Zaug Stove shown in Metallic Blue and Metallic Charcoal
Each Zaug is custom made to order. There are 45 individual pieces of steel welded together to complete one unit. The 12 gauge cylinder and 2″ trim are rolled and welded as well. Once the welding is complete, the surfaces are cleaned, washed in lacquer thinner, and prepared for paint. A coat of Thurmalox primer and two coats of Thurmalox paint is applied for a smooth finish. The result is a beautiful Zaug stove for heating and cooking.
Fabrication takes approximately 28 days from start to finish.
Stove weight is 275 lbs. Shipping weight is 435 lbs (shipping crate weighs 160 lbs.) and is class 85. We ship from Yelm, WA 98597. We use FreightQuote.com for our shipping needs.
The Zaug Stove operates best with sticks and branches but can also handle 5” rounds up to 24” long. The fire eats a hopper of sticks and branches in about 30 minutes. A solid round will burn in about an hour.
The cooktop of the stove can be easily removed for access to the interior, for quick cleaning. There is an easy-access ash pit, resting in the pedestal, for removing burned ash. The air-intake chamber over the feed tube, is dampened down and can be completely closed off with the bi-fold hinged door on the top of the intake.
The most beneficial way to use a Zaug stove, is to add a thermal mass around the 
stove exhaust to capture and store heat from the exhaust. The easiest way to do this is to make a bench or hearth, out of cob or clay, but brick or masonry can be used as well.
For more information on how to build a thermal mass, research Rocket Mass Heaters on the internet.
Sticks and branches work best in the Zaug since they offer more surface area than larger pieces of wood.
In our tests, the Zaug burns about 1 cubic foot of wood in 4 hours.
There’s 128 cu. ft. in a cord of wood, so that would last 128 days of warmth. A four-hour fire is enough to heat up your mass and nearly heat you out of your home.
The exhaust is ran horizontally. If encased in a thermal mass such as brick or clay, this thermal mass will heat up and store the heat for many hours.
For heating greenhouses, the exhaust duct can be installed in the ground, so that it runs approximately 6 inches underground, to heat the soil. The soil will act as a thermal mass and retain heat for several hours. If you have an aquaponics system, you may even consider wrapping a coil around the Zaug exhaust to heat the water in your system. The exhaust duct temperature is approximately 225 degrees. Extreme care would have to be taken to avoid over-heating the fish.
We have tested our exhaust up to 47 feet before we change the direction to vertical. We have found that adding a section at the end of the run vertically, dramatically increases the draw in the unit. This is a new technology and we will be discovering better and more efficient ways to use this stove in the future.
Zaug shown with optional fireproof glass on 3 sides of the feed tube, for viewing the fire.
OPTIONAL
For an additional cost, we can install 3-panes of fireproof glass on the feed tube. This makes viewing the fire possible.
We also offer placement of the exhaust port anywhere on a 90 degree swivel, left or right. When designing your system, tell us where you want the exhaust to go and we can accommodate your system. For instance, if your stove sits in a corner, and your thermal mass runs along a wall at a 45 degree angle, we can place the exhaust port to exit the stove right where your mass starts.
EPA CERTIFICATION
We are in the process of certifying the Zaug Stove with the proper EPA and UL regulations; However, at this time, the Zaug Stove is not recognized as a conventional wood burning stove by the EPA. Unfortunately, the EPA does not have a test for this new type of technology. It may be some time before an independent research and development team can design a test for our stove. Thank you.
please email me additional information or you can mail it to: Deleted for Privacy
Please provide us with an email address and we will be happy to send you a digital brochure.
Thanks for your interest in Zaug Stoves.
How many BTU over the four hour burn period are produced by the Zaug?
I currently heat a house with a large wood stove in the basement – three floors, 2800 sq feet. My chimney is 26′ long.
Would the Zaug with thermal mass be able to heat my house here in VT?
I’d like to invite you to watch this video- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4usXIAoy9us
These people have built a rocket mass heater themselves.
To get the kind of heat out of the stove that you need, the stove would definitely need to be used in combination with some sort of thermal mass which will extract and store heat created from the stove. A thermal mass can even be a vertical rock chimney, as long as the exhaust duct is zig-zagged through the masonry. The more heat you can extract from your exhaust duct, the better efficiency your stove will have. The BTU’s are difficult to calculate when you include a thermal mass in to the calculation, since the thermal mass gives off heat as well (continuously for up to 24 hours).
However, I wouldn’t recommend using the 26′ chimney for your exhaust run. The air inside the exhaust duct will cool down, and it won’t have enough heat to push up 26′. I’d suggest using a new exhaust port and sending the vertical line up about 10′ instead.
I’ve seen external wood and/or coal furnaces which pipe hot water to a house, the aim being to isolate the house from the risk of fire. Seems to me the Zaug could be positioned just outside and the exhaust piped through the wall and into thermal mass. Might keep the building inspectors happy.
To RayS: I’ve seen that type of outdoor solid fuel furnace also. Although it might make the inspectors happy – someone has to feed the external furnace… I do like sending heat – but not fumes – into the home. Wood smoke does cause a certain amount of sickness – http://www.epa.gov/burnwise/healtheffects.html & people with asthma & compromised lungs are more at risk.
The reason I originally became interested in the rocket mass stove is that – as a nurse – I noticed a correlation = the problems of 2 million deaths of women & children worldwide resulting from open fire cooking together with deforestation – and how this relates to our own energy future – more expensive, dangerous & toxic methods of extraction & more demand.
I wondered whether there was a common solution for heating that might work for cooler Latin American countries & for us in the Northeast US.
I love the masonry heater – but so expensive – can’t be popularly retrofitted in our area… & the UL certification on that – not sure.
The Rocket Mass heater might help solve cooking and home warming problems in the third world – and maybe home warming and water heating problems here in the US.
I wonder…
To Jim Pitman – I have the same situation approximately – I have a Vermont Castings Defiant that amazingly heats our entire 3 story house very well – but we feed it 5 – 6 cords of wood = its a lot of work…
I would LOVE to see Rocket Mass Heaters applied to RADIANT FLOOR HEATING – and it is a good question whether that heater could be fed pellets via an auto feeder AND kept in a small heating shack outside the house.
Meanwhile – good luck with UL cert – & I will buy one when you are certified!
Yours with warm regards
Jennie
I was researching using a rocket mass type heater for hydronic radiant floor heating, myself. I did find a commune that built a shower house using a rocket heater. Instead of an insulated flue inside of a larger container (55 gallon drum) to force the hot gases back down, they used an insulated flue that rose nearly to the ceiling and turned back down to force the hot gasses down through a natural gas style water heater, down to the ground, and then out the side of the exterior wall. It seemed effective, and any condensate would run down the inside of the water heater’s inner flue and towards the outdoor exhaust, instead of back towards the rocket heater or getting caught in a crevice.
sounds interesting. I’d love to see some pictures of this. Would you site the source?
Hmmm, I can’t seem to find it now… Never did save it as a bookmark, sorry. I’m certain that it was set up just that way, like an oversized pocket rocket. It was still insulated, an then the flue was turned to force the exhaust down through a gas-style water heater, from the top down. I’m also certain that the reason for this was to permit any condensate to drain away from the setup and out of the building. It wasn’t really being used for space heat, so much as to heat water for a communal washhouse for a hippie commune. Or ‘intentional community; if you prefer.