Jen’s Boot Camp and Allerton Abbey Experience

Tuesday: Morning fire in Abbey; no fire at lunch (working) or evening (Taco Tuesday at basecamp).

Wednesday: Fire for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Thursday: Fire at breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Friday: Fire for breakfast. No fire for lunch. Longer fire after lunch while working on Abbey to provide workers with tea and counteract the effects of having the door open for four hours to run the extension cord for tools. Fire at dinner.

Saturday: No fire until dinner. Slaughtered and processed sheep all day and then went to Missoula to buy a sink for the Abbey.

Sunday: Fire at breakfast. Bella has moved into the Abbey with me and Josiah is also staying here sometimes. Since we tend to wake up and get hungry  at different times, the morning tea and breakfast fire sometimes lasts quite a while. Then Dave came over to get his rocket cooktop BB, and made another fire right before lunch. No fire at dinner.

Monday: Breakfast fire. No fire at lunch. Fire at dinner.

Tuesday: No fire all day.

Thank you all for being worried about me! Every other time I have checked the carbon monoxide alarm, it has read zero. I think we do have some extra CO alarms around, I might install a backup just for safety. I do think that not taking the coal bucket out quickly enough could have been part of the issue.

New video with Jen running the rocket cooktop

Jennifer Richardson wrote:After staying up late last night playing games, eating, and watching movies at basecamp, I ended up sleeping in this morning until almost nine! When I woke, it was 56.4 degrees inside Allerton Abbey. Much more pleasant than the freezing temperatures (25 degrees) and snow outdoors, but not as toasty as I might prefer.

Thank you so much for collecting the data and sharing it!  This type of work is very valuable and I'm glad it's being done. Thank you

paul wheaton wrote:The casserole door is, I think, a design that needs further optimization.   And I think the first optimization is that we need to get away from batch box stuff.

....from the pod casts, I'm getting hints that the batch box doesn't produce the same amount of heat per same volume of wood type....tell us what you're thinking now on why the batch box should be abandoned???   the CO2 and the too hot lid can't be overcome???