The Mad Housers

Construction - The Emergency Heating Stove

Introduction

The Mad Housers stove is simply and cheaply made, yet puts out a surprising amount of heat. Properly used and maintained, a stove can last for a couple of years or more.

Construction

Stove assemblage. Note that there will be more than two buckets in a real stove.

Materials

All quantities are for one stove

Tools

Design

The stove is a basic Franklin design. The body is built from nested shop buckets; the upper buckets have their bottoms removed to extend the length of the firebox, while the bottom two buckets keep their bottoms to provide a dead air space between the firebox and the floor. The grating, which rests upon the brick fragments, raises the fuel above the ventilation holes at the bottom of the firebox. The stovepipe is prevented from falling through to the bottom of the firebox by the screw inserted at its base.

Construction

  1. Start a fire outdoors in a large, enclosed space or container - a 55 gallon fire barrel is ideal. The fire is to burn off the paint from the buckets. This is necessary to guarantee a snug fit when nesting the buckets together; otherwise, the first few times the stove is used, the paint will burn off then - and the buckets will have a gap where the paint used to be, leaking smoke.
  2. Once the fire is going well, put the buckets in the fire, to burn off the paint. This'll take a couple of minutes per bucket; you can have more than one bucket going at a time, however. You can also speed things up by pouring a small amount of oil to burn in the interior of the buckets

    Safety Note: Fire is hot. Smoke from burning oil and paint is nasty and poisonous. Don't pull the buckets out by hand; hook them out by the handle using the poker. Don't stand around inhaling the smoke, unless you want to wind up talking to yourself behind a 7-11 somewhere.

  3. Toss the lids in the fire. This'll melt the plastic off the pour spouts, leaving the hole on top where the stovepipe will go. You can hook them out by the hole once they're done. You only need two lids per stove, one for the top of the stove, the other for the stovepipe flashing.
  4. You'll only want to keep the handle for the topmost bucket of the stove; the others just get in the way. Use your vise grips to remove the extra handles.
  5. Using the vise grips again, go around the rims of the holes of the lids, where there's a steel reinforcement ring. Squeeze the lip of the ring flat - this will both give the stovepipe enough room to get into the hole and add some strength to the lip.
  6. Set aside two of the buckets without handles; they'll become the base. Using the circular saw with the abrasive grinding blade, remove the bottoms from the remaining buckets by running the sawblade around the bottom seam. All you need to do is remove the bit at the fold; you don't need to explicitly cut the bottom out. Once the fold is removed, you can punch out the bottom with a hammer.

    Safety note: This'll produce lots of sparks and noise; goggles and earplugs are recommended.

  7. Nest the buckets. The two buckets with bottoms go on the bottom, bottomless buckets without handles go in the middle, and the bottomless bucket with the handle goes on top. Using the drill fitted with the 1/8" bit, drill two holes on opposite side of each bucket, punching through to the interior, and screw the screws into the holes, fitting the buckets together into one unit.

    Tip: Screw in the first screw after drilling the first hole, to keep the buckets from shifting around while you work with them.

  8. Drill a hole using the 1/8" bit near the bottom of the stovepipe, and screw in a screw.
  9. Using a measuring tape, measure the distance from the top of the stove to 1 1/2" from the bottom of the firebox. Drill eight holes at this depth around the stove using the 17/32" bit.
  10. Using a discarded bucket bottom, mark a circle on the expanded sheet metal grating using spray paint or a marker. Cut the circle out using your circular saw or jigsaw.
  11. The bricks go into the bottom, the grate goes on the bricks, the top goes on the stove, and the stovepipe goes into the top. Congratulations! You have a stove. The bolts are used to damp the fire; for a hotter fire, remove bolts from the holes around the bottom to let in more air, and to damp the fire, insert them into the holes.
  12. If you can't find metal flashing for the roof of a hut, flashing can be manufactured from a second lid.

Usage and Maintenance

Usage

The stove is designed to burn wood or, preferably, charcoal. If you're burning wood, it should be as dry and seasoned as possible. Wet or green wood won't burn well and will leave more deposits on the inside of the stovepipe.

Warning: do not burn railroad ties or chemically-treated wood in the stove. You could die from doing this. Railroad ties are coated with creosote to keep them from rotting. Creosote builds up in a chimney to cause chimney fires; the 2" diameter chimneypipes will clog up and either catch on fire or flood a hut with smoke.

To use the stove: take the stove outside and dump out the ashes. Put your fuel in the stove and start a fire on top. The fire will burn downwards; starting the fire on top helps prolong your burn time.

Once the fire gets going, put the stovetop on and carry the stove into your hut. Drop the stovepipe into the hole in the top of the stove. If smoke starts pouring out of the airholes at the bottom of the stove, it's likely that your stovepipe isn't drawing. This could be for a few reasons. Your stovepipe could be clogged; if so, clean out the pipe. If the pipe is clean, another possibility is that the air in the stovepipe is too cold. Try taking a piece of newspaper, lighting one end, and warming the pipe with it to get warm air rising up the pipe.

To damp the fire, place bolts into the airholes to diminish the fire's air supply. To give it more air, remove bolts - be careful, they'll be very hot!

Making charcoal

Making charcoal is easy and useful. Charcoal is made by denying a wood fire air. When this happens, the residual heat chars the wood, driving out impurities and water. This results in lightweight, clean-burning charcoal. One way to make charcoal is to start a wood fire going in a 55 gallon drum that has its walls intact (no ventilation holes punched in the side). Once the fire is going well, clamp the lid on the top of the barrel and let the fire smother. After a few hours, shovel out the charcoal.