Alex Howell

As I'm reading more about potential gick in cardboard, this idea of using it as a heat source is certainly sounding more appealing to me... The next question is what to use as sheet mulch instead 😅

Nancy Reading wrote:
Menstruation (not really an option for those of a male persuasion, children or older women)

I wonder if the medievil practice of phlebotomy and bloodletting could make a comeback as a means of ridding yourself of PFAS, haha.

I would be interested to know if people who frequently donate blood have lower levels present in their blood

Congratulations on passing the 2 million mark!

Just wanted to chime in here to say that google definitely does like permies because forums tend to perfectly fit searcher intent (someone has generally asked the exact same niche question in the past). I myself found the site when searching for information about naturally sealing ponds...

That being said, there is also an enormous wave of bot traffic on almost all websites coming from Lanzhou, China (the company I work for is also experiencing this). It all comes from data-centers scraping data to train AI, the average session lasts less than a second and puts almost no strain on the website server... they can get around cloud-flare checks, but generally wont bother logging in or creating accounts, so traffic will be focused on pages which can be accessed without login.

As you showed though, there is an uptick in sign-ups and posts, so the forums are definitely getting more popular! Just wanted to mention that the China traffic is, as you suspected, potentially not as exciting as one might initially think... Although maybe we'll generate a super permie AI that will go rouge and reshape the world someday!

Neat idea! I've always thought these Makita wheelbarrows with the hydraulic dumpers look like a great back saver too. A bit overkill for gardening, but definitely a lifesaver if you're doing construction work.

Laume Fae wrote:Damn it I'm a bit too old, who want's a milenial thread ?Looking for friends

Hey, there was a millennial permies thread some years back. I'm sure you could drop a post there and revive it!

Link: https://permies.com/t/101996/Millennial-Permies#840895

I had similar issues with adding photos (on firefox mobile browser).

Switched browsers to chrome and had no problems, so if you still can't upload in desktop mode then I suggest trying another browser!

Fox James wrote:Well it is a small world, I bet you are glad you left that horrible place…should have moved to Guernsey   ha ha!

Guernsey wasn't quite far enough from Jersey for me, so I decided to move to Japan instead, hahaha

Fox James wrote:Peters latest Shorty core is relatively easy to build and is much more forgiving about re loading to produce radiants heat all day long. A lot depends on how well your house is insulated and how much wood you have to burn?

Firewood is expensive here, so not a lot. And the house is currently very drafty (working on that part of it), which is why I was hoping to get a good amount of mass... That being said, I would also like to feel warm sometime in the near future, so a small setup for the coldest rooms might be the way to go for the immediate future (as long as I can figure out where to route a flue...)

Rico Loma wrote: One idea I want to toss out is maybe the smallest heater. Benjamin documented his  work here, Cottage rocket, first time build.  It is compact yet has a slight mass, please look.  If bolted to a wall it could handle an earthquake better than an all masonry build, I presume?

Will definitely take a look into this! Regarding bolting things onto walls, the main issue with earthquakes isn't the stove falling over, it's the stove acting as an anchor and preventing free movement/flexing during the shaking (these old timber houses are supposed to move with the quakes, not resist them). It's not really something you think about unless you live in earthquake prone countries, so it's been a big learning curve for me!

Coydon Wallham wrote: I wonder if the obstacles leading you to abandon a sunken design here are insurmountable? If you are going to have a massive object, surely having it constructed roughly two feet shorter (half height?) would make it far less subject to damage from seismic activity? As for your mention of using rock wool for insulation/fill to seal edges between mass and floor, Morgan Superwool would be beneficial there if you have access to it or something similar- regular rock wool has hazardous properties in normal handling which Superwool does not, as long as it is kept below furnace temperatures.

There are a few issues with the sunken idea (albeit aesthetically preferable) which are currently turning me off the idea. It really depends on how sunken we are talking about, but in a 1-2 foot step-down scenario the biggest risk is the trapped heat zones becoming a pyrolysis risk to the surrounding bearer posts/joists, and that the close the slab is to ground level, the more we have to start accounting for condensation... Building it directly on the ground might seem like it would be seismically safer, but there's a real risk of soil liquefaction during quakes, if the heater moves and the house doesn't, or visa versa, then you're suddenly ramming a large mass into the foundations of the building... It's all a bit messy.

Will definitely take a look at superwool, thanks!

Hi James, Pleasantly surprised to hear from another channel islander! (I was born & raised in Jersey)

Fox James wrote:
Also there are other options that might help you build a lightweight stove with less mass, maybe not exactly what you planed but still a super efficient stove that can be placed in you home without massive foundation work.

Did you have any potential recommendations here? I'm making sure to consider all my options before I make any costly mistakes.

Hey Everyone, thanks again for your interest and your comments.

I decided to veer away from pebble mass entirely for the reasons you mentioned above + I ran some seismic simulations and pebble mass fared much worse due to all the individual pebbles having their own inertia, which resulted in a lot of stress on the frame/anything it was attached to... In general it seems to be a bad idea in an earthquake prone country (unless you're bringing it around as an outdoor promotional item at fairs, etc.)

Since my last post I have decided that sinking it into the crawl space is  a bit of a recipe for disaster (Soil moisture migration and restricting crawlspace airflow are just a couple of concerns here), so my next steps really are deciding what work needs to be done to make everything earthquake/fire safe for the standard above floor setup.

I'm estimating that is would weigh about 3.5–5 metric tonnes over about 4-6 meters squared, so I'm thinking that it would be best to seismically isolate the heater from the house.New piers or short strip footings, build a new platform concrete rebar slab on top, with an isolation gap between the slab and the house frame (Maybe 10–15 mm filled with rock wool). Other than that, keeping the bench low and spreading the surface area as wide as possible is logical.

The seismic logistics are turning into a bit of a mammoth task, so I'm currently thinking I may build a test unit in my barn as there are solid concrete floors there and I could pipe the flue directly out of the wall. Would give me a much more holistic idea of what I'm dealing with and work out any potential kinks during this initial testing stage, then if necessary calling in someone to help with the foundation work if it feels out of my depth.

Will continue to update this thread as things progress.