Charles Schiavone

things have been on hold for a bit here
most likely this year I'll be back out and working on the kiln
I will most certainly keep y'all updated
c

it's better to let us know ahead of time as we are often occupied with stuff and hard to find.
it's as easy as a quick email

charles@trilliumcenter.org

we know a few of the folks on the food council.
the seeds of what will be

I am.
if you are interested in who "I" is, check out trilliumcenter.org/blog
we're teaching about herbalism, wilderness awareness, sustainable building, simplicity, intentionality, all manner of garbage now and again.
if nothing else, come by and meet the goats.
can't get much closer than Conneaut really. I mean, you could but not by much.
I've got a few posts on rocket stoves and cob on this forum as well
c

I am pleased to announce that THAT DRAGON HAS ROARED!!! or whatever. The rocket stove in the barn seems to function adequately after only a few hours yesterday and most of today. Actually it was working pretty well after about the first hour today. Maybe the first few hours. I did try pointing a fan into the feed tube. Pretty much the exact fan in the picture above. If the fan helped, I would have to say that it helped push the excess smoke out of the metal can and further into the room more quickly than the drafts would have on their own. So no fan. An hour of working in a smoky room was enough.

The thermal battery is still damp, so that will take some time to actually heat up, but the riser is dry. I figure that a dry and pre-warmed mass will automatically improve the draft. That will just take time.


The one alteration I did to the stove was to add a single brick to the feed tube. From the book I think.  This made the opening of the feed box 15 square inches smaller. This choke point popped the draft up enough to keep the stove going. Or so I thought. Before I put the last load of wood in for the evening, I pulled the additional brick out of the feed tube, to see if there was "excess" draft. I went from fully effective, smoke free roaring draft to a meager draw without the strength to pull the smoke down from wood that was only 3-5" long, well below the upper surface of the horizontal thru tunnel.

Tomorrow will see how it starts up after being open to the draft all night. I'm leaving it open so that the moisture can continue to vent. The metal can around the feed tube has a lid that is effectively air tight. I haven't get it figured yet. But I do know that being to at least slow the draft between firings will help hold the heat in the mass. With the amount of moisture still present in the feed tube I figured to just let it breathe.


This thing is just sucking down the wood now. Granted, I'm burning mostly hemlock lathe boards. But so what? It's working. It's not filling the room with smoke. For day 2, I'll take that as a win.

I looked into the TROUBLESHOOTING section of ROCKET MASS HEATERS by Ianto Evans and Leslie Jackson
Here is the direct quote from the end of the bit on " Stove smokes into the house"

"The first time you light your new stove, don't expect immediate success. Don't be downhearted if it smokes like crazy and it's hard to get a draw. With any new masonry stove which is still cold and wet when you first fire it, there will be an adjustment period. Use the primer, light it up with the driest, thinnest wood you have and be patient. It may take several hours for it to start burring really well."

in other words, I need to go eat smoke for a while and see if that does it.

yesterday I ran the chimney up through the roof and put the cap on.
The first lighting was a total smoke fest
if and only if the wood was less than 6" in length would they burn relatively smoke free.
otherwise the draft wasn't strong enough to pull the fire into the system
I have 18' of rise on the chimney and the smoke/steam barely oozes out
adding burning paper in the base of the chimney did create a nice draft, for only as long as it burned, once it went out, the draft fell back to not much

maybe it is because the mass is damp (as is the inside of the duct pipe in the floor)
maybe the steel can around the feed box is upsetting the draft requirements (as in riser should be 2x feed tube height)
I don't feel like it should matter though, with it's being so much larger than the feed tube opening

maybe the space between the top of the barrel is too far/close to the top of the riser
maybe the firebrick liner in the riser is just too cold/damp (after 6 months)



I'm pretty sure I'll have to dig it out of the ground
the main riser/barrel, not necessarily the feed tube/metal can

not today though

I think that it would be fair to say that every one of us who look at this forum were inexperienced at some point. I've been at this all for almost 8 years with 2 buildings and 4 rocket stoves to my credit and I am only just starting to scratch the surface of what is possible.

A big portion of this stuff comes down to you.
how much money do you have?
how much time do you have?
how strong is your back? knees?
Any building skills at all?
access to earth moving equipment or experience with same? (shovel to backhoe)
how much can you pick up 6000x in a day?
what grows around you? straw? Phragmites? timber? Hardwood or soft?
what is your soil like? gravel? sand? clay? rock?
are you in a city or un incorporated land?
how forward thinking is your zoning office?
many of these questions will answer what is possible.

I am youngish, and live in a wet place with lots of clay and Phrag and not so much straw.
New Mexico styled earthships don't work in Ohio all that well.
I'm fascinated with grass sticks and mud but hate how sandbags look
this limits what I'm going to look into and what I can produce from my own land
we have almost no rock here, none to build with anyway. Not like New England or the Rockies.

If I had more money than time, I could go to classes everywhere and when.
Instead I watch things fall to pieces at slower and slower rates as I solve my mistakes
you will to once you figure out what you like

google images or pintrest
tons of places to start

as for books, Iv'e found that you get 3 or 4 pages of useful material in all but the best books.
sometimes only 1
the rest is the same questions I just asked and a set of answers that the writer found important
Interlibrary loan is pretty awesome
read a few of them
look at pictures and most of all

get busy getting dirty!

the web link is brilliant
it would be great to go and hang out with them.
I'm not German, living in Europe or multi-lingual so accessing their treasure trove of knowledge won't happen easily.

but again, great link
they are actually doing it
which means this all should work

the images are my coop. the walls are 2 bundles thick, one on the inside and one out. They are bound to horizontal bars with a sort of book-binding stitch that we made up.
it's mostly ready for a few layers of earthen plaster.

making progress

if possible, you should secure the land owner's permission.
if you are gathering clay on public land, I would look into your local land use regulation through your state's Dept of Natural Resources
usually is the amounts are small enough, they don't care what your take of most things
a few bucks of clay won't make or break you
truck loads of clay get noticed

also, all waterways in the US are under the jurisdiction of the US Coast Guard not.
Even in Iowa.
Water is water to them
they are mostly concerned about runoff and pollutants getting into the bigger lakes rivers and oceans
maybe look to their regulations also
that is if you find success and want to exploit it.
digging a big hole on a river bank will push a lot of silt down stream so do think of who you are impacting with your explorations (fish clams frogs et al)