I have the orange ones!
They do spread.
I have recently started using their abundant leaves as mulch around more desired plants.
I figure they are like mulberry trees, minimally useful as food, close to indestructible and therefore an inexhaustible source of biomass.
Over kill? Yeah, I think so. I'm sure it uses a bunch of energy, but the organic farmer in this story thinks its worthwhile to the point he has invested his own money in the company.
Compared to traditional composting, it is faster, and it may preserve more nutrients, nitrogen in particular.
Compared to a biodigester I have no idea.
Could this process be done with a less expensive machine?
Could it be powered with waste heat from charcoal making?
Could it be powered by a biodigester?
I've often thought a solar still could do something similar.
There's a photo of early Cincinnati , taken from across the river.
It is entirely denuded, not a tree in sight.
Today our hills are covered with trees and brush.
Not old growth, just trees.
I think trees will outlast humanity.
If we ever get down to the last tree, I think there will be bigger things to worry about than staying warm.
I used to install them, as a plumbing technician who was responsible for warranting my work, I was taught not to use anything else.
They seem pretty bullet proof.
Sometimes the float switch would fail, but nothing else seemed to go wrong.
Head height is about 19' and GPM is 42.
If bugs and seeds are an issue, maybe pour boiling water over the soil component and then cover it tightly?
Add worm castings and/or compost tea to repopulate with with beneficial microbiology.
How long a burn did it take to fire the pottery?
Are the pieces usable as is or do they need a second firing, with glaze perhaps?
Since the kiln is set so high on top of the riser now , building a raised work platform next to it could be use
I think all of the attachments might benefit from being set after the riser instead of before.
Hey Ray!
I haven't built a rocket oven but I see some things about your build that might be keeping you from getting high temperatures.
You mention a 2 1/2" by 8" opening.
If your core and riser match that, they are not within the standard design parameters.
A circular or square cross section of at least 4" is recommended, and 6" or larger is preferred.
The diagram you share shows the firebox as long or longer than the riser is tall.
The prefered ratio for a J tube rocket is 1-2-4, with
1 being the height of the feed tube, 2 the length of the burn tunnel and 4 the height of a riser.
Your feed tube seems to be slanted, which might reduce the turbulence that happens where it meets the burn tunnel.
More turbulence tends to be better for complete combustion.
The riser seems to have a slanted portion, I'm not sure how that would affect things, I think Matt Walker experimented with a "broken" riser design, but strait is the standard.
You don't mention what kind cement you used for insulation, nor the ratio of perlite to cement.
Portland cement will begin to fail at 482 degrees fahrenheit.
The higher the cement to perlite ratio, the less insulative it will be.
I would try a fire inside the oven itself, along with firing the existing rocket .
You might be producing unburned combustion gasses in the rocket stove which in turn could feed the hearth fire.
I'm less concerned about contaminants and more worried about self sufficiency, but the cure is the same either way.
Grow your own biomass and then compost it.
If possible, feed it to an animal to speed the process.
You count as an animal, so at minimum, your nitrogen need may be covered.
If you eat meat, save the bones, dry them powder them.
If you eat eggs, you can do the same with the shells.
Burn wood and collect the ash.
There are some new things I want to try:
I am aiming to grow the water fern azolla because it's nitrogen fixing and it doubles quickly.
I've started growing a dedicated strip of fast growing trees for their carbon biomass.
I met people who run an animal sanctuary and I am trying to get all of their poops.
I am growing comfrey in dedicated containers, feeding them with urine.
I'm very interested to see how well the kiln lining holds up.
I'm also hoping they make provisions for loading and draining the crucible while its in operation.
The article mentions the need to produce acetate without salts.
It also claims that a solar panel powering their acetate creation process is a more efficient way to grow food than letting the plants do the work.
I find this suspect, if only because plants are self replicating.
I think acetate can be produced via acetic acid bacteria and distillation of wood.
Getting the same kind that works to grow plants in the dark could be a boon to small food producers.
Rocket stoves and mass heaters are often distinguished from other gasifires by their reliance on natural draft.
This seems to be a forced down draft gasifier.
That being said, it's very interesting, seems to have potential.
I have many wicking beds/ containers and I never use sand or gravel.
Here's what I do use:
Wicking soil from top to the bottom of the container and surrounding the inverted buckets I use for reservoirs.
I use strait peat below the waterline, then mix compost and peat.
I cut slits in the buckets to allow water to flow in and out while excluding soil.
I cut a horizontal slit in the side of the container as an overflow.
No landscape fabric needed.
Sand added to soil mixes is said to improve drainage.
This is kind of the opposite of wicking.
There is sandponics, which uses sand as a growing medium, but I'm pretty sure this exploits sands ability to filter water, not wick it.
Sandy soil that's low in organic matter are not noted for their ability to retain water,rather the opposit.
I am not satisfied with the sustainability of peat but it wicking ability and price point are excellent.
I think biochar will be a good substitute but I've not followed through on implementing it.
I would make sure it was dead, dead, dead.
I've seen new growth on mulberry branches that had been off the tree for a month.
Mind you, I'm in a very rainy humid Ohio valley, so you may not have to worry about it.
I really like the solar gain idea!
While I cant see smoking food in a cabinet, because of the chemical nastiness, I have thought that black file cabinet would make a good dehydrator.
We already grill on our back porch, so I'm adding a sink , and an oven of some sort.
Adding 240v or natural gas to the the porch takes materials I haven't wanted to spend on, but the ovens themselves are free for the taking.
I have two electric ovens in the basement, but my wife loves the 1930s chambers oven that came with the house.
We often cook indoors with an electric skillet, but I might as well grill if I'm doing it outside.
TLUD and rocket powered items are banished to just off the porch, and will probably stay there unless I can demonstrate their absolute tameness.
They are probably as safe or safer than propane, but they are diy and there fore not to be trusted.
It's hot outside and we are paying to cool our house.
At the same time, we have bread and cookies to bake for market, and dinner to make for the family.
Most of the year, our oven gets heavy use, because it doesn't need constant monitoring.
While I have been meaning to/trying to get a woodfire or solar oven set up outside, it hasn't happened yet.
Even when it does, my wife and kid may never want to use it.
Right now, I have a propane powered master built smoker that's ready to go.
I cranked it up last night, it hits or exceeds 400 degrees easily.
That's enough to bake bread(which we readily sell for 4 dollars a loaf),and chicken, which we consume in vast quantities.
So I will certainly be using this, but it is propane powered and has ZERO insulation.
I will want to modify it with thermal mass and insulation, in order to make it more useful.
I will also be trying it with and without water and of course , woodchips.
I'm concerned that water will keep the temperature from getting very high, even as it transfers the heat more efficiently and keeps meat moist.
I don't want to buy wood chips if twigs from the pear tree and/or hardwood pellets will work instead.
I want attempt some dehydrating, taking advantage of smoker temperatures that may be lower than what my oven can maintain.
Lastly , I want to investigate an electric option.
Propane will ideally be the shtf option, eventually, with wood and electric being preferred options for every day use.
Any experience or ideas you might have would be welcome.
DIY is always my preference, but also my weakness, so I'm eager to hear off the shelf options.
My wife is eating keto, and the best way I can help is by roasting chicken leg quarters.
She has an Appalachian love of chicken anyway, and having this flavorful meat on hand makes things easy.
She will make a soup from from some of the meat, along with cabbage and onion, which were cooked under the chicken.
Technically this is leftovers, but we cook big and plan for leftovers, so...
I am trying a propane smoker for the next batch, les for the flavor and more to keep the heat out of the house.
My current fav is runny yolks eggs and fried greens with soy sauce when I'm at home.
At work I heat up a can of beans, spoon in some sour cream and apply hot sauce.
I checked out Mother Mountain Farm.
All thumbnails all seem to be advertising a story I am not interested in.
I watched part of two videos, and I got a lot of frolicking and precious little knowledge.
The storytelling isn't compelling to me.
The whole thing feels like a permaculture cosplay.
Maybe there is more there there than I realize, but there are plenty of other content creators who deliver what I'm looking for without the parts I don't want.
If you're actually demonstrating technique or sharing knowledge, you message is liable to be obscured by your marketing.
For example Path of Fire is a blacksmithing channel that focuses on demonstrating technique but markets itself via sex appeal.
If I had been presented with the thumbnails first, I wouldn't have given it a chance.
Instead I followed a recommendation from another channel, so I gave it a chance.
Fortunately the actual content doesn't resemble the thumbnails, but I don't have to like it, and I don't.
The Weedy Gardener is from a similar part of the world as the Mother Mountain Farm sisters, he tells a great story, his photography is stunning, and he has a good signal to noise ratio.
He even frolics some.
Sometimes he waxes too philosophical for me, and I skip over that.
I think his content is better that that of the sisters.
You can get rocket stove information from Banshee Moon or Green Shortz.
Both of them have a story to tell.
One of them offers considerably more information about rocket stoves.
Both Skillcult and WranglerStar are homesteading woodsman with some decent content.
One of them has made multiple videos with clickbait titles about barrel stoves.
I think clickbait is a way to tell stories.
I also think it's manipulative and is sometimes used in lue of real content.
I find myself turned off by Youtube content that seems to be intent on manipulating me as its main purpose, with knowledge a side order.
I don't think its my place to tell anyone how to run their channel, so I just unsubscribe.
Sometimes it's just the title or thumbnail that's clickbait and there is real information content.
Mind you,watching other people work isn't necessarily any more useful to me than watching them frolic.
Teach me or I unsubscribe.
I see a lot of youtubers go from scrappy do it yourselfers to homestead un-boxers.
I unsubscribe.
Thomas, do you ever girdle the undesirable trees to speed their demise?
I realize that girdling can create a hazard but I think that's true of trees that die naturally as well.
I think temperate food forests might work best when they include livestock or wildlife.
The pig seems ideal in this role, from a homestead POV.
Unless you are growing in containers, it's hard to see how this would be a problem.
I compost in place, in raised beds.
The soil under and around the beds get the run off from them.
Soil life mixes the compost into the earth below.
Plants roots and mycelium grow throughout the bed and into the earth.
If topsoil isn't made up of decaying organic materials, comingled with mineral soils by the actions of living things, what is it?
Good point on the mass.
Do you think the basement floor could provide the material for cob?
If so they could gain head space and obtain building material at the same time.
Maybe use slip forms and tamp earth around the the barrel?
I get lots of sheet metal panels from appliances.
These or something similar could be used in the basement as leave in place forms.
If the steel barrels are cheap/easy to come by, they can also be a source of sheet metal for the outer forms.
These are great questions.
I don't think you can exclude voles or mice with a panel made of natural material,but making one that deters rabbits and deer seems likely.
Lashing will be one of the cheapest ways to connect the natural materials into a panel.
Using a little bit of baling wire will make this easier.
You could also weave the materials basket style.
I wonder if aluminum cans could be used as a cheap way to protect the trunks from the smallest animals.
I like it!
I have had similar schemes myself, but only the beds rooms were separate.
You could slice this all kinds of ways, but a big shared space can make tiny private spaces more bearable.
I've often thought, a tiny house would be fine, if I had giant barn to go with it!
When I'm building with dimensional lumber of questionable strength I test it with my body weight, either hanging from it or standing on it, and sometimes for good measure, I bounce up and down.
This tends to lead to overbuilding, since most structural members don't need to support 280 plus pounds of weight.
For your purposes, two 5 gallon buckets of water will weigh more than 80 lbs., so maybe hang them from your timber and bounce them up and down?
This is a great thread, building with pallets is very economical.
I totally get spending time on the technique and design of a building in order build well without spending money.
Since you have "free" long timbers and pallet wood you could build trusses from pallet wood and timber, to vastly increase the strength of your roof.
A simpler solution is to use a massive number of timber rafters, like one at every foot.
Same goes for the purlins, with a supply of pallets you can afford as many you want, at whatever spacing.
It would of course add weight along with strength,but your load bearing walls are arguable the cheapest and easiest part of your build.
Speaking of walls, for sheathing I encourage you to staple pallet deck boards to your framing, diagonally.
Put over your vapor barrier and the it could be bracing and furring for the rain screen.
Finish up with board and batten siding made from the same pallet deck board.
It just occurred to me that something like workshop heater that Peter built could be used in this situation.
The bell of this heater was three(?) steel barrels stacked one atop the other.
I think the firebox was near the top of the first one, but you could put it up higher in the bell.
This should save a lot of money on materials compared to bricks or cement blocks.
To ease construction, you could start by opening up a hole on the floor where you want the heater to be, making it large enough to work in.
When you are done with construction, the area around the stove can be reconstructed with fire proof materials like steel studs,cement boards, and tile,
Anne, I am bindweed curious but so far, I haven't eaten it.
The thread linked to in my signature explores the possibilities, but doesn't give clear answers.
There is more than one kind of bindweed, and the edible kind isn't even widely eaten as far as I can tell.
Linking to the thread is my way of drawing interest and expertise.
I have read that some homesteaders feed bindweed to their rabbits.
Because of this, I've tried to establish it indoors as a fodder plant, with no luck so far.
I throw both poke and bindweed in with my chickens.
They don't eat them but they do shred them.
I don't know what could replace bindweed, it competes with everything else in my land scape, including itself.
Sweet potatoe vines maybe?
Poke pops up anywhere a bird might poop.
It is edible when handled properly, but I don't think its worth the time it takes to process.
Comfrey, rhubarb, fennel or burdock all seem like they could take the place of poke.
I have found "soil" to be over rated in any bed.
I usually use raised beds, as my land tends to be full of rocks, but even where I do plant in ground, I want the soil around the plant to be compost like.
I say all this because I think the mound form is over rated.
Rather than struggling to keep soil on the surface of a mound, we can put the same ingredients into a raised bed, or in the ground.
A raised bed does mean some extra materials are needed, but nothing fancy.
You can even use the stony clay soil to make the sides of a raised bed.
Once the contents of the bed compost into rich soil, we can remove the sides and a steep sided mound will remain, held together with plant roots and mycelium.
There may be a benefit to building sloping soil mounds that I'm not seeing.
As it stands I'm totally jealous of all the good composting material yall have, and I would be content with beds filled with this and little else.
I think you can have your firebox or jtube at ground level and have a bell in the basement.
The bell could be built from the basement up through the ground floor.
The j tube or batch box would be supported inside the bell with angle iron.
Rocket exhaust would fall all the way to the basement as it cooled.
For exhaust, run a system sized flue inside the bell from near the basement floor up and out of the top of the bell.
A tee right before it existed the top of the bell would be a good way to add a bypass, for easier start up.
I wouldn't want any bed that was wider than 4' , matter the height, 2' if I could only reach it from one side.
I wouldn't want to step on the bed either.
I have had better luck with sunken hugels and raised beds with wood in the bottom than I have hugel mounds.
As to filling the ditches with woodchips, I've recently participated in building a new garden bed that was wide ditch, filled with aged woodchips and crowned with topsoil.
The design seemed to ignore the warnings against burying woodchips, but the fellow in charge is a professional nursery man.
