Design Considerations

Every example of a Rhodesian boiler was built with whatever materials were to hand. As a result, there are nearly as many different designs of boiler as they are boilers. Nevertheless, this basic design is common to most:

Origins of the Rhodesian boiler

Having established that the 'donkey boiler' takes its name from auxiliary maritime boilers, I then turned to finding the origins of the classic Rhodesian boiler as seen next to nearly every colonial rural homestead throughout the Rhodesian federation, and further afield in East Africa: