I will attempt to heat my home all winter with just cardboard and garbage

For this to make sense, I need to point out that several years ago I heated my 3-bedroom montana home with 0.60 cords of wood for an entire winter.  I have experience with regular wood stoves.  I think it would have been 6 cords with a regular wood stove.  

The funny thing is that when I did that test, I didn't have curtains (which save heat).  And we all had poor habits about holding in heat.  And we had poor habits involving being too warm.  So I thought we would get better at all these things and try again.  I feel like there are a lot more things I would still like to try, but this winter I got a new idea ...


Years ago ...  during the age of junk mail arriving in our physical mailboxes ...  I heard of a guy with a rocket mass heater that heated his home all winter with only junk mail.   Today we have about 5% of the junk mail we used to have, but we have a lot more cardboard boxes.  And I suspect that we have a lot more paper/cardboard packaging too.

Over the summer we saved up our burnable garbage.  Let's see how long it lasts.

I have learned that if you try to burn just cardboard and paper, about five minutes into the burn, the wood feed is full of an ashy ember that is slowly burning.  But if you can toss a few twigs in there, it will keep the air flow so strong that it will quickly clear out that ashy ember stuff.  So I have a few crates that I have accumulated "garbage" from the ground last summer.  Whatever I found laying around on the ground outside.  Pretty dry stuff made dryer by sitting inside.  Twigs, bark, broken branches, plant stalks ...   stuff that i would normally use as a mulch or compost.



We've had a couple dozen fires this fall and we have not yet touched our cordwood.  Just "garbage".  

I gotta say that I prefer burning cordwood.   Currently, we are burning about 80% to 85% cardboard.  You fill the wood feed and keep filling the wood feed for about two minutes.  Come back in five minutes and it is ready for more.  In a way, it is faster, but it definitely takes more time.  Cordwood has more fuel per effort, so it takes less time.  

Burning garbage has its merits.  Things feel less like waste.  There is less to take to the recycling drop off.  Less garbage.  And where the recycling peeps don't want any garbage that has grease on it, we actually prefer to burn garbage that does have grease on it!




This is yet another experiment.  We are still feeling it out a bit.  Stuff to be learned.

Do you have a standard size of cardboard you are using as feedstock or just an assortment of sizes?

I wonder if the extra effort to cut the cardboard into uniform strips might be useful to reduce the amount of stuck ashy embers if you didn't have a bundle of twigs handy in similar supply to the cardboard.

All kinds of wacky stuff.  Including some stuff that would otherwise go to the landfill.  

I think we see similar ashy embers when burning bark.  So this is not a property limited to cardboard.

We cut up cardboard to use as "kindling" for our regular wood stove. I'll spend a bit of time while listening to the news, or some talking head, so I'm stacking functions of my time.

"Twigs, bark, broken branches, plant stalks ...   stuff that i would normally use as a mulch or compost." That stuff is just too valuable mixed with our chicken/duck/goose shit to burn it!

In some areas, paper is the one item that actually, genuinely gets recycled and reused. Where you live matters. As an experiment, this is wonderful, but my recollection is that the last person who tried it, was in a city and stealth heating, and not where scrap wood was easy to get? Proving this works, would be wonderful for those people who are in that situation.

Good luck - looking forward to reading about your experiences.

Is this a piped mass or a stratification chamber? Because you are almost certainly going to have to clean out all that ash during the heating season and if it's piped there's a risk of blockage. This is why I prefer to burn hardwood in my 4" J-tube in the greenhouse...cleaning the run through the cob bench is a bitch.

I know that a few years ago we burned a huge amount of paper and ended up needing an extra cleanout mid-winter.  We noticed that the draw became kinda weak.  The draw is still quite strong.

This reminds me that I have to call the chimney sweep. Which made me think, how do they sweep these rocket mass heaters that seem to have a labirynth of a chimney?

Flora Eerschay wrote:This reminds me that I have to call the chimney sweep. Which made me think, how do they sweep these rocket mass heaters that seem to have a labirynth of a chimney?

No creosote.  No need for the chimney sweep.

Would compressing the paper using a manual baler increase the mass and burn time?

John F Dean wrote:Would compressing the paper using a manual baler increase the mass and burn time?

Dunno.

At the moment, I am thinking that the purpose of this is to compliment "a guy heated his house all winter with junk mail."   I like that I am doing something similar.  We could end up with "heated the house all winter with cardboard and garbage."   I feel like if I introduce some sort of processing contraption, then dumbfucks will come to the errant conclusion that it cannot be done without the contraption.  I think that because of decades of demonstrating how excellent something is only to later find out that dumbfucks appear to have a louder voice saying something utterly wrong.   So I choose to minimize dumbfuck bait.

Unfortunately, you make sense. Much of my life has been spent hearing what “John said …”

yes we have lots of "clever trevors" --(thanks Ian Dury ) who keep coming out with hand lever press to hydraulic powered devises to make briquettes from shredded wet paper , dry them out and burn in your stove ---but its the stuff of urban legend almost----complete waste of time----the only processing routine i follow with cardboard or newsprint ---is to make rough parcels of twigs --wrapped up ---and placed into the burn chamber---no glossy paper---its full of chalk---makes abundant ash

R

Flora Eerschay wrote:This reminds me that I have to call the chimney sweep. Which made me think, how do they sweep these rocket mass heaters that seem to have a labirynth of a chimney?

My recommendation for the best chimney sweep ever, though I know Paul won't need him...

my vid from 8 years ago - heating a 3 bedroom montana home with 0.60 cords of wood for the winter

Timothy Norton wrote:Do you have a standard size of cardboard you are using as feedstock or just an assortment of sizes?

I wonder if the extra effort to cut the cardboard into uniform strips might be useful to reduce the amount of stuck ashy embers if you didn't have a bundle of twigs handy in similar supply to the cardboard.

We do that too.but sometimes it makes creosote.

We opened up this rocket mass heater a few days ago.  It hasn't been opened in several years.  A lot of dry ash.  No creosote.  We cleaned out most of the ash and put it back together.  Easy peasy.

Wow, Paul hit his convenience limit, lol!

Considering how little junk mail we get these days compared to a decade ago, that is pretty impressive to make it this long.

I think Paul's last line says it all! This is a wonderful experiment. I am *really* glad he's doing it.

The time aspect is very true, however, people who live on small properties who don't have access to much wood, may be very glad to be using cardboard as their main heat source, rather than paying gas or electric bills.

Hopefully some of those people will also choose to plant a few fast growing shrubs so that they will generate a little more wood to go with that cardboard.

From estaban's thread








My old coat disintegrated.  Beyond patches and mending.  So I ordered another and it arrived in a huge cardboard box.  Tada!  More heat!

I found myself at the grocery store and forgot to bring in my cloth bags.  Tada!  Paper sacks!  More heat!

A huge wind storm knocked down some branches and small, dead trees.  Tada!  More heat!



There are now about a dozen crates sitting on the mass.  Two of the crates contain our christmas tree cut up into bits.  We took it down jan 1 - so it has been a few weeks.  The bits still feel a bit bendy - so not ready yet.  The crates with material that is ready is moved closer to the barrel and the crates with material that seems a bit damp is further from the barrel.  


Yesterday morning I got the temp up to 73.  Last night it felt a bit too cool, but I thought I was just being wimpy and old.  This morning it was 62 inside!  Way too cold!  Ahhhh ....   I see now ...  a pretty cold day outside ....    Maybe while it is this cold I will do two fires today.  


The best recipe for success

Have lots of storage for cardboard and dozens of these wood crates.  Then when trying to tidy, through the summer and fall (and even winter), these things magically fill up.  And there is a place to put it all.  

Other people have to make trips to the recycling center, or haul twice as much stuff to the land fill.  But by giving this stuff a future purpose, it actually gets saved.  But you gotta set aside a bit of storage for all this.  


will we make it to 100%?

Will be get to the end of winter and be able to say that we heated this house 100% with cardboard, paper garbage and garbage woods ...    ??  It will be close.  But even if we fail, I think we will pull it off next year as we will have a better understanding of what works and what we want to achieve.

I do know that when samantha stopped by a few days ago she was pointing at some dead branches on trees near the front door and talking about adding those.  I think if we harvest those, we could get to 100%.  

We are about out of cardboard.  And we are about out of scrap wood from the wood shop.  But we are more than half way through winter.  

I do think that the desire to heat with garbages has led to a lot of tidying in other spots.  :)


the future

I like how easy it is to start a fire with so much cardboard.  In future years we will return to whatever is the simplest and easiest.  I like the idea of going heavy on cardboard in the future.  Just maybe not THIS heavy.  Lots and lots of cardboard to get a roaring fire started is a better way.  

I like the idea of having the many crates of garbage woods.  They are smaller than cord wood.  I think that in the future it might be good to start a fire with cord wood, and later if I want to add wood, but there isn't room for full size cord wood, i could toss in some garbage wood.  

I guess I just like the idea of preparing our future heating to have a lot more of this material involved and it will dramatically cut our cord wood needs while making the whole heating experience even more luxuriant.  The key to it all is to have tidy ways to store this material.

Paul wrote:

...And we are about out of scrap wood from the wood shop...
...I do think that the desire to heat with garbage has led to a lot of tidying in other spots.  :)

I hear you! It's too easy in a wood shop especially, to think you will find a higher purpose than the dump or a hugel bed for some small offcut of wood.  If I have 100% cotton offcuts from a sewing project, the tendency is similar. But if I can use those scraps to wipe grease off a kitchen pot, then use it to start a fire, all of a sudden, I'm decluttering with a purpose.

Over all, so far, do you feel this winter's weather in your location is "about average" or better or worse than average. Mid-Canada towards the east is in a dangerous deep freeze. Such things will affect experiments like yours.

So far this has felt like a warm winter.

Well, I am extremely excited to hear all about it post-cold weather!!  I may not have a way to burn for warmth right now, but I am soaking up as much info as I can for when I CAN burn for warmth.   --Tess

Just found it!! There are several of these vids out there, but the first half of this video shows a cool, potentially feasible idea to extend some of the materials for burning:  



I have yet to watch the 2nd half, as I got interrupted and need to finish it.  --Tess

I did not watch the video.  It looks like something where you take cardboard and sawdust and process it before burning it.  And I am simply burning it without processing it.

When i was there for bootcamp we burned a lot of bark. I heard a later assessment that this was creating too much ash/not producing enough BTUs. Is bark part of the experiment/rethink here, or does it remain a separate category?

Most of the bark that would be available has already been redirected to be mulch.  We've had a little, but not much.

paul wheaton wrote:Most of the bark that would be available has already been redirected to be mulch.

Mulch would seem to me to be a "higher purpose" - more valuable use than burning it.

It may depend in part on the particular bark. Some of our Fir bark doesn't make good mulch - it's just too thick and chunky. My neighbor claims that it does make really good firewood and he's very knowledgeable about tree species in the Pacific Northwest. I think it's the same wood that R Ransom was using in her wood stove to heat her biochar can for artists charcoal.

So one's experience may be species dependent. Our Big Leaf Maple bark I would expect would make good mulch and less good firewood, but I'd need some to experiment with.

Found some bark and brought it in.

Cardboard is running low.  

Garbage wood is running low.  

Looking at some dead branches in nearby trees.




Kinda thinking that the real magic for doing this in the future is to have something like 40 of these wood crates and to fill them up with woody garbage in the summer and set them some place dry.  Just having a good place to put woody garbage will make a huge difference.  

Cardboard is easier cuz you get a lot of cardboard boxes.  Cut up three cardboard boxes and store them in a cardboard box.  

paul wheaton wrote:  Kinda thinking that the real magic for doing this in the future is to have something like 40 of these wood crates and to fill them up with woody garbage in the summer and set them some place dry.  Just having a good place to put woody garbage will make a huge difference.    

Are the wood crates designed to stack?

Do I imagine another skiddable structure full of stacked wood crates in your future?

The crates stack, but they don't "interlock" or nest or anything.  I think i would not want to try to stack them higher than 3 crates unless they are in some sort of frame to hold them.

As I'm reading more about potential gick in cardboard, this idea of using it as a heat source is certainly sounding more appealing to me... The next question is what to use as sheet mulch instead 😅

I think the thick chunky pnw conifer bark referred to is likely doug fir, possible ponderosa or jeffrey pine. All have been used as weed deterring mulch around my blueberries, and I think could possibly be a cardboard replacement for sheet mulching. I have also considered matted maple or oak leaves. This would utilize the plant’s physical adaptation to smother understory ladder fuels and competition.

Ben Zumeta wrote:I think the thick chunky pnw conifer bark referred to is likely doug fir, possible ponderosa or jeffrey pine. All have been used as weed deterring mulch around my blueberries, and I think could possibly be a cardboard replacement for sheet mulching. I have also considered matted maple or oak leaves. This would utilize the plant’s physical adaptation to smother understory ladder fuels and competition.

In my recollection of the Wheaton properties, Ponderosa  stood out as the dominant species, although I don't have anything but a spattering of doug fir back home for comparison...