Sheila Payne

Oh boy.  Well, I guess a rocket stove is out of the question.  I can't build it myself. At least now I know.  Could the red clay bricks work for a grill at least?

Hi, I am interested in building a rocket stove for outside that I can use for grilling food in the summer, and also for boiling maple sap in the winter/spring.  what would be a good design that would be condusive to that?  also, are red clay bricks sufficient?

We are currently in a drought, but we normally don't have issues with water.  I will definitely look into the water harvesting.  

I figured if I made rows, I would be able to make room for my vegetable garden easier.  It would look really nice if I just had the trees the way you suggested, I love the way that would look!  Plus, it just makes sense.  The other issue is, the trees I got thus far do not tell me the type of rootstock the trees are on, so I don't know what their mature size will be.  it is making it harder for me to know the spacing for the trees.  I have put 2 trees into the ground already, because the garden center told me to put them in asap due to the weather.

We finally got a piece of land after 2 months of issues, so now I am ready to plant all my fruit trees and berry plants.  This is the area that I want to put them, I would say it is about an acre in this area.  From looking at the photo, the sun comes up from the bottom right corner of the photo, then sets on the top left of the photo.  I thought about putting the trees all around the perimeter, not close to the existing trees though, about 30 feet away perhaps?  However, I am not sure if that is ok with the sunlight.  I was out there today and it started getting shady around 4ish from the top left first.  I also need to leave room for my vegetable garden.  Currently I have 6 apple trees and 2 pear trees, however I plan on getting a few more apple trees, a peach tree or two, a couple of plum trees, and maybe a cherry tree... not sure yet.  That would be about 17 trees.  I thought about putting my berry plants between the trees, but not in the rows... if that makes sense (so it would be a row of tree/berry/tree/berry/tree/berry... so to speak.  

With that in mind, would you put the trees along the perimeter on the lot away from the trees, or would you put them all to the right or all to the left or something?  And remember I have my veggie garden.  Also, would you put manure right away or would you wait a while?

Thanks so much!

What about the woodstove-rocket mass heater- hybrid idea? is there any benefit to it and would it bypass insurance?

ughhh. I thought I read that people were getting away with them. How do people do it then? or is it only in other countries?

I am in Maine, so yes it gets cold for a long period of time. I really really would like a radiant heater of some sort, there's got to be a way to make it happen. Just those masonry heaters are so darn expensive! Are those even covered too?

As for the concept of my house, this is how it is planned out. http://www.jcalldesign.com/?pid=4&singleproduct=10#product=10

I hope I am not asking redundant questions, but I've been literally online all day trying to find the right heating method for my new home, and I just can't do it any more. hopefully you all can help me, and thank you
We found some land and I am trying to make this home as self sustainable as possible. I love the idea of a masonry heater, but cant afford it. Then I found out about rocket stoves, but insurance won't cover them. So then I saw that one can sort of do a hybrid between the two and it is the batch box, if I am understanding correctly. I could just do a wood stove, but I don't like the smoke aspect and all the ash etc... and the creosote.

The questions I have are, when I have my builder build our house, I was going to have him put in a chimney. Can this batch box connect to that, or is there something special I need the mason to do when he is building the chimney? And our house will be 1650 square feet cape cod style home. the downstairs will be 896 square feet and the upstairs is less because of the way the house is designed, there is less usable space. Would a batch box effectively heat this size home? And the third question is, when having the home built, what kinds of structural supports do I need to have put in to have this device on the main floor of the home (if I choose to go with the batch box)? The chimney will be in the center of the house.