Phil Stevens

This is one of my faves from Studio Ghibli. I lost count of the number of times I watched it with my kids.

Glenn Herbert wrote:Steel barrels over the riser do not wear out in less than decades of normal use. Thomas Rubino is in an extreme climate and building situation where the RMHs had to burn almost all day every day, and his barrels did not wear out; one was retired because the RMH design was changed, and the other is still going strong as far as I know.

I think the bit about running continuously is an important factor. I just replaced the piped mass on my 4" J-tube with a half barrel (cut lengthwise) covered in cob. It needed to happen, because the flue in the mass was getting clogged with ash that I couldn't reach from the cleanout points, and as I took it apart I discovered that the thin galvanised steel flue pipe itself was deteriorating badly and the rust flakes were contributing to the blockage. The postmortem suggests that the way I run this RMH is probably part of the issue: I only burn on cold nights in winter for the most part, and sometimes there will be a week or more between fires. Also, the fires tend to be short duration, 3-4 hours typically, so the mass never got fully warm and that led to lots of condensation in the pipe. That's a recipe for corrosion and I saw the results...but I did get eight or nine years of service before failure and teardown.

Now, I'm hoping that the stratification chamber as a replacement for piped mass will alleviate this problem, but the underlying factors won't change. I will still be burning sporadically through the cold season, so there will still be plenty of opportunity for moisture to condense on the inside of the bell and start rusting it out. I'll keep an eye on this, using a USB endoscope and the inspection/cleanout hatch I put in the side of the bench. Maybe i will get twenty years out of this setup before the drum collapses.

So the rule of thumb for RMH construction is still valid: Mild steel anywhere but the initial drum location over the heat riser is at risk, either from spalling and destruction by high temperatures, or downstream from condensation and rust.

Another data point: Sometimes, if I go back to an earlier page in a long and image-heavy thread like this one, not all the images load. If I do a hard refresh (Ctrl + F5) in the browser, they usually come back. I haven't run across the issue often enough to do a more detailed analysis, but I'm assuming that it is related to the browser's local cache.

Well, anecdotally speaking, I know a guy who has put bits of plastic in two different J-tubes. He always waits until they're up to operating temperature and rocketing along nicely, and then he'll drop in a few bits of plastic alongside the wood that's burning. He goes for a low ratio of plastic to wood, always keeps an eye on the exhaust for any visible smoke (none), and occasionally walks downwind to see if he can detect any "off" smells (again, none). He's done this with polyethylene, polystyrene, nylon, polyester, PET, milk jugs, sandwich bags, bale twine, and broken garden hose. The only thing that was ever left behind was fibreglass reinforcement that was embedded in a plastic coated tarp that was used as an outdoor billboard (great source of cheap tarps if you need to cover stuff).

This same guy also has a downdraft gasifier modification in his indoor wood fire, and has been known to throw the odd plastic bag or scrap in there when it's burning nice and hot. Either way, RMH or home fire, he's getting heat value out of a waste product.

As long as we stay away from chlorinated plastics and are certain that the combustion is clean and complete, this is a low-risk activity. However, there is a considerably chunk of the general population, and (probably more importantly) official departments of Sad Making, that would be aghast that anyone would contemplate doing this. So I tend to talk about it in hypothetical terms most of the time.

Compared to what passes for recycling in most places nowadays, which usually looks like either a short trip to landfill or bulk cargo carriers going to the global South where it gets burned in piles or washed into the ocean, this seems like one of the least bad options. It also means you don't have to rinse out the last bit of yogurt, bacon juice, or Sriracha sauce.

Esteban Ademovski wrote:Yeah, I’ve been harvesting fresh material for the posts and support pieces with coppicing in mind, and reusing the older junkpoles as pickets to fill in the panels wherever I can.

And yeah, you’re right — I must’ve harvested hundreds of trees by now. 😂 It’s definitely made me look at the woodland a little differently. I’ve gotten more mindful of what I’m cutting and what I’m leaving behind, trying to work with the regrowth and keep things healthy for the next round instead of just taking whatever I can get.

It looks like what's being harvested are the local conifers: Doug fir and Ponderosa pine, correct? Neither of these species are coppice friendly, because when you cut them down that's pretty much the end of the tree. So if you want to plan for a supply of pole wood, then I would suggest planting fast-growing coppice-ready varieties like willow, poplar, hazelnut, and similar trees. This could become an output of the willows that are fed by the willow feeders, for starters.

We're having a wet start to spring (typical) after a dry winter (unusual). And now with the equinox upon us, we have a cold snap on the way and are expecting frost tomorrow night. Glad I haven't planted out anything tender yet. I've got the fire going and some corn and lime simmering for a pot of posole.

There's a company here in Aotearoa that turns soft plastics into fence posts. Thanks to them our local council has started collecting this material again. The quality is good, with close to zero leaching and excellent durability. No heavy metals leaching into the soil like the industry standard tanalised posts.

Future Post website

These engines go great in vans. I recently got an off-lease 2018 Caddy Maxi cargo van with the 2.0 L TDI and 6-speed dual wet clutch gearbox. It's got heaps of torque and is surprisingly quick off the line...not a lot of turbo lag. I towed a tandem axle lowboy trailer to collect a piece of equipment and it drove like there was nothing behind it on the highway. I can stack eight pallets in the back and have room for sacks of feed and tools. All this and if I keep to a top speed of 90 km/h I get 5.4 L / 100 km (43 mpg) lightly loaded. So it's about as good as I'm going to get for a 2.5 cube 3/4 ton payload van in the world of fossil fuels (which I am hoping to check out of again soon, but didn't have the budget to do it on this round).

However, given the amount of technology that is knitted into the drivetrain, I expect that if I want to keep it reliable and on the road I will have to shell out for the premium service and not even think about going the shade tree route like I used to do with vehicles back in the day.

I really like substituting halloumi in my saag paneer because it's got a more intense flavour. Salty and tangy with the extra umami from frying. Oh yeah.