Nearly half of the people of the world use wood to fuel fires for cooking and heat. Some of the reasons for using wood are obvious… It is typically easily accessible, inexpensive or free and provides reliable and consistent heat without expensive equipment.

In spite of these advantages wood fires for cooking have some major limitations.

• Wood is renewable but replanting and forest growth takes years. Deforestation can be devastating leading to erosion, decreased plant biomass, increased aridity/desertification, reduced ecosystem stability, etc.
• Inhaling smoke related to cooking accounts for 1.6 million deaths each year. Amazingly, this is nearly 3% of the world’s entire burden of disease! Studies have shown that smoke exposure related to cooking dramatically increases incidence of eye infections, asthma, pneumonia COPD and other lung diseases. The impact is typically the worst on ladies and children who are more likely to be cooking and tending fires.
• A typical 3-stone wood fire is only about 10% efficient which means that only 10% of the heat being generated actually heats the contents of the pot and the rest is lost as waste heat.

Because this is such a huge problem for both individual health and for the environment much research has gone into developing new technologies which can help to avoid the pitfalls of commonly seen smoky fire.

This page is in the process of being expanded.

Please check back again for more information as well as directions which will soon be posted demonstrating how to make your own simple improved stove. These easy-to-make, inexpensive stoves are able to cook nearly twice as fast, use 1/3 the amount of wood and produce virtually no smoke.