The Rocket Mass Heater Builder's Guide: Complete Step-By-Step Construction, Maintenance and Troubleshooting

Heat your home with 80% less wood while eliminating smoke, ash, and constant fire-tending. Complete construction manual for building ultra-efficient rocket mass heaters that provide superior comfort, slash heating costs, and burn so cleanly they're legal in smoke-restricted areas.

Why Rocket Mass Heaters Outperform Traditional Wood Stoves:

Conventional wood stoves waste 60-80% of fuel energy up the chimney. Rocket mass heaters capture and store that energy in thermal mass, providing 6-12 hours of radiant heat from a single 1-2 hour burn.

What You'll Build:

• Complete construction plans - step-by-step guide and heater design


• Troubleshooting systems - prevent and fix common installation problems


• Safety protocols - building code compliance and insurance considerations



• Fuel efficiency calculations - reduce heating costs by 50-80% immediately


• Maintenance schedules - ensure decades of reliable, efficient operation

Proven Performance:

Builders report heating 1,500-3,000 sq ft homes with just 1-2 cords of wood annually (vs 6-8 cords for conventional stoves), eliminating daily fire maintenance, and achieving payback within 2-3 heating seasons.

Transform heating from daily chore to set-and-forget comfort. Build the last heating system you'll ever need.

Erica Wisner is a skilled educator and project coordinator, with over 25 years' experience building teamwork and facilitating hands-on learning. She loves making things from scratch - anything from blueberry scones to the oven they were baked in. Erica is the author of The Ultimate Girls' Guide to Science and The Art of Fire and she has also created instructional materials and rocket mass heater resources for the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, The City Repair Project, Handprint Press and others. Together with her husband Ernie, she has built over 700 super-efficient, clean-burning masonry stoves and led over 50 workshops across North America.

Ernie Wisner is a jack of all trades - his rich and varied background includes fishing and maritime work, firefighting, botany, natural building, hydraulics, and plumbing maintenance. Extreme conditions and high-risk work focused Ernie's attention on survival skills and emergency preparedness. After witnessing hard evidence of global climate change, Ernie's search for sustainable solutions led him to Cob Cottage Company, where he built his first rocket mass heaters while serving on the research team for Ianto Evans and Leslie Jackson's pioneering Rocket Mass Heaters . Together with his wife Erica, he has built over 700 super-efficient, clean-burning masonry stoves and led over 50 workshops across North America.