[Stoves] advice for chimney wood stove for rural Burkina Faso

Crispin Pemberton-Pigott crispinpigott at gmail.com
Mon Feb 6 23:14:57 CST 2012


Dear AD

 

Your story is not very unusual. It is unfortunate that people produce stoves
that have chimneys, but are not actually clean-burning. My point is that
just because one produces a chimney stove is no excuse not to use that
additional expense to create the draft needed to completely burn the fuel.
Astonishing really. 

 

I wonder if there is too much emphasis on 'clean indoor air' without enough
emphasis on 'not needing to worry about clean indoor air' in the first
place. 

 

That level of deposition is depressing. I heard about a stove being produced
in the tea country high in Kenya which is used for space heating and
cooking, According to the designer the 3 inch chimney would clog after three
months. That is ridiculous! What kind of crummy combustion is that?

 

A chimney is as good as a fan - especially 3.5 metres. Fan stoves are
supposed to be really clean or you have not done a good job. Shoving bad
combustion outside does not solve much. The situation in Ulaanbaatar is
exactly like that. No one has a stove without a chimney. The air outside is
so polluted that it is contaminating the air drawn into the homes. So the
chimney solved nothing - the problem is the stove.

 

Your grate price is good! I think we should be  jealous! It would be so nice
to be able to get good parts in cast iron.

 

Thanks

Crispin

 

 

Dear Crispin,

the grate costs about a dollar each, whereas a 3.5 m long chimney having a
diameter of about 8 cm costs about US$6. Formerly, these chimneys were mass
produced as water pipes, but nowadays people use plastic pipes for water.
There is only one manufacturer in our state who makes the cement chimneys,
and about 15% of them are found to be broken on arrival. Fixing the chimneys
is a tricky business, because one has to make a hole into the ceiling or the
roof of the house. If this hole is not properly sealed, rainwater drips
through it. After using it for about 3 months, the chimney generally gets
choked with tar, which is very difficult to remove. Once that happens, the
stove produces more smoke than the traditional stove used to produce, and
disgusted, the housewife removes the improved stove along with the chimney.
We have recently installed our chimneyless stoves in about 1000 households
under a special programme funded by Cummins (India) Ltd. These stoves are
now in operation for almost a year and there are no complaints.

Yours

A.D.Karve

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