So the Mad Farmer just got back from the Rocket Mass Heater Jamboree that took place at Wheaton Labs. If you are not familiar with Wheaton Labs it is the place where Paul Wheaton, the Duke of Permaculture (Paul was given that title by Geoff Lawton), holds his events and experiments with all things permaculture, natural building and cool technology, like the Rocket Mass Heaters.
The RMH Jamboree was a nine day event that took place in early October with multiple instructors and multiple build tracks.
Kirk ‘Donkey’ Mobert was there:
Sky Huddleston, the inventor of the only UL listed shippable Rocket Mass Heater core, the Liberator:
Also instructing were Rodney Morgan, Isaac Workman, Christina Keegan and of course, Paul Wheaton himself. Several instructors scheduled to be attending had visa issues, and other various things that came up so were unable to attend. All things considered, there were a lot of people there and a lot of things going on.
Sky brought one of his Liberator RMH cores to install at the shop and a Bulgarian Gamera RMH was sent to the lab for installation and testing. Sadly the Gamera inventors were unable to get clearance to come to the event but I did get to say “hello” to one of them over a video chat that Uncle Mud was having. Both the Liberator and the Gamera are very cool stoves and I will be posting more about them in future posts.
`Gamera 
Liberator
Over the course of the nine days there were quite a number of projects that were started and most of them completed.
- Sky installed his Liberator into the Shop and performed the initial install of the Gamera into the Red Cabin (one of the rentable buildings at the Lab).
- Uncle Mud took on a Rocket Heater Assisted Solar Dehydrator and a rebuild of the pebble mass bench in the Red Cabin where the Gamera was installed.
- Donkey Mobert tested a Rocket Kiln concept and started work on a portable 8 inch Rocket Engine that can be “plugged into” various types of experiments, the kiln, a forge and anything else Paul can dream up.
- Christina led the build of a Rocket Sauna and installed a smaller Rocket Mass Heater into a small WOFATI (Woodland Oehler-style Freaky-Cheap Annualized Thermal Inertia) home for one of the boots (more on that program in other posts).
- Isaac led the build of an eight-inch Pebble-style Rocket Mass Heater in the new Solarium
- Rodney led the build of a Lorena-style Rocket Cooktop and outdoor kitchen, repaired the electric “Bad Boy Buggy” and lent his myriad areas of expertise to many of the other on-ongoing projects.
- Special Mention for Jamboree attendee JR who designed and replaced the plumbing in the Rocket Heated showers!
That’s a brief overview of what was going on. In future posts the Mad Farmer will do a deeper dive into the individual projects and what it’s like to visit the Lab (this was my second trip and boy did things change in just three years)!
If you can’t wait that long you can always go sign up at Permies.com and check out all the things happening a Wheaton Labs.
TSL Odysee Channel https://odysee.com/@TSLHomestead:3
TSL YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-_13yNtVZ5j0uag8EgqHXA