Joshua Myrvaagnes

It's a beautiful pace, and it is anthroposophist, not theosophist.  There were issues with the theosophical movement that anthroposophy would not want to be tarred with.  

S Tonin wrote:I don't know if it's still there, but in the early oughts I visited a place somewhere in upstate NY (right along the Hudson, you could see the lights of NYC from the hill the place sat on, I think it was close to the Tappan Zee Bridge) that was a mixed-age intentional community whose central focus was eldercare.  Unfortunately I don't remember a lot of details or even the name of the place (I met a guy on the internet and went to meet him; I was only there 3 days/ 2 nights), and Google isn't helping me either.  I think it was super expensive and catered mostly to rich Manhattanites, but the place itself was a working farm that grew most of the food for the community.  They were just getting back to using horsepower for some tasks, like pulling the wagon that held all the tomato plants going in the field.  It was really cool to participate in planting, 20-30 people of mixed ages all working together to get the tomatoes in the field.  They did group meals, too, and I remember dinner being compulsory for everyone except the staff on kitchen/ dining room duty that day.  

I'm pretty sure the place had been established in the 70s, at least as a nursing home, though it may have been an intentional community for longer.  It was Theosophist, and they were kind of strict about what the community members were allowed to do.  The atmosphere was a little too restrictive and too cult-like for me (and I'm no wild child or anything, it just wasn't my scene), but I really loved the idea of it.  Everyone there seemed pretty content, and not like Manson-family blissed-out--truly satisfied with their existence in that place and time.  I think they had like 150 elderly residents, I don't know how many staff.  They did have some kids there, though not many, and I think there was a Montessori school nearby or they homeschooled the kids in that manner.  I remember the staff stayed in houses on the property (the one I stayed in was a 19th century farmhouse, I think 4 or 5 people lived there) and the elderly residents were in different buildings, so it wasn't a truly integrated community.

I know all that isn't much help, but I just wanted to add my (very limited) experience.  If your googling is better than mine, maybe you can find more info on the place (if it still exists).  Seems like it would be a cool place to live/ work for a while to gain experience.

Edit: I was wrong about some of the details (hey, it was almost 20 years ago), but I found the place-- The Fellowship Community in Chestnut Hill, NY.  

Seeking deep green permie(s) for carrying on the work here:

—rmh that still needs some more cob on the drum to really sing
— willow feeder buckets in process, and willow. (not the whole willow feeder setup just yet, unfortunately, just a large store of semi aged willow food in the barn)
— soil building with fowl for 4 years
— a few nut trees, sadly not from seed, but that was attempted also, and some black walnuts from seed, mulberries, legacy apples, wild apples, some stone fruit. Two honey locust from John Hershey line, by way of the river Chestnut Farm
— one properly built hugelbed , and a bunch more that are easier soil to grow in, hauled in from a landscaper‘s jobs. the properly angled one has issues—soil is so sandy it will take a long time for it to function, maybe a few more years? and I didn’t know about the magic basketball of garden soil going in the middle of it… has drip irrigation barrel in place.
— multiple portable bird hutches, electric, fencing, perimeter fence
— Solar hot water heater
— on a major numbered route, perfect site for a farm stand. Space to build on a second parcel, and by right two more dwelling could be built for a total of 4. In addition if it were up to me, and no building code could get in my way, I would build a wofati there. if I stayed here longer, that’s exactly what I would do, and keep it small enough to be within the code definition of a shed, making an “animal shelter“
— well is OK, there’s also deeded access to a spring across another nearby numbered highway, and there’s another Spring nearby that you can fill up large container containers from
— up-and-coming community, that is to say, this town is really hitting bottom hard. The long range plan may have some Permaculture and resilience measures in it, if it ever comes out I’ll update.
— local Strong Towns conversation, one of only about five towns or cities in the state to have one
— a lot of people care a lot about this town, even if some of the ideas of how to make it better might be going backwards, and  the building regulations (irc) are real barrier
— land is unfortunately very flat, and extremely extremely extremely sandy.
— road noises considerable, recommend putting up a berm on the south field or something and live there.
— sunchokes established, but you should know that even sunchokes struggle to grow in this soil.
— rainwater catchment, barrels, and gutters,
— big barn and below-grade barn basement
— House can hold four people for sure, and up to 608 hippies
— seeds Of Solidarity and the Farm School are nearby
— maker space within walking distance; sort of bikeable
— more than happy to pass on all of my notes from my many, many mistakes I’ve made here on the land—and boy do I have a genius for making mistakes.
-- I really want this land to go to someone who will be a good steward of it, and will use and value the RMH
--$460,200 zestimate; 3 br, 2 bath, 2.25 acres on north and 2.25 on south side of highway, an alfalfa field, woods owned by the rail. turkeys and coyotes common.
--will try to finance but I don't know if I'll be able to afford this.
I'm putting out feelers now, will want to build trust to know for sure.  Thanks.

If there's interest Emily of Biolithic Builds could be persuaded to give a workshop again.  There's a farm near here that may build one for their greenhouse.  If she can get compensated enough to make it work financially Emily coulld lead that.  If not I could do a decent job, the book is really all you need (Erica and Ernie Wisner, The Rocket Mass HeaterBuilder's Guide). But it's more fun to learn in a group.  You can search for Biolithic Builds and reach out to her.

I would love to have a podcast about integrating, hot water, cooking, and heating people/Plumbing

Here is my hack that I figured out: my friend has a J-tube rocket mass heater, and this winter I have been cooking on top of the wood feed! Yes, that’s right, instead of putting a brick on top of the wood feed, I put a big old cast-iron skillet for greens or a pot with squash in it or a pot of buckwheat.

It takes a while to get warm enough, and I would not try and cook a pot of stew this way, for that I would take the extra thermal battery off the top of the main barrel.  But for every day use and reheating, you can use it just fine.

Why this works is that the coals radiate a certain amount of heat, even if the flames are being drawn, laterally and up the riser.  

This is one way of integrating cooking with a rocket mass heater, even if you’ve got some kind of Cob hat situation on top of your barrel, or a supplemental thermal battery (eg a feeding trough of water with a lid)

A downside of this is that sometimes vapor from the skillet is getting sucked into the fire, which probably decreases the efficiency of the burn somewhat. But if the pot is tall enough, then this does not seem to happen. And for sautéing there is less moisture involved then for cooking a pot of grain.

If other people experiment with this or have thoughts, I would be interested to hear them!

For hot water, I think Solar is still worth discussing, although I know there are reasons that it’s not so great in cold climate, and my super-professional, pricey, German-overengineering system is truly a pain in the butt

This podcast really saved my butt this winter, the long Arctic cold spell had me burning way more wood than I had stored up, plus my backup backup wood was buried under an unusual amount of snow.  I’ve been foraging for Wood and have not had to buy any (except I did buy a few sticks from a local farmer to support that farm, and they tried to refuse the money. I had been planning to buy some from someone nearby, but he said he kiln dries, and I am doing this so I can use less grid energy so it would defeat the entire purpose. I decided I’ll just forage, and it’s working.  Drying wood upright with a very small fan is working extremely well!! Thank you!!

Thanks, this gives me some good information.

The bucket of water on top is propped up on bricks around its circumference, mimicking the Cob hat, i’m not sure if I had mentioned that.

I’m going to thicken the Cob that surrounds the second barrel for sure, cob higher on the first barrel, and also ask the person who helped build it how much space was between the riser and the barrel. I think it may have been more than 3 inches, and I think it would actually be worth it to concentrate the heat more in the center of that barrel, so that it would be really directed at the tub of water to be heated rather than radiating into the room.

Another issue is that the Cob hat is way up in the air—not where people are. I put a metal bonnet on top of that to reflect heat down again, but it’s not very ideal.  It doesn’t feel like it’s radiating a lot of heat when the fire is out, but I suppose that that’s not so easy to feel unless you’re right up near it.

The burn tunnel is 33 inches long, I believe, one extra length of brick. I’m understanding you’re saying that that is a serious problem, yes? Do you know why that creates more ash instead of Heat?  

One obstacle to changing that is that the size of the barrel is 65 gallon rather than 55, and there’s not very much space between the firebox edge, and the edge of that barrel currently. Almost none. Certainly not 9 inches. And I thought we had solved the problem of the extra burn tunnel by making the riser taller…?

Another thing I’ve discovered is that I can cook or reheat a pot on top of the firebox, as long as I don’t let it boil over, the firebox radiates a lot of heat upward. Even though the draw down is very powerful.  My pot got up to a boil, reheating some starch.  This is helpful because I have sacrificed to the top of the barrel to just heat that big tub of water.  My friend still has a way to make a pot of buckwheat for dinner without needing to use electricity.

Another factor I just realized I should mention, this is the sunroom, it gets really good Solar gain in the daytime, but has terrible shades at night. Some of them are r2 beehive, shades, and some are just a thin rough-weave cloth, which hopefully traps a little bit of air between the glass and the curtain.

Yesterday, when it was about zero Fahrenheit outside, which is not the coldest it ever gets here, it felt like the cold was reaching fingers into the room. I was sitting right next to the rocket mask heater after the fire had gone out, and I was wearing my coat. I made another fire and then I felt better.

At sometimes when I have measured the temperature of the chimney as it’s exhausting, it has been about 160°. I’m wondering if all the Heat is getting radiated into the room from the barrel, and it would actually be good to put Cob up higher around the bottom of the barrel?

Please forgive the weird capitalization of words, I am using dictate to type this. Thanks so much for your help.

Thanks for your reply, Glenn, I wrote back and I messed up the thing to indicate that I was quoting your post. I put my answers with a DASH (—) before it.

Joshua Myrvaagnes wrote:Some information we need to assess the situation would be the size and character of the house, its age, insulation, weathertightness, a description of the chimney...

What exactly do you mean by a baffle?


—I put a piece of aluminum food container, the disposable kind, up the chimney so that it blocked maybe half of the airflow. It didn’t seem to do much of anything to the draw when I operated the rocket mass heater after that.

How close to the floor of the final bell barrel is the exhaust to the chimney?

—The second bell is between the normal rocket mass barrel and the Mass. The exit of the stratification chamber is about 3 inches from the floor, I would guess, whatever height the pipe that goes through the mass starts at (as it gradually rises through the mass)

How tightly do you cover the J-tube feed between fires?


—I use two jumbo bricks, it seals pretty well, there are some gaps between bricks that I have filled in with a bit of Cob. it is not as good as seal as the metal prefab thing from the liberator though.


Do you have natural draft when the heater is cold?

—If it’s cold, as in cold-start cold, I don’t know, I would say maybe slightly. If it’s as in “cold in the morning,” there’s definitely a draw, I noticrd the difference when I was away for a few days and had to do a cold start, it was really hard to get it going. in fact, I removed my rudimentary baffle at that point, because I was worried that there was something seriously wrong, and I haven’t put that baffle back in again.


How strong is the draft when it is operating?

—I would say it is very strong, I don’t have much point of comparison, but it’s at least the same as the liberator was. Strong enough that it’s pretty easy to start the rocket mass heater. that aspect of this is way easier to use than liberator was.

As long as the main floor is not leaky (letting cold air percolate directly up), I think the underfloor insulation is not the main issue (but good to get it fully insulated).

—I’m doing the best I can. It’s a funky situation down there, lots of pipes and things to get in your way.  They’re definitely isn’t any leak, but it’s a tile floor, so it was kind of taking upon itself to radiate heat down into the basement, and I decided to put tinfoil under it as well as the insulation stuff.


A 6" duct in the mass would possibly be too quick of a reduction from 8", though the extra large barrel(s) above the riser may shed enough heat to make that not a problem. My experience with a 6" stovepipe and chimney from the bell of an 8" J-tube is good, but that has all the heat extraction in the zero-friction bell.

—Thanks for that information. So I think you’re saying that it should be OK, as long as a lot of heat gets shed before it goes into the Mass, right? And now I hope it is clear that there are two opportunities for Heat to be shed, the initial barrel, which is 1 1/2 barrels, and the second barrel that is a stratification chamber.  

My question is still if I should put the baffle back in and make it even more baffling. Claude the AI said to put 5 1-inch diameter holes in a circle of metal, which would be a pretty extreme baffle. Was Claude hallucinating?


A few other points, I have almost finished, coughing around the stratification chamber, but not completely.

I have put a “Cob hat“ on top of the first barrel, by which I really mean a gigantic aluminum animal feed tub filled with water. I haven’t measured its temperature, but it definitely has not gotten up to boiling. Which leads me to think that the top of the riser is not close enough to the barrel, to really shed the kind of heat you want to shed in this situation, and that would be a better optimization. I also have a metal tub on top of the second stratification chamber, and that one is about the right temperature for fermenting animal feed, which is nice, but I also wish that it got too hot, that would be a nice problem to have, which I could solve by putting another layer of bricks between that stratification chamber and the feed fermenting tub. These tubs can hold maybe 30 gallons of water.

Thanks so much for your help, I really appreciate it!

Some information we need to assess the situation would be the size and character of the house, its age, insulation, weathertightness, a description of the chimney...

What exactly do you mean by a baffle?


—I put a piece of aluminum food container, the disposable kind, up the chimney so that it blocked maybe half of the airflow. It didn’t seem to do much of anything to the draw when I operated the rocket mass heater after that.

How close to the floor of the final bell barrel is the exhaust to the chimney?

—The second bell is between the normal rocket mass barrel and the Mass. The exit of the stratification chamber is about 3 inches from the floor, I would guess, whatever height the pipe that goes through the mass starts at (as it gradually rises through the mass)

How tightly do you cover the J-tube feed between fires?


—I use two jumbo bricks, it seals pretty well, there are some gaps between bricks that I have filled in with a bit of Cob. it is not as good as seal as the metal prefab thing from the liberator though.


Do you have natural draft when the heater is cold?

—If it’s cold, as in cold-start cold, I don’t know, I would say maybe slightly. If it’s as in “cold in the morning,” there’s definitely a draw, I noticrd the difference when I was away for a few days and had to do a cold start, it was really hard to get it going. in fact, I removed my rudimentary baffle at that point, because I was worried that there was something seriously wrong, and I haven’t put that baffle back in again.


How strong is the draft when it is operating?

—I would say it is very strong, I don’t have much point of comparison, but it’s at least the same as the liberator was. Strong enough that it’s pretty easy to start the rocket mass heater. that aspect of this is way easier to use than liberator was.

As long as the main floor is not leaky (letting cold air percolate directly up), I think the underfloor insulation is not the main issue (but good to get it fully insulated).

—I’m doing the best I can. It’s a funky situation down there, lots of pipes and things to get in your way.  They’re definitely isn’t any leak, but it’s a tile floor, so it was kind of taking upon itself to radiate heat down into the basement, and I decided to put tinfoil under it as well as the insulation stuff.


A 6" duct in the mass would possibly be too quick of a reduction from 8", though the extra large barrel(s) above the riser may shed enough heat to make that not a problem. My experience with a 6" stovepipe and chimney from the bell of an 8" J-tube is good, but that has all the heat extraction in the zero-friction bell.

—Thanks for that information. So I think you’re saying that it should be OK, as long as a lot of heat gets shed before it goes into the Mass, right? And now I hope it is clear that there are two opportunities for Heat to be shed, the initial barrel, which is 1 1/2 barrels, and the second barrel that is a stratification chamber.  

My question is still if I should put the baffle back in and make it even more baffling. Claude the AI said to put 5 1-inch diameter holes in a circle of metal, which would be a pretty extreme baffle. Was Claude hallucinating?


A few other points, I have almost finished, coughing around the stratification chamber, but not completely.

I have put a “Cob hat“ on top of the first barrel, by which I really mean a gigantic aluminum animal feed tub filled with water. I haven’t measured its temperature, but it definitely has not gotten up to boiling. Which leads me to think that the top of the riser is not close enough to the barrel, to really shed the kind of heat you want to shed in this situation, and that would be a better optimization. I also have a metal tub on top of the second stratification chamber, and that one is about the right temperature for fermenting animal feed, which is nice, but I also wish that it got too hot, that would be a nice problem to have, which I could solve by putting another layer of bricks between that stratification chamber and the feed fermenting tub. These tubs can hold maybe 30 gallons of water.

Thanks so much for your help, I really appreciate it!

Two more wrinkles –

– The riser is more like 40 inches instead of 36. The burn tunnel was made too long, by mistake, so the builder compensated.

And then the barrel is more than 2 inches above the top of the riser, whereas Erica and Ernie’s book recommends 2 inches. That would seem to mean more turbulence and less heat transfer from the top of that barrel, so potentially more Heat would go into the stratification chamber? And then more out the chimney than we want?  The uninsulated part of the exit chimney feels like maybe 200°. The meat thermometer gives a reading up 130 Fahrenheit(but that’s not necessarily super accurate.)