I can't remember where I picked this up. And here it goes. It may help the RMH spreading problem.
For doing a specific action three things are needed. It's sort of the fire triangle for actions.
1. The ability to do that thing (*)
2. The will to do that thing (**)
3. A trigger (***)
* : or the self understanding that they have the ability, etc.
** : or employ the ability, spend the resources, etc.
*** : a point (? in time and space?) at which the idea of doing the thing is raised, evaluated and selected for doing.
At it's simplest these are binary things, and can be forced. Think jump scares or tickling, or putting something burning hot on someone's hand to get them to (re)act.
At the more complicated realistic side 'convincing' is needed and all manner of brain rot and PR damage can be a hindrance.
Leading with the solution rather than the problem.
There are three basic problems coming up in short order.
1) Cost of current heating system / fuel / running out of money spent on food, etc.
2) It's already to late and I'm cold.
3) long term saving the world, CO2 , etc. etc.
Skip 3, Near and dear to our hearts, and not the point at the moment.
Skip 1, They have options ( they just don't know it yet )
Some Europeans putting in what looked to be a common area open air, rocket mass heater. A supper gilligan proof ( I know... ), BYOW, communal solution might go a very long way to showing a lot of people that warm asses warm cold people.
To cut the gordian knot of design / regulations / etc. Don't do it inside. It doesn't need a building permit if it's out in the back yard. Wrap a tent around it and call it a 'communal warming center'.
One possible template, a liberator on a custom non burnable skid with a bench or two of mass then enough structure to get the chimney up 10 + ft.
Rather than the push of 'this solves your problems' get it coming the other way to 'how do I get an ass heater closer to where I sleep? '
Ideas, not fully though out, and hope. It's some good work being done. At first slowly, and then all at once.
I have one of the originals packed away, it worked last I knew it was just a bit small for my needs.
I have no personal experiance with the current crop of products ( thought the website is being a bit... wonky for me ), I hear good things from a nomad I watch on youtube.
I'm a big fan of Bob Wells at the youtube channel CheapRVliving.
And they just posted : Cook in Your Car! 12 Volt Electric Oven Cooking in Any Vehicle! Cooking & Warming with NO Propane!
At the end he messed up the units a bit. The cooking probably took about 250 watt hours, or 22 amp hours on a 12vdc system. That'd be a lot of hurt on a lead acid system. On a LiFePo, system i'd probably be fine. Extra fine if you can do it while the sun is out on a few 100 watt pannels.
Bob also mentioned 'wrapping it up' e.g. like a hot box / hay box cooker.
The given solution depends on situation and budget both in the longer and shorter term.
A $50 cooker that ends up eating $200 batteries every year or two due to deep discharge... not the best plan in the long term, and sometimes you need to do what you need to do.
Or - my brain wants to say I remember reading something years ago about some sort of cooling system using ammonia that caused a chemical reaction with SOMETHING that made things chill or freeze. Any thoughts?
There is an Einstein Refrigerator. Want cold? Just add heat.... (cough) rocket mass heater... (cough,cough), or maybe a solar thermal collector.
At one of the higher money thresholds, I'd say a version for people who use metric measures.
Maybe a second level for plans adapted to a EU, or Chinese market.
Get wheaten labs one of them fancy combustion gas measuring thingies
Get wheaton labs one of them fancy thermal imaging cameras.
rewards :
Stickers / plaques / art for backers RMHs, or RMH dreams.
"I ❤️ RMH"
"Windfall for heating!"
RMH top safe mugs / tea / coffee sets or drinks.
Possibly a set of trivet that are RMH barrel top safe, and keep stuff on top at _less_ than a raging boil.
I'm enamored with the idea of a RMH samovar.
a 20 minute egg timer, so that I can figure out when to go check on the heater.
a 20 pack of 'just light this thing' eazy rocket mass heater starters like the compressed wood logs that go in some fireplaces ( something more non ick though ).
I've had about... a dozen instant pots. I like them a lot, and tend to give them away.
I'm not familiar with the 'burned pot' message.
When i'm using the Saute seeting it'll sometimes say 'BURN' or something like that when it's getting to hot or it things I've done something wrong.
The stainless steel really more like 'less staining that raw iron'-steel.
A bit of water and steam in the pot for cleaning probably wont hurt. Heck, try pressure canning it for 1 minute. I'd stay away from soaps as they might cause bubbles and cause venting issues. Maybe some white vinegar.
If there's a real Truckstop around where you live, go take a visit over in the Trucker parts area. There's always interesting 12 volt stuff there.
12V DC cooking is going to be a bit rough as the standard plugs can only pull 100-200 Watts safely.
Hot water is sorta like one step of cooking, a 12V DC heating element for a hot water heater would be useful. There are on demand or not 12V DC kits for that.
There are apparently some DIY sous vide rigs for the googling.
I have a 12V DC LiFePo bank ( they are getting much more reasonable now a-days , and don't off gas when charging so they prefer to be in the house rather than in a vented compartment out in the cold. I use it and an inverter to run an instant pot and a rice cooker, today I ran them at the same time... it was lovely.
Price wise, converting 12V to 120Vac ( always get sine wave inverters, it's just for the best ) is getting cheaper and cheaper.
To Long Didn't Read; flights seem to be about 1/2 as fuel => CO2 usage as driving a standard gas car.
Rhiannon Drake wrote:
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Paul wonders if flying is not better than driving; he has seen a statistic of 5 gallons jet fuel per passenger on a flight, vs an estimated 150 gallons gasoline for driving a similar distance. He thinks better data is needed about carbon emissions from various modes of transport.
If you’re going anyway, the jet plane might not be as much as you think.
CO2 emissions from a gallon of gasoline : 8887 grams / gallon
CO2 emissions from a gallon of diesel : 10180 grams / gallon
I recently drove across the US and racked up ~2050 ish miles at about 23.4 MPG, or about 88 Gallons of Gas. Or about 777 Kilos of CO2, not the greatest i'll admit.
I also recently flew across the US and racked up... 1800 miles or so, going to and from the same locations. ( with two layovers... ) The flights were on older yet full of passengers and they claim an equivalent MPG of ~ 60 ish. so.... about 30 gallons of fuel, and about 305 Kilos of CO2.
On the one hand, the drive also moved a seveal ton vehicle with me ( that was the entire plan btw). The drive cost maybe $300 in fuel, and a maybe $250 for lodging, and maybe $100 for road snacks. And that costs about as many dollars as the flight and such did.
Sear / brown / lightly render the pork pieces great, then fry up some added onions and salt. When that's all good enough, add water, some cabbage , maybe juice of a small lemon and a turnip or two.
Slow cook for a long time until it the meats are tender and falling off any bones. Add some fresh diced onion and maybe cilantro if that's your thing, and serve.
I understand that many recipes can be cooked in the Instapot without adding any other equipment.
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Though I wonder if the pans I already have will work. I have two stainless mixing bowls that will fit inside the Instapot and all my Corningware will fit inside.
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What have you bought or have that works well with the Instapot?
( stream of contiousness, not quite coffee'd yet, thank you in advance for the accomidation )
First off I'm an evanjelical instant pot pusher. Not for money mind you, but for ideals and saftey.
I have purchasd at one time or another, basicly all the different types of add ons. I have mostly given them away to new instnat pot owners. I recmoend getting an all in once set of all the sillicone things, egg trays, steamer baskets, whever. See if they work for you then pass the ones that do not on to others. This clears up the fomo that you might get dithering over it. The isntant pot can save a pile of money. I used some of the saved money to get all the things to prove I don't need them _and_ that you arn't missing out.
The ones that I use are a steamer basket ( currently one that was in the kitchen before the instant pot showed up but ifts well enough)... A few extra silicon sealing rings, so I can have rings used for spices and seperate ones used for bland things like yogert. That's it, that, and a sillicon lid for the fridge is all I use. An extra pot might be useful for the logicstics of cooking. E.g. Slow cook something for the day, then swap in another pot for quickly steaming some veggies or potatoes or something.
I do use the instant pot for light canning. at 11 PSI check your tables for times and what you can do with it. For steaming I do use the included wire rack.
Speaking of steam diverters. Especially if you have one of the versions that can be programed for specific heats, Some tubing that goes from the steam output port ( take off the thing that looks like a jiggler, and there's a nice hollow metal post that tube can be clamped to ) to whatever receiptical you can find.
Why? Because you have just made a still for making water safe, really really safe. Some tube, and a hose clamp or two is enough. Use copper if you are worried about reactions, off gassing or want hgiher throughput ( there is a lot of energy in steam ).
I hear good things about the 6 qt air frying lid. I'm trying one out now. It'll never be as good as a real oven, an oil fryer, or a rocket stove pizza cooker, and that is not the nitch I'm shooting for. I can see it being @#$@#4 perfect for less hasttle off grid tater tots in 20 minutes. ( assuming there are some solar pannels and big batteries around ). FYI : 200 g of tots, @ 400 degrees for 9 minutes for less than 0.20 KWH. Or about 1500 watts when running. ... so technically I guess a kill-o-watt or equivilant ( Poniie PN1500 Portable Micro Electricity Usage Monitor Electrical Power Consumption Watt Meter , have been good to me and are what I'm using now ) would be a good addition.
How does one obtain salt if Peak Energy hits and we have a sudden, dramatic collapse of civilization and its systems of production and distribution?
Many thanks!
'we' as in humanity or 'we' as in you and me as individuals?
'We' as in individuals can preposition a life time of salt for ourselves and our families. Depending on your source, depending on what you are doing with it and if it can be reused / cleaned up. I figure a tablespoon / day. ( mostly for food preservation, a tablespoon / salt per day is a bit much for consumption, but a few table spoons will go into a brine for that turkey. and it's probably way high. ). Call it 20 g a day, About 16 lbs a year. 160 lbs / decade. 1600 lbs per lifetime. that 1600 lbs of salt might take up about 3x 3x 4 ft in space. Depending on things. Packed into 55 gallon drums it'll last for your lifetime. One would probably pay more for the packaging than the salt it's self if one buys in bulk. ( rock salt is $250 / 2000 lbs ) Maybe get a nice old refer container ( air tight , water tight, with insulation) and keep a whole mess of long term storage stuff there, a lifetime of garden fertilizers, honey, animal salt licks and mineral supplements, grit for the chickens, maybe a few cans of various fasteners for building stuff later, salt.... diatomaceous earths... that's all I can think of at the moment. ) .
'We' as in humanity. Utah. the Utah salt mines and solar electric mining equipment. Mining a ton of salt doesn't take to long with the right diggers. There's no reason they need to be running diesel. Sure it might cost 3 times as much in power costs... 3 times basically 0 is still basically 0. The south has brine wells, and salt domes that are mined out as well. Solar panels or hydro power electric can work for a long time with low maintenance. Distribution by electrified rail. Salt doesn't go bad, so it can be slow and efficiently moved.
'We' personally have a few years supply of salt around, well... because it seems like a reasonable thing to do and I like corned beef.... probably like it too much.
The question is: how do we get more people to reply to the thread and offer up a few bucks?
Any suggestions?
Tithed badges? " I didn't do a sand badge but I helped 20 people get theirs. " sorta thing? Not necessarily monetarily.
Pay it forward sort of things? I'd start it going by donating a hammer, if the user of that hammer would donate back two when the work up to it. I'm not sure how to word smith that together right. Maybe plant a seed so that all may enjoy the fruits of our labors.
There are a few UI things that could possibly help people get to the right place.
1) Call out broken external links specifically. There is probably enough umph in JavaScript to figure out when a resource doesn't load or a request to the hosting sites root fails at least. ( doing it in JS avoids backend complexities )
Construction of a "bear proof door" , though I'm guessing that the other commenters were completely correct and if a bear _really_ wants to get in you'll need to up your game quite a bit. Possibly take bear proof trashcans as an inspiration.
Bethany Dutch wrote:The other day I got to chatting with my Dad about a few different predictions about climate change, etc.
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We don't have an adequate substitute for oil just yet. We have a few potentials, and maybe some things that will work on a small scale, but nothing on a big scale.
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What would life look like for the people who are left? How long would it take before civilization would sorta somewhat recover? Or would it ever?
Elan Musk forced the auto manufacturers to go electric by building a better car. Trucks and farm tools are next.
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Most of the arguments around "we can't without oil" or "an adequate substitute" is really PR from the involved industries. A more correctly stated version might be "There is no adequate substitute that is cheaper, and is already done for you without any effort on your part... keep buying our oil!".
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Coal / gas and petrol. it is currently cheaper to decom a coal plant and install wind power than to simply pay for coal shipments. Gas power plants are being shut down and replaced with battery farms. we are well on our way to the electrical systems being off petrochemicals. The rest of it is a question of gumption and pricing rather than technology.
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For some insight into the entire collapse issue, one can look into the Seneca Effect / curve / trap. ( http://thesenecatrap.blogspot.com/ )
The short answer is diversify and understand where one is on the curve.
Note, we didn't run out of whale oil because we ran out of whales. We stopped killing whales when they got rare enough to be cost prohibitive compared to this new thing oozing out of the ground ( only some what true, but a good start) .
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The scarcest thing about the end of oil isn't the oil. It is the end of the Petro-Dollar. This is _very_ important. The USD is the defacto world currency, and the US gets away with lots of shenanigans because it can just go and print more money when every other country in the world can't ( technically its more complicated than that... but not by much ).
I can't tell you exactly what'll happen or how it'll go. ( and with an Iranian conflict possibly rising up and blocking the straits of Hormuz
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strait_of_Hormuz , maybe we'll find out about that sooner rather than later. ) There are general responses and planning that we can individually do that will decrease the suffering around the time that it happens.
e.g. Permaculture! Gert doesn't much need to care too much about outside inputs ( https://permies.com/t/gert ) . If everyone were Gert'n through life, we'd be much less effected by monetary system changes.
paul wheaton wrote:tesla power wall - I got the impression that they are about $7000. And they supposedly will do fine down to 4 degrees. It seems that the the thing to do, for a portable solution, is to have them in a super, tiny insulated room with an incandescent light bulb that comes on when temps are below 20.
Out of all of the solutions that you listed, the one that seems the quickest and I am the most comfortable with would be the propane generator and a conventional portable electric heater.
BUT!
I think the best thing this year is a series of simple, indicative tests.
Even if we ran the generator for a week, holding the interior temp at 85 degrees F for a week and then observed what happened in the following weeks - all of that would still be nothing more than indicative.
The real test is a year from now. Hence the challenge with "annualized" - it takes a year to do proper tests.
If we had more people in the bootcamp the last few years, we might be two years ahead on this testing. Which is why I have placed so much emphasis on the bootcamp and the BRK for boots.
Totally fair and right.
My understanding with the power walls, $7-8k cost, + installation ~= 10k.
( I just found these) Slightly better than strait propane would be something like a cozy cabin propane heater, they are sailboat heaters that send flue gasses out the chimney. Neat!
Also, they make the same thing but for diesel. Diesel heaters : flue gasses go out and the heat stays. And diesel. :/
These are probably both cheaper / better than a generator and lights, but would be more single purpose tools.
And yes, artificially loading up the mass is testing, and possibly testing things that are not the most important.
paul wheaton wrote:I haven't finished reading your post and I need to comment on the propane heater. I have two big concerns:
- it uses up the oxygen in the space (and i am also concerned about the invisible exhausts)
- it puts a huge amount of water into the air
No worries. The oxygen issue (e.g. killing things with lack of it ) can be solve by the Mr. Heater Big Buddy it's got an low oxygen shutoff. Maybe not something to _only_ trust, but it's something.
The water might be the solution to get the mass more charged.
A pool heater, that circulates warm water around coiled tube inside the wafati. ... They seem to be costing in the kilo dollars. well fooie on that. a home brew solution might work well enough temporarily enough to charge up the mass.
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The volts wagon. It might be possible to hook up a heater (or some lights) without the inverter or the batteries. (depending on the details of everything) A dump/diversion controler => 3k worth of lights or resistance ; done. ( :) )
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The power wall will be something like $10k ( and they _really_ might not like it being used as in a mobile installation ), for 13.5 kwh . 13.5 turns into about 46k btu, and each round trip is going to take 3-4 hours. I'd guess the cook top is doing more.
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heat water with the cook top? That might help the heat transfer better... maybe...
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5kw of propane generator (outside) and a bunch of halogen lights (inside) ? It's temporarily icky, but might be worth it for science. ( and the cheapest/ simplest/ fastest solution ) . And I can see not being happy with that one; I'm not.
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Tank hot water? Is there a large hot water heater on the lab? a 55 gallon barrel of water at 210 degrees has about 50k BTU usable in it. 4 of them might be a good start, though driving that stuff around is going to be dangerous and getting it all moved around is going to be burn inducing.
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That being said, it's a good problem to solve. having to wait 3 years to _realy_ get a place happy is a larger ask for the general human populations.
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Build the sauna. Put it down hill of the floor of the abby. Add some water heating coils to the sauna heater. Thermosyphon up to tank(s) in the abby. Daily sauna activity. ?
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As a first data point it's probably a good idea to start recording wood weight. It'll put an upper bound on BTU required to increase the air temperature in the space. Adding more BTU than that number is just going to be wasted. (Should! hA! I almost should'd Paul, I need some sleep I think). A week or two of watching the temperature loggers and recording wood weights, we can go back and get the temperature rises per weight of wood. Two burns a day, one when it's getting warmer and one when it's getting colder ( and dark) would be helpful. Is there an exhaust gas temperature for the typical burn on the cook top? ( getting an approximate idea of cook top thermal efficiency might be helpful too ).
I'm working through a similar design problem. I'm trying to estimate how much external heat (or cold) a space will require.
I accidentally figured this out by running a propane heater in the space.
If a 4k btu / hour heater heats the place, it's losing less than 4k btu /hour at the current temperature difference.
The heat loss equilibrium would be heat_added = heat_lost_to_environment + heat_put_into_the_mass + heat_added_to_the_wafati_envilope.
If the wafati human envelope is at a stable temperature, and the mass is at a stable temperature then the result is the amount of heat lost to the environment at that temperature difference. ( it gets complicated because there is air and ground temperatures to deal with, ignore it for a bit ).
By finding several equilibrium points with different amounts of added heat, the system should be characterizeable. If there is measurement of how many BTU is required to change between equilibrium points in mass temperature, that should be usable to help inform how many BTU are stored ( and thus available for use later ).
Is there a reticence to using temporary portable propane or kerosene heaters? If the voltswagon isn't doing anything 3kw of solar turns into 10k btu of heat with an extension cord and a resistance heater. ( just don't run it on the batteries cuz' it's abusive ).
We should be able to math this out some.... humm..
More specifically the questions arose from me working on phase changing materials (PCM) for use as part of the thermal mass in one heading solutions. The easy PCM materials are water, waxes and fats. Water ; Boom squish and if it's left to freeze it'll destroy it's container. ( though hyper saturated salt water might be an option for the freezing part ). Waxes and fats... they tend to be flammable. Which brought up the idea of, WTF does one do if one breaks PCM containment over a hot part.
In other fields the answer would be something like Emergency Power Off (EPO) the equipment and get out.
I completely failed to consider the earthquake / major structural issue angle.
Maybe a fiberglass fire blanket?
Possibly a wad of fire safe cloth like stuff on a stick to plug up a ruptured chimney?
Peter van den Berg wrote:There's an old recipe which was used in former days in the Netherlands. Somewhere beside the cole stove a two pounds paper bag of salt was placed on the floor. It could stay there for years until a chimney fire occured. The recipe was to rip open the paper bag and throw it in the fire, bag and all. Immediatly after that all the air inlets should be closed and the chimney fire went out just like that. Presumably the salt getting hot, was producing a gas that's supplanting the oxygen in the stove and the chimney. The stove shouldn't be opened immediatly after the fire was out, the fire could start again in a flash.
Baking soda seems to be one of the options. A smaller than feed tube sized bag of baking soda might be the thing, followed rapidly by sand / a cover plate.
1) heat from the cooker :
Have you tried using stack effect to draw more air across the surface?
e.g. Grab a 4-8 ft piece of ducting from the bone pile or wherever and hold it a few inches above the hot burner area ( maybe with a stand or hanging from the ceiling ) . It should help get the heat away from that area. If that works more would work better.
A solid maybe.
2) De humidification :
Intentionally leave one of the windows without a cover to get the water condensing their first, then figure out how to deal with _that_ window condensing. Possibly a metal plate rather than a window. Possibly placed in a cold sump / the lowest spot in the area so that the cold doesn't drain the rest of the structure of heat, but can be allowed to get cold enough to dehumidify then let the water flow down ( and out? ).
A friend swears by the sauna. A minimum size is 1 inch larger than you are with a head hole to poke your head out of.
One of the Nifty things about the Finish style sauna's is they were built first in most long term camps. With this there was always a refuge for getting warm and clean ( and delivering children ).
I'd council the size be increased so that someone could use it as a sleeping space in a pinch. So a bench of at least 6 1/2 ft x 30 in or so.
With a bench high and a bench low, this results in a 4 or so person sauna with space.
With a little bit more space it might also serve as a winter time clothes dryer. ( just add clothes lines or drying racks )
I'd second the safety fence around the burning bits.
What are the correct procedures and provisions for emergency extinguishing of a RMH?
For _reasons_, I'm working with a very restricted space budget on a design. Being in restricted / small spaces increases the risk that something will get bumped into something else, or dropped into the wrong place. Possibly combustible things. Possibly on 500+ degree stove parts.
A knee jerk reaction might be dumping a few gallons of water down the side of the barrel... This might end up with a large amount of very hot steam confined in a very small space with a now par broiled everything I care about.... like lungs.
Closing off the feed tube with bricks is a way to restrict the airflow and will get a RMH to stop combustion in a little bit. Presuming that "that's not fast enough". What other options are there and what are the results? e.g. Will the standard RMH be damaged by the procedure? Will the RMH be temporarily out of commision until maintinance can be carried out? ( e.g. sand dumped into the feed tube would need to get cleaned out of the entire burn path ). Will there be boom squish?
The internet told me to a) close dampers, b) fire off a fire extinguisher (ABC?) into the wood stove. Is that a reasonable thing? and where does that land on the result metrics?
I have my own ideas about things, and some of them are certainly silly and wrong, so what's the most expedient way to get a RMH down to less than burning temperatures without endangering people, pets, etc. ? Ideally three options, one for just getting it turned down quickly, one for turned down quickly with maintenance to turn it back up, and one for getting it stopped ASAP with the RMH being possibly sacrificed along the way?
What's the right way, and what should be avoided? And for the literature edification... why?
Are you talking tea for an army or 8 - 16 floz of water for some nice Twinings?
1 pound of water (~16 floz or two cups) will raise 1 degree f , for every BTU of energy put into it. To get 1 lb from 40 to 212 degrees would ideally take 172 BTU. 1 BTU is about 0.3 Watt hours. The cup of tea should take about 50 watt hours of power... with losses it'll take a bunch more, maybe twice as much beacuse you'd be heating the cup and the heater, etc.
Induction may be more efficient if your vessel is metal, it's also a lot more complicated. A $30 '1000 watt electric burner' should be simple, last forever and do good enough. In that ideal case it would boil your water in ~3 minutes. In reality it'll take longer to heat the tea pot, etc. etc. It's about the same sort of math people use for microwaves. 1000 watts for a few minutes, doesn't use up that much overall.
While you are at it, grab a kill-o-watt and it'll tell you how much AC power you are using each time you use it.
I can't wait to hear which way to go and how it worked out for you and why. I'm eventually hoping to have a nice off grid permiculture tea house somewhere in my life and would enjoy the different perspectives and results.
Sander Krijnen wrote:How about creating some kind of a spiral with the exaust pipe and adding more mass on top of the barrel for more heat efficiency?
Adding mass to the top seems like a really good idea to me.
I have been adding mass to a portable ceramic propane heater ( the mouse is next when I get enough space ).
The simplest would be to add a big pressure cooker filled with water on top of the stove. The down side being steam and dampness.
Iron has 80% the same thermal storage as water by volume. I stacked up some iron weights above the heater, and an upside down cast iron skillet to act as a bell. Any iron should do well enough. With about 70 lbs of iron there is no longer a hot spot on the ceiling ( it's warm, but not hot), and the heat tends to stay around a lot longer. 70 lbs of iron works about as well as about a gallon + of water for storing thermal energy.
I'm currently also work on PCM Phase change materials. There is about as much energy require to melt water ice as it takes to boil 0 degree water. Water however... boom squish, and freezing problems. Oils and waxes however, as long as you can keep them from burning, might just do the trick for producing gentle heat around the 70 F range... like where humans tend to like to live.
I'm guessing estate sales might be a good pace to find cheap stackable iron, maybe scrap yards.
I was thinking about other things and was wondering if anyone had problems with keeping the boxes hot enough / long enough for what they were doing.
The simple solution for that is add more insulation. That'll work to a point.
The hay boxes tend to work with 4+ quart pots, with the general plan of using that 4 quarts for food. Sometimes, some people may _not_ want to have that much food cooked. (I know, crazy right? )
A way to stretch the hay box cooker to smaller cooking tasks could be to add more mass to the original heating that isn't food.
A simple / old school way would be nice clean washed, flat river rocks or something.
Another might be to warm up some quart jars filled with boiling water and put them in the cooker next to a smaller pot ( a bigger box might be required for packing the jars in there).
A suuuuuper interesting to me and something going on my todo list is to try doing that boiling water trick but with waxes. Beeswax, soy wax and carnauba wax are on the list of things to try out. The neat bit about waxes is that they work like ice cubes in reverse. Ice cubes keep things cold by melting a little. Melted waxes will keep things warmer by solidifying a little. The different waxes solidify at different temperatures so they should give different temperature profiles as the box sits there.
Travis Johnson wrote:I was wondering what people felt the ideal Homestead Size was?
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LTDR; min 2 acres of 'avearge land' per person.
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What's the ideal weight of a truck?
What is the ideal angle for a blade edge?
It's a good though provoking question, rather than one that can get an analytical answer of X acres.
10 acres of tundra is not equal to 10 acres of the Krameterhof. 10 acres of the Krameterhof isn't equal to another 10 acres of the Krameterhof.
Quick diversion. Price vs Value. The price is a dollar amount that someone ask or maybe two people agree to do a deal on. e.g. $5. The Value ( note the gravitas of the capital V which, i'll stop using shortly) is what that Price gets you. The incremental value of a gallon of water when you have pletny isn't much. The value of that one gallon of water you might need when dieing of thirst in a desert that value is quite high.
The Value of a fully functioning 100% sustainable homestead is at least the number of lives that the homestead can support. Or maybe just the lives minus the time spent keeping the homestead up and running. A turn key Gert homestead could be valued at somewhere around $1-2 Million / person the homestead can support. Only the cash richest could pay that in money.
Back from diversion.
Ethically there is only so much land and there are a lot of people. At some point, ethically, the ideal homestead size might factor in how much land there is for all the people. Ditching ethics, at some point the people without land get pointy sticks and come after those who have the land, no mater how well it's looked after.
~ 196.9 million mi^2 of land, 7.7 billion people. or about 16 acres per person of land. Different per capita land areas ( https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Geography/Area/Land/Per-capita ) , you'll notice Greenland has about 10,000 acres per person.... most of it's ice and not so useful for growing tulips, or food. There might be 1-2 acres of arable land per person globally. Though arable doesn't cover everything productive.
In general I'd say the right sized homestead might be though of like animal stocking densities. Large enough so that there is plenty of extra capacity and surpluses possibility so that life changes can be supported. e.g. being at 100% stocking density means an unplanned child breaks the homestead. Likewise there are other 100%s to watch out for. Using 100% water in a drought year. etc.
Averaging everything out... I think Skandi Rogers hit it about right ( or I am misinterpreting wildly) . on average, a minimum of 2 acres / person. For average land. Use the 1 acre to grow stuff, and 1/4th acre to live on, and the rest in some productive endeavor or zone 5. A household planning for a longer term sustainable life might be 2 grandparents, two parents, two kids for some amount of time. Figure ~10 acres. ( compared to the total available for 6 people of 96 ish acres of average land )
I originally stopped by withe naive idea (RFE) that a zero match for anything with non ascii characters could be retried with only ASCII characters, or some such....
I'm not sure that's the primary thing going on, nor how it may fall into everyone's priorities.
A newer site for doing mostly mobile / small scale DIY Photo voltaic systems originally focusing on RV or small off grid systems. Mostly 12 VDC, starting to do 24 VDC and lithium stuff.
Will helped me get off my but and just order some stuff and start plugging it together. So I need to thank him for that and getting me off the power grid at least part of the time.
Davin Hoyt wrote: ...
Questions: 1) Any outliers? 2) Concerns? 3) Can you see your work flow within this shop's orientation? 4) May I design custom beams to spread from South extent to North extent?
1) which way is north in the diagram? ( ahh, it's in the first picture )
2) depending on the kind of metal work ( chromium, sanding, grinding, welding, etc ) . It might be good to get the food (green house) further from the contaminants.
3) The garden is rather far away from the kitchen / way out of zone 1, so it will not see as much use/care as if it was closer to the home.
4) is the pool natural or chemicly treated?
5) where do the water tanks go? ( a big pool is going to need a _lot_ of water storage to make up for evaporation )
6) solar hot water?
7) how does power get into the property?
8) at 1 acre, the property is about 150' x 300' or so? is that right?
By using a reflector after the Fresnel lens one might be able to redirect the beam up into heavily insulated heat box. possibly heating a mold from the bottom.
By heating from the bottom the primary heat losses of convection out the top and radiant heat that goes away would be reduced, more effective heat and more diffuse heat.
James Bong wrote:Not a tiny house as such, but if one wanted to insulate a cargo van as cheaply and easily as possible/least amount of work, how would you go about it?
The standard way to do it is with spray in closed cell foam. And that'll be full of toxic gick.
One way many people start doing it is by shoving fiber bat insulation everywhere they can. This might not be the best plan due to mold ( very bad plan really ). After you understand where to, and not to use it. There is a company that does 1/2 per-prepared meals / teach you how to cook things. And the boxes they are currently shipping their food in boxes insulated with cotton/denim batting. Ever box shows up with another few square feet of insulation.... Talk about an awesome build as you go solution. ( https://support.homechef.com/hc/en-us/articles/210097943-How-do-I-dispose-of-the-box-packaging-materials- )
