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Sand battery - thermal mass proto type.

 
Mart Hale
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Interesting experiment with sand battery.

Life on a farm is a school of patience; you can't hurry the crops or make an ox in two days.
Henri Alain

 
Mart Hale
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Life on a farm is a school of patience; you can't hurry the crops or make an ox in two days.
Henri Alain

 
Mart Hale
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Life on a farm is a school of patience; you can't hurry the crops or make an ox in two days.
Henri Alain

 
Mart Hale
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Looks like this gent found a good way of using thermal mass in concrete to heat their home.

https://medium.com/@upnorthandoffgrid/6-heating-systems-5c5727c1607e

Combining heat pump + masonary heater I do find innovative.

Life on a farm is a school of patience; you can't hurry the crops or make an ox in two days.
Henri Alain

 
Mart Hale
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Use of excess solar to store heat in sand.

Life on a farm is a school of patience; you can't hurry the crops or make an ox in two days.
Henri Alain

 
Mart Hale
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Life on a farm is a school of patience; you can't hurry the crops or make an ox in two days.
Henri Alain

 
Mart Hale
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Testing different types of sand.

Life on a farm is a school of patience; you can't hurry the crops or make an ox in two days.
Henri Alain

 
Mart Hale
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The comparison of graphite verses the sand I found most interesting.

Life on a farm is a school of patience; you can't hurry the crops or make an ox in two days.
Henri Alain

 
Bever Branson
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Sand Battery Comments Please!! July 2025

Before I put the blades on my baby windmill!!

Stove Top Element to 400 watt AC wild windmill:
*Cement Paver
*Canning Pot
*Antique mine cart forged wheel in the bottom
*Bricks with air holes
*Old HubCap
*Play Sand
More sand will be added if any heat generated.

I had information that a heating element creates a circuit so no neutral is in this Iteration #1.

#6 copper Wire 1 pc each end connected to a prong makes a kind of half hoop
#10 stranded wire wraps the ends of #6
*Ceramic Insulator pieces for electric wires
 Attached to 2 energy conducting wires from the windmill to keep the connection away from the side of the pot
*Three AC wild energy conducting wires attached to the #6 hoop to send energy to the heating element . see above
*Ground wire from a satDish we had once, attached to the Canning Pot, then goes through wall outside grounding to the soil

I do have refractory insulation
I do have a heat reading gun
I do have a multimeter
I also have some plaster of paris

IMG_20250726_132223.jpg
[Thumbnail for IMG_20250726_132223.jpg]
IMG_20250726_113728.jpg
Old wheel in bottom
Old wheel in bottom
IMG_20250726_132509-2.jpg
[Thumbnail for IMG_20250726_132509-2.jpg]
IMG_20250726_141450-2.jpg
[Thumbnail for IMG_20250726_141450-2.jpg]
 
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Bever Branson wrote:Sand Battery Comments Please!! July 2025
Stove Top Element to 400 watt AC wild
*Cement Paver
*Canning Pot
*Antique mine cart forged wheel in the bottom
*Bricks with air holes
*Old HubCap
*Play Sand




Hi Bever,

Thanks for sharing your experiments with sand battery.


I have found that the elements will short out if they are placed in the sand,   I find it better to use them as they were designed with a pot over them and the elements not in the sand.      

That said,   thanks for sharing your experiment,  I look forward to see how you intend to use your sand battery.

Cheers.

Life on a farm is a school of patience; you can't hurry the crops or make an ox in two days.
Henri Alain

 
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July 2025 - sand battery stove top element

Are you saying put sand into a pot, then pot on top of the stove element?
Maybe in that scenario the stove element rests on the old hubcap, sand any sand...
 
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Bever Branson wrote:July 2025 - sand battery stove top element

Are you saying put sand into a pot, then pot on top of the stove element?
Maybe in that scenario the stove element rests on the old hubcap, sand any sand...



Yes,  that is what I am suggesting.    

Mike on youtube has had success putting the coil in bout taking it apart and making a spiral  in the sand...    


https://www.youtube.com/@off-gridsurvivalmike8120/videos

Mike has several experiments going with sand batteries...    Some of them have been running for many months.

Life on a farm is a school of patience; you can't hurry the crops or make an ox in two days.
Henri Alain

 
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July 2025 Sand Battery with stove element:

I was pleased to find I could bend #6 copper wire, so the coil like Mike sounds very very feasible!!!

I will look for his topic

Thank you!
I'm tired of being afraid of electrical wires dernit
 
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Bever Branson wrote:July 2025 Sand Battery with stove element:

I was pleased to find I could bend #6 copper wire, so the coil like Mike sounds very very feasible!!!

I will look for his topic

Thank you!
I'm tired of being afraid of electrical wires dernit



Yeah,  Mike has done great work, but he is not on permies as I am aware, but look at all his other videos, there is tons there.

Life on a farm is a school of patience; you can't hurry the crops or make an ox in two days.
Henri Alain

 
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2025 Sand Battery with Stove Element

Thank you Mart!!
 
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Life on a farm is a school of patience; you can't hurry the crops or make an ox in two days.
Henri Alain

 
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It looks like a pretty cool project.  I often wonder how difficult it would be to do a DIY heat exchanger with a primitive boiler either wood or waste oil driven on the outside and utilize a pump with coolant filled lines to move the heat indoors.

https://www.youtube.com/c/MikesGarageRoute66
https://www.windsolarforum.com

 
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Boiler, coolant filled lines heat to house sounds like a great project. Waste oil sounds like a longer boiler heat scenario than trudging out to refill wood fire.

My neighbor has a hot water trough attached to copper coils heating from a little woodstove for occasional soaking tired muscles and pain.  It's set up in an outhouse looking structure outside and makes an interesting rustic addition to the place
 
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https://www.batsand.com

Commercial use of sand as thermal mass.

Life on a farm is a school of patience; you can't hurry the crops or make an ox in two days.
Henri Alain

 
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Sand Battery 2025 AC wild

July 2025. Thanks Mart Hale for the bat sand design link.
BatSand tech is familiar!  I've seen designs for large scale well over 45 KW too.
The fact there are blueprints included bode well for buyers who need credibility at the permits level. I think i sent the BatSand idea to a family member moving to Italy.
 
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Bever Branson wrote:Sand Battery 2025 AC wild

July 2025. Thanks Mart Hale for the bat sand design link.
BatSand tech is familiar!  I've seen designs for large scale well over 45 KW too.
The fact there are blueprints included bode well for buyers who need credibility at the permits level. I think i sent the BatSand idea to a family member moving to Italy.




Yeah,   I think the next level is instead of resistive heating as they are doing is for them to combine in a heat pump as they do with modern heat pumps that cool the room and use the heat to heat hot water for showers.          I have posted several designs in thhis thread that are commercial I might have posted somebody that has already done that....

Indeed when you have commercial ventures doing this it does prove the tech is moving forward.
 
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Interesting,    use of quartz tube heating....

Use of alum shavings mixed with sand looks promising....

Life on a farm is a school of patience; you can't hurry the crops or make an ox in two days.
Henri Alain

 
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Life on a farm is a school of patience; you can't hurry the crops or make an ox in two days.
Henri Alain

 
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I have seen a WWII immersion water heater that would be placed in a 55 gallon barrel. The base and burn chamber a donut shape that rested on the bottom of the drum and the chimney and feed pipe/air inlet up to the top of the barrel. At the top a vessel of a couple of gallons held diesel or waste oil that drips oil down the feed pipe to the burn chamber. No reason the heating medium couldn't be sand.
immersion-heater.jpg
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Our inability to change everything should not stop us from changing what we can.

 
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Robert Ray wrote:I'll try and pull up a picture today, I have seen a WWII immersion water heater that would be placed in a 55 gallon barrel. The base and burn chamber a donut shape that rested on the bottom of the drum and the chimney and feed stack up to the top of the barrel. At the top a vessel of a couple of gallon vessel held diesel or waste oil that  drips oil down the chimney to the burn chamber. No reason the heating medium couldn't be sand.



Thanks for sharing.        The problem I could see is that the dry sand would insulate the tube and create furnace like conditions like a rocket stove,   and a rocket stove you don't want metal in the hot part of the chamber as it will deteriorate  quickly...        

I would love to see the design,  I have been thinking ceramic on the inside of the chamber might be the way to go...

Life on a farm is a school of patience; you can't hurry the crops or make an ox in two days.
Henri Alain

 
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Never having built a RMH but seeing that some use pipe in their construction, maybe someone could offer their opinion in how long pipe lasts within an insulated construction. Temperatures within an oil drip stove would be nowhere near the temps achieved in a RMH. Duct hose and a bilge fan could be used to exhaust fumes from a structure.

Our inability to change everything should not stop us from changing what we can.

 
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Sent out a couple feelers and by noon had an immersion heater gifted to me. Will fit in a 30-gallon galvanized garbage can. Need to fab a drip can and will add a square of carbon felt in the drip chamber I don't have to drop paper in to start pan.
used-immersion-heater.jpg
[Thumbnail for used-immersion-heater.jpg]

Our inability to change everything should not stop us from changing what we can.

 
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Robert Ray wrote:Sent out a couple feelers and by noon had an immersion heater gifted to me. Will fit in a 30-gallon galvanized garbage can. Need to fab a drip can and will add a square of carbon felt in the drip chamber I don't have to drop paper in to start pan.




Very nice...    

I was thinking that could come in handy to give frost protection in a green house.       that design looks simple enough that one could make one from pipe and a propane tank...


I was thinking about something like this for frost protection, move barrels next to plants cover,   then heat up the water in the barrels.

Life on a farm is a school of patience; you can't hurry the crops or make an ox in two days.
Henri Alain

 
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Robert Ray wrote:Sent out a couple feelers and by noon had an immersion heater gifted to me. Will fit in a 30-gallon galvanized garbage can. Need to fab a drip can and will add a square of carbon felt in the drip chamber I don't have to drop paper in to start pan.



I found them on ebay...  you got a real deal..

https://www.ebay.com/itm/287078011942?_skw=MILITARY+SURPLUS+IMMERSION+HEATER&itmmeta=01KFKYPH0D0DPXPTMY0ZS210ES&hash=item42d72ed426:g:GUUAAeSwxEBpaZ71&itmprp=enc%3AAQALAAABAO7PUuNWmJ%2B%2BUShgI9tQz%2FpZr08G91R5nGqFFSIiY7uiMgFLI3iWX7s%2FUCNHm4OxOxr7HrNbsJduObR6kfV8HZ2gURDrq%2BTaaV37xxPKQUyvh7CTfJfjJZ%2FUtVB%2Bkzas%2B330mo51zBkaG2m7BYvGGNOLD%2F4EvuZnG5IyOwUhykppPfIm0OVtCVxnsWFnWxGANvm19v3tr6PY5oESczOyu%2FqEUa%2BCk2T295DQnfreNgCihHL5HeUnPE%2F548P%2B4Ohde3oFBsmSR2dGvd1Pgf%2Frj5bnvgmRbQ69KsGN4wwoyoRtXJcKjr3ZcHQz580VIyPt5sibtVCLDYLFn6vFkR2nP6A%3D%7Ctkp%3ABk9SR7aQ2v78Zg


Life on a farm is a school of patience; you can't hurry the crops or make an ox in two days.
Henri Alain

 
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Sand battery  with ducting.....

I was looking at this and was thinking this would be cool to test with forced air from a rocket stove...

Life on a farm is a school of patience; you can't hurry the crops or make an ox in two days.
Henri Alain

 
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