy little set up for sure.

Its a pleasure to watch a professional metalworker doing his craft. Thank you for posting this educational clip.

Your work blows my mind in what is possible!!! Love the background track hahaha! Thanks for the chuckles. 🇦🇺🤜🏼🤛🏼🍀😎☮️

Nice wieldings seams, PS I know nothing about metal work but watching you work is fun, thank you.

Beautiful, just beautiful.. you are amazingly talented my friend.

nice hand grinding skills ,this guy could build anything

Only if mankind hadn't invented a better way to heat water jk Amazing metal fabrication skills

I am impressed by this new hot water system and can see a lot of possibilities , the results are very good, looking forward to updates.

Clever! This needs to be on the market for small/tiny homes.

Nice craftsmanship. I don't think I could rebuild this project but I liked watching you to approach all the individual steps. Your welding lines look awesome.

What an amazing gift you've gotten. Congratulations

I was listening to the songs and following along and I knew the songs, I have listened to this music for hours, I was like I know this from somewhere instantly, RIMWORLD! lol thats awesome. Also the build was cool.

Nice! In another vid they used a fish bubbler to prevent stratification of water temps in the water tank. Of course it needs to be high temp design. GJ mate!

That's a really nice build. I like that one. Better than I thought it would be. Makes me want to start playing around again.

Excellent fabrication skills! Love the humor! Keep up the good work!😊

Soft pine wood burn much hotter than any hard wood. Of course Pine has lower energy density and it disappears really fast but you can achieve much higher temperatures faster. Nice stove. Good work.

Lookin good man! You've come a long ways!!!!!

This is a very nice build and you can put a grate on top for a fry pan and cook food.

The most beautiful hand TIG welds I've seen on the interwebs! Very nice, and great project too!

Master Metal Worker.....indeed....Air Velocity going in, maybe more Cant / on the in-feed and experiment with the after combustion vent slot (?)

I love the music in this video. It has such a retro feel. And your welds are quite pretty.

Nice work and great to see the evolution. Your vids are really enjoyable. Thank you.

Such beautiful welds. And the free-hand drill bit sharpening is especially nice.

Your work, the craftsmanship, the attention to detail, is beautiful! I tried something similar but with 6"x6"x0.25" (152 x 152 x 6.35) steel tube and put a coil of ss water tube inside of it.

Those are some beautiful welds!👍👍

I gotta say, those are some beautiful welds.

Glad to see you posting again 😊❤

When cutting or milling stainless always use water for cooling only! The stove came out very fine. Good work man!

I clearly see your designs improving Along with your shop expanding I hope your beautiful family is well As your hand/machine skills are honed 🙏🏻👍🏻

Damn man! My eyes got fried from the welding arc flash. Other youtubers send out a warning beforehand so you can don the proper gear to watch safely or look away. Do now I'm just lying here eith potato slices on my eyes with hopes of a complete recovery. Interesting project from what I can hear you describe!

Your a real craftsman. Amazing work !

You do nice work, if you investigate types of steam engine boilers you will find what is known as Hedgehoged boilers, where you have the teow pipes passing through the chimney if you weld 10mmish solid bar through the water jacket and into the boiler you'll be able to harvest more heat from the flue gasses and flames

Truly beautiful workmanship, you sir are a craftsman.

fantastic workmanship, really well done

My man, Those welds! 👌

Excellent work and an awesome production.

Love the way you TIG weld: drop the filler rod in the crack and go over it, instead of feeding it in. Don't know if it the best way, as I am a beginner, but makes the welding easier.

You, Sir, are a prime craftsman!

Nice job been watching for several years no quitting for you ehhh. I think you got it down pat now. Thanks a bunch ehhhh

Great stuff as always and getting even better. Thanks mate.

Great design and great video ! Thanks for sharing 👍

I enjoy watching you build your stoves and you definitely stepped it up. I’d like one of you hot water rocket heaters.

Awesome video and craftsmanship , well done 👍

Great fabrication and workmanship 👍👍👍

Expert workmanship

So glad I found this channel, even if it were for only the way you edit your vids, totally worth it!

Easy and effective. Love the design.

The fire is climbing up the wood as the air isn't being pulled in at the staging area for the burnables. I think due to the slot cut out at the top of the burn chamber. Air would be drawn in there before being pulled in around the wood. Maybe test the theory out by temporarily closing off the slot and seeing if it makes a difference. Your welds are topnotch!!!

You sure do have some skills. Nice metal work and touch control and bead flow.

Absolutely fantastic welding! I'm impressed!!!

God damn your welds are majestic sir!

That was a great video, from start to finish great work on the video itself and great work on the rocker stove

Nagyon szép munka! Pont valami ilyesmin gondolkodtam. És itt van! Tudom kombinálni... Köszönöm! További sok sikert! 👍

Great workmanship! I think you can increase the heat transfer time by increasing the number of passes the water makes. Weld the outer rectangular pipes on the narrower side to the square tubing and interconnect the 4 chambers created by the rectangular tubes in series. Right now it’s 1 pass. Seems you can get as much as 4 passes if series.