Benjamin Dinkel

Hey Fred.
I don’t think Fox is talking about the barrel. Barrels usually last quite a long time as they quickly shed the heat that’s coming in from the riser.
Smoke back can happen with any wood fired stove. But if you prime the riser and maybe even the chimney you won’t have that problem with a standard J-tube.
A way to close off the feed tube is having a tile or something ready to be put over the feed.
So if that’s what you want to build after reading up on all of the types, go for it!

As for the length of the firewood, the last one I built had a 35cm feed tube height. That would be enough to fit 30cm wood.

Hi Ankit,

I reach normal working temperature in about 15 mins.
For Pizza I heat up about 30 mins and then the oven is ready to go.

With the addition of the steel plate I get a crispy crust and browned cheese in about 4 mins per Pizza.
But I can't really tell you exact inside temperatures.

Nice job Judith. Those are some tasty looking tempeh logs.
Who do you make all that for?

Hi Hardik.
What do you mean by stone machinery?

If the old plaster is lime based and the mortar too I would be careful with using anything else.

Why not get rid of the loose parts, repair and repoint with lime mortar and finish everything off with lime plaster on the outside and maybe even clay plaster on the inside?!

Hi Austin.
Just to make sure I understand correctly. The inlet from the stove is higher than the bottom of the stratification chamber (bench)?
As far as I know all area/volume of the strat chamber that is above the outlet (chimney exit) counts.
Any area under that is just dead space. But no adverse effects to my knowledge either.

Hi Leonardo. And welcome to permies!
I’m sure you’ll get some answers soon.

Well, I can't guarantee anything. But try googling it, maybe it looks similar. How's the smell? Old basement (=mold) or something else?

Alexandra, tome it looks more like Kaam yeast than mold. Mold grows in spots (round colonies) most of the time, is thicker and hairier.
You can try to get rid of just the top layer, it often breaks apart and mixes in though. If it's what I often have in ferments it's harmless. Ruins the flavor though.

I agree Timothy. A good, hot compost pile (for example from humanure and kitchen scraps) will take care of smaller animal corpses.
I dig into the pile a bit and cover the corpse again afterwards. Everything disappears within weeks.
Jenkins also writes about that in the humanure handbook.
And my permaculture teacher talked about composting an entire goat.

The biggest difference I see is that the fire provides it's own method of "charging" the mass. It leads hot gases with some movement through the mass and has a lot of surface area to pass the heat energy on to the mass.
I don't see that when we're talking about a resistance heater. Unless we're talking a resistance and a fan, pushing hot air through the mass.

I'm not saying it's impossible. But it seems like no one here has tried it, which is what you were first asking for.
Please share your results once you have tested a system.