my new rocket mass heater experiment: a warm winter with 0.2 cords of wood

Off to a good start.

Our home is warm, but we have used zero wood.

We have been burning cardboard, paper scraps, twigs and other yard waste, wood shop scraps ...

All summer we put cardboard boxes or paper sacks next to the recycling and garbage.  We throw burnables in there.  And when we get too many cardboard boxes, rather than take them to recycling, we cut them up into smaller pieces and put those in a bigger cardboard box.

At the end of summer, I went outside with a bucket and picked up dry, woody garbage laying around the yard or near the driveway.  I pruned a couple of little trees and kept the twiggy bits and branches.  I cut them to 6 inches or shorter with my pruner so they could dry quickly.  I poured the result into a wood crate so the twiggy bits could get good airflow.  

Mostly I am burning cardboard.  I would say 70% cardboard, 10% paper, and the rest is boxes of woody bits that are not fit for a wood stack.  I think it is fair to call all of it "garbage".



I gotta say there is a trade-off.  Normal, split firewood takes about 20 minutes to burn and burns with little ash.  A couple of rounds of that, and the house is plenty warm.  So it is easier.  

With heaps of cardboard and twigs, I spend more time tending the fire.   And each fire makes an enormous amount of ash.


If I have enough cardboard and twigs and garbage, I  might be able to get to the point next april where I could say that I heated this house all winter with nothing but cardboard and garbage.  0.00 cords of firewood.  I'm not sure if I can do that this year.  

What junkmail won't you burn due to gick?

I assume not plastic windows in envelopes. Any problem with glossy catalog pages?

Christopher Weeks wrote:What junkmail won't you burn due to gick?

I assume not plastic windows in envelopes. Any problem with glossy catalog pages?

My understanding is that the glossy catalog stuff has extra clay.  So lots of extra ash.

The "plastic windows" in envelopes are usually cellophane - a wood product.

I reject the cardboard cartons that have a metal liner.  

I reject the plastic mailers.  

Cardboard cartons with a wax interior are great - we just tear off the plastic pour spout and throw the spout into the garbage.

I also wanna point out that paper and cardboard get to a point where they are sorta "embers" that are kinda big.  They start to plug the j-tube.  So a few twigs in there will hold enough fire that air moves past the embers and reduces them to ash, so you can add more cardboard.

Some paper and cardboard will have a plastic coating on it, especially if it was food packaging. This plays merry hell with recycling processes, and leaves microplastics in the soil if we try to compost it, so really the only responsible thing to do is burn it in a high-temperature fire. RMH to the rescue.