How To Make An Institutional Stove With Chimney

There are at least three ways to make institutional stoves with chimneys, all of which work well and save fuel and decrease emissions. Here they are:

1. Shell Foundation supported the making of an eight-part video, a step by step guide to making a 50 to 100 liter institutional Rocket stove, with a heat resistant metal Rocket combustion chamber. It is a great stove with lots of successful field testing but it costs the most to construct because heat resistant metals like 410 stainless or FeCrAl are increasingly expensive. The super insulated combustion chamber requires these types of metal. 304 stainless will not last. https://youtu.be/VdhLWMW7IXA
   
2. Cooking With Less Fuel: Breathing Less Smoke shows how to make the same institutional stove using bricks for the Rocket combustion chamber. Construction details can be found at aprovecho.org in the publications section. The book was written with the World Food Program in Rome. This is a less expensive stove that is slightly less fuel efficient at cold start but lasts longer and is easier to make in places where 410 stainless and FeCrAl are not available.
3. Making a VITA style institutional stove without a Rocket combustion chamber is the least expensive way to create an institutional stove. The open fire under the pot is supported on a grate and the hot gases flow up the inside of the skirt, down the outside of the skirt and exit out the chimney placed below the bottom of the pot as in the Rocket stoves shown above. You can find a video we made about constructing the VITA stove at: http://aprovecho.org/video-gallery/

Lots of manufacturers do not use the chimney but we think that protecting health is very important. We try to follow Don O’Neals advice (HELPS International) to always include chimneys whenever possible, imagining our mothers cooking and getting ill from exposure to the harmful emissions without the protection of the chimney.