We love our Dakota Rocket Silo--it helps us cook outside, put our pruning brush and small-diameter dead trees to good use, render wax, make biochar, and do lots of fun things. But the original and rebuilt designs had one flaw that cropped up during extended use:
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| The piece of ground between the holes gets baked pretty good, and eventually weakens and starts crumbling, which makes the chimney part not level. It might not be as much of a problem with wider cinder blocks where more of the support comes from the sides. |
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| But weve got skinny cinder blocks, so we took out the middle part and built a brick foundation. Theyre not fire bricks, so they probably wont last too long, but they were free! This setup lets us keep the in-ground aspect that we like so much, but hopefully will stay level for longer. Plus, it looks kind of Petra-esque. |
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| We fired it up, and sure enough, it burns like a champ. Next test: will it stay level through a winter? |
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| Jalapeño popper, anyone? (They took a LONG time to cook this way, but they were really good!) |
