Local knowledge refined…

As I learned through my years of studying community development, there is always local asessments to take into account when we want to see development. When we look on wood burning it is offcourse local knowledge available, it is not like we introduce woodburning here. And the small metallboxes we see everywhere havent always been the methode for heating…

Several times when I have explained the rocket-stove to locals they have responded, “oh just like the Samovar” or “just like the Tendir” And it is to some degree true that the rocket stove is like a crossing of a tendir (traditional stone oven used for making the excellent tasting tendir bread) and a Samovar. A samovar is well described in this article “Let`s make tea in Samovar” by Tahir Amiraslanov and is a small traditional tea boiler that burns in a stack. This article claim that in Sheki and early variant of this was used to put on topp of a small fire and create a hot chimney effect through the water 1500 years B.C !! So the hot stack effect that is known as the driving engine of a rocket stove is not exactly a new concept here. It uses a very small amount of fuel to boil water for tea and cooking. And it is found everywhere because it is known to give the water somehow a different taste because of the circulating effect the hot stack has on the water.

The tendir is another traditional asset for making good rocket stove. It is mainly because of the building technic that seem to be adaptable to our stoves. And it also shows local understanding of the muds excellent properties for storing heat over a long periode of time.   They use clay mixed with wool as reinforcement, and it is excellent to work with and prevents cracking very well. I will report it when we have tested this traditional building skill for the first rocket-stove.