Stacking Functions Sunday

Had to clean the basement area where my son likes to split wood. And had to clean up all the sticks in the yard that fell during the storm the other day. Had more leaves to pick up too. Time to make some char!

I filled a barrel with small wood bits from the basement cleanup, and threw it into the fire pit with a bunch of sticks from the yard and some scraps from the basement cleanup.

My son and I probably got a bit overzealous adding wood to the fire, so ended up with a lot of coals. Doused them with some rain water (and ice) from one of my leaf barrels I'd left out.

So, ended up with a bunch of good char IN the barrel, AND in the fire pit! Score!

This char will get used in the chicken coop...where under my nesting boxes I've been layering hay I got for free to catch the poop and cut down on drafts. The char should help absorb some nutrients and help keep smells under control.

Also raked up a bunch of leaves and added them to my "slow compost" chicken run deep litter system. Come spring, the chicken poop/hay/biochar will get mucked out of the coop and added to the leaf compost.

Nicely done! You clean up the basement, make biochar, improve the smell of the chickens area, inoculate your biochar,  get some exercise, clean up some leaves, activate your biochar with the rain water, and sequester carbon all at the same time!

John S
PDX OR

Good job! It's cool how thinking about things as a system helps to connect the dots!

Had a day when I was home with the kids before a few days of rain, so we made another batch of char.

Images uploaded backwards, but you can see the process from fire to result to the resulting char being roughly applied to the my "under the roost winter poop catching pile". I didn't bother crushing the char before adding as it'll get plenty of time to break up as it works it's way from coop to run to eventually being used somewhere.

Animated GIF of the flames shooting out the drilled holes and around the lid during the charring process.

Nice!

I'm curious -- could the offgass flames be directed more underneath the "kiln" to keep as much heat as possible on the char?

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:Nice!

I'm curious -- could the offgass flames be directed more underneath the "kiln" to keep as much heat as possible on the char?

The drilled holes are pointing "sideways and slightly down" to aim towards the fire, but clearly the majority of the gasses are escaping around the lid. I'm considering different designs to help that. Maybe something as simple as tilting the can so the lid is lower than the bottom?