I think a bit of history about how I got here might interest some people.
I am
native to Atlanta Ga and currently live in Smyrna. I am a techie by nature and vocation. Much of what follows is a long tortuous path of doubt and discomfort that has lead me to a new view on how I think I
should live my life. All the reading and research over the past year has lead me to believe I am not living life...only surviving it. I will change this for the better. I have to find a way to make it happen.
Over the past 15 years or so I have weathered maybe half a dozen ice storms. It seems I have had the misfortune to always live in an area where the power goes out. I can honestly tell you that any modern house these days is completely worthless when the power goes out. I lack the vocabulary to express how much I HATE being cold.
bare with me I have tons of ideas and thoughts ping ponging around my skull right now.
I started my journey by researching alternative housing methods. I found earthships,
straw bale, earthbag ect... I then started thinking about these types of houses being off grid. My research lead me to finding different ways of heating an off grid house and that lead me to
rocket mass heaters. Even as a little kid I never liked fireplaces as I viewed them as a total waste of a tree since all the heat goes right out the chimney. All of this lead me to
permaculture and somewhere along the way I found a link to this site after watching one of the lectures by Paul.
So now here I am and convinced I want to live outside a large
city off the grid on my own
land with no building restrictions. I've never had much desire to live in a cave or anything but after watching tons and tons of videos on the subject it makes perfect since and I would only limited by my imagination and checkbook.
So there you go an abridged version of what has lead me to this forum.
This past weekend I made my first attempt to build a
rocket mass heater.
Try #1 didn't go very well. I was using some left over
concrete paver bricks, just the brick, I didn't sheath it in
cob or anything yet. Anyway I created the base with the J tube with a 6" x 26"
cast iron riser(without the insulated sheath ) , 30 gallon drum. I was not getting
enough draw so the flame and the smoke were coming out the
wood feed side.
Try #2 I changed the config of the brick to make the wood feed horizontal to the ground and the draw was much better and I didn't get any smoke or flame back.
I really want to the wood feed to be vertical because then I can put longer peaces of wood in and it will self feed. I am convinced I need to insulate the riser reducing the space inside the drum and play with the dimensions of the J-tube also. I've never done anything like this before so I will have to play around with it until I get it right. I'll get it to work because I will not stop fiddling with it until I do.