Jenny Ives

I'd love to know more about the lime fresco finish.  Sounds appetising and looks great too.

Busted!!! The sheep came inside and discovered what keeps us humans on the inside for so long in the mornings 🤭

Husband loved a bag of firelighters he recently bought.  They didn't stink and when we looked at the ingredients it was coconut oil, wax and wood threads.
So we found some candles in the garage (not keen on candles anymore).
Melted the candle, filled an egg carton with wood shavings and poured over the melted wax.  And he loves our homemade fire starters.

Such neat work.  

Yes cob treading even in wellies is hard going.  And 1 + 1 makes 1/2  is soul destroying plus the smell of it gets me in the back of my throat.  Can you tell I am not a fan of wet cob? :D

Often challenges are best approached as a series of measures and as such my kitchen shelves are made from light steel framing.  

We had this material leftover from another project.  I feel the metal and the gaps help.  I often have to close up and go away for a few weeks and since putting in this shelving my few bits of plastic and wooden items didn't have to be thrown away.

I also intend putting in an old computer fan when I can scavenge a couple.

Thumb to show the gap between.

Glenn Herbert wrote:.

The proportions in the original RMHs were 1:2:3; more recent advice has been 1:2:4. I have found that 1:1.5:3 works well, and on an 8" system can be 16" feed height, 24" burn tunnel floor length, and 48" riser height from floor, giving an 8" burn tunnel ceiling. My system in a tall bell with good natural draft actually has a 45" riser, and flames seldom reach the top of the riser, meaning combustion is complete by then. (I have a nail-sized peephole in the access panel above the J-tube so I can see across the top of the riser.)

With Thomas Rubino help we luckily shortened the burn tunnel and heightened the Riser.

In the end our numbers washout as follows

38 cm / 65 cm / 122 cm  
(15 cm gap between riser and top of the drum)

Austin Shackles wrote:For what it's worth, I used refractory mortar on the lower part of the Matt Walker stove*

One thing I keep noticing though is the clay mortar has very limited adhesion to the bricks when dried out.  It's easy to knock bricks loose.  

* documented here if you haven't already seen it.

When we first used refractory cement it was quite nerve wracking.  It didn't have body or substance of usual mortar and left us wondering if it would 'do anything'.  So in a weird way we were quite pleased when we took RMH #1 apart how very well the refractory cement worked.

Plus in Portugal you can wallace into a hardware store and buy it in containers of .500 gram right up to tens of kg sacks.

...when the Rocket Heater hasn't been connected to the exhaust you make another plan 😆

2nd photo We put a candle in and there's a draw.


Edit - added photo of barrel

paul wheaton wrote:

Take a look at http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/heating.html

(and when you visit a really good site, I encourage you to click on the ads - it's like voting with your clicks for quality stuff)

I forgot about clicking on ads as a show of support.  Great reminder.

At the expense of dinner we trialed the dry build outside tonight.

The heat riser in the photo needs to go up two courses and the drum needs to be extended.  Jobs for tomorrow.

The rocket heater outside worked well and in an unexpected way.  By the time we came inside the 13 °c inside felt a lot warmer then the 8°c outside 😆