Mark Roelofs

I like the new page better, looks more modern and more like a typical website that tries to sell you something. If the purpose is world domination, i think that is what you would want.

I do however missed something on it, that is the site is now focused on telling people about RMH and selling them plans. But i think many people do not have any interest in building a RMH themselves, even when they really want one. They have looked at the page and feel excited, but might be left with 'i cannot/do not want to/have no time/etc to make one myself. Maybe it would be good to add a small paragraph about who to contact when you want to have one, but not build/design one. We have a forum with a list of people that are known to do this, so the information is already there.

Thanks for the reply. Mulch and leaving them it is, we do not have very wet or cold winters so they will probably survive. Lets see whether they bolt or grow bigger, either way I will have another change to grow them.

I bought some (bad quality) seed of potato onions this year and ended up with about 6-7 plants. I planted them out in spring, but since my soul is still very poor they did not grow very well. Some of them have bulbed up, other remain straight and some have split in other onions. They are all around 1-2 cm thick, either as bulb or more like a leek.

My question for people with more experience: this winter i can harvest them and dry them and plant again in spring, or leave them in the ground during in the winter. Leaving them in the ground will probably cause them to bolt, but im not interested in seed at the moment because the state of the onions. I prefer to harvest and dry them to plant again (in better soil) to see if i can grow better onions from these onions. My worry however is whether my onions will survive drying and replanting, since they are so small and underdeveloped.

Anybody has any experience with drying and replanting smaller, not well formed, onions?

Just a final picture to have this thread in a more finsished state. Found some old tiles that were used in the kitchen, so used those to finish the ugly corner that the old fireplace left. It is not a RMH of course, but to us it looks a lot better than the super big fireplace.

In the end the plans have changed and the RMH build has been canceled. Maybe in the future I will get my RMH

Day 4/5 update: Grinding away on the chimney. It goes OK, but I have ran out of cutting discs and because my grinder is very old, all the stores here do not carry 18cm discs anymore. So ordered some from amazon. So this work is halted for now, Really do not understand why you would make a chimney like this out of 10mm(!!!) thick steel. The bottom plate would make sense, and the baffle as well. But everything is 10mm thick. No way is that needed, especially with the low temps you get in a fireplace like this....ah well, build to last i guess.

I still have some other prep work to do: Cleaning up barrels, digging more clay, figuring out how to seel the manifold and the top barrel, etc.

EDIT: Day 6: Found some more grinding discs so managed to get another piece out. Also started welding in new supports for the big  steel chimney. I will take a big part of the bottom of the chimney off, to have more space to fit the exhaust of the RHM.

EDIT: Day 7: We continue

EDIT: Day 8: The chimney is gone and I have welded all the supports onto the remaining piece of pipe. Now just to remove a part of the pipe at the bottom and then remove some more cement and stones to make the floor a bit more level. And then cleaning up...

EDIT: Day 9: I guess the first phase of the project has come to an end!

I was searching for random homesteading topics and was fed up with generic google answers. So for every search i started putting 'forum' in the search, then i ended up here a couple of different times. I think around the same time I was also getting some Paul Wheaton shorts on youtube. And since many things he was talking about made sense (I think it was mostly RMH, because I was looking into that as well) I was watching him more on youtube. Later I realised that the forum google was sending me to was actually made by Paul.

Progress of day 1 of deconstruction.

EDIT: adding day 2 pictures.

EDIT: adding day 3 pictures. Now we have the chimney leftover to do. I do not know why, but it is 10mm thick steel.....it will cost me a lot of angle grinder discs to cut it into pieces and get it out. We might keep a part of the super thick steel chimney, might look cool when it is nicely painted. The RHM output chimney can always be put in it.

Nice!

I have planted a number of plants last year as well, but they all died (or so i thought). They came back quite early and are also starting to flower now.

Thanks!

We have many chimneys... On the roof, the one on the left is for the RMH. It is maybe 1 meter of stone and then 3 meter of black pipe.
On the roof, the one on the right is for our kitchen stove, it is only stone. Draft is a lot worse with that one, the kitchen stove needs careful lighting..

Then the one closest to the RMH is the chimney from the downstairs (future) workshop. Also part stone and pipe

And the stainless steel one is fromnour diesel central heating.

Maybe one day i will make another one at the back of the house so we can geat with wood there too. Never can have enough chimneys