Mycelium Core Door

I've had a few good talks with Paul this week, as well as with Jeff the Boot, and the mycelium insulation project has turned into this:

The mycelium core door project for the 2022 Permaculture Technology Jamboree.

I plan to fabricate this door conjunctively with the Wool Core Door, using the same basic design principals.

The current plan is to mill up some wheaton labs trees into 3/8 inch boards, ship-lap the edges, and make a hollow-core door - then stuff it with innoculated sawdust from the milling portion.  

The door structure method might look a little like this, except the mycelium will bond without the use of adhesive, and it'll be thicker.


Might use some dowels at the edges, kind of like this, to reinforce as the mycelium creates a good bond.

(source: https://www.gsd.harvard.edu/project/the-littleton-trials/)

The overall method of mycelium core growth will be kinda like this, where we stuff the cavity with partially innoculated sawdust substrate and loosely wrap in reclaimed plastic sheeting.  Open to non-plastic suggestions.  Could bury it in mulch or straw for a week or three, maybe, to maintain humidity.  Note, these pictures show you a roof cavity of a tiny home.  Mycelium doesn't really know the difference between a roof and a door . . .



(source: https://mushroomtinyhouse.com/post/51145560727/roof-filling)

We'll assemble the pre-cut pieces and stuff it with the core substrate up at Cooper Cabin.

This door, as of now, does not have a pre-determined home, so I need to establish dimensions that will make it usable for future lab projects.  It will probably be a thick-ish door, suitable for exterior use, and use a magnetic closure mechanism, as has become customary at Wheaton Labs.  Then it'll just need a beefy handle on each side for yankin'.

Notes:
I've sourced a variety of oyster mushroom spawn that really likes softwoods, so we should be good with the conifers at the lab.
This door project won't yield fruiting bodies as a byproduct, but maybe I can stuff some buckets of extra substrate to feed folks in a few weeks.

Questions:
Door dimensions?  Possible future applications?
Will the mill be working?
Sourcing and heating water at Cooper Cabin?
General carpentry feasibility at Cooper Cabin?  
Planing, jointing, and ship-lap of WL-milled 3/8 planks?

There are some peeps here advocating that the door should be for the dog star.

paul wheaton wrote:There are some peeps here advocating that the door should be for the dog star.

Works for me.

Maybe I can get somebody to take some measurements so I can do some chicken-scratch drawings.

I was talking to Samantha about doing two doors of similar build, one for the mycelium core, and another with raw or ferment-cleaned wool core.  Would it make sense to build them both to Dogstar's dimensions?

Hmmm ... Maybe the back door for cooper cabin?

paul wheaton wrote:Hmmm ... Maybe the back door for cooper cabin?

I'm guessing a regular, rectangular door, rather than the round one that was intended?  Though maybe round is feasible, apart from Skye's hardware element.

@Beau Davidson
"The overall method of mycelium core growth will be kinda like this, where we stuff the cavity with partially innoculated sawdust substrate and loosely wrap in reclaimed plastic sheeting.  Open to non-plastic suggestions."

Number one non plastic suggestion for this project (hope all this bacteria wont eat the wood).
https://climatecrocks.com/2022/02/18/scoby-doo-plastic-substitute-from-kombucha

I make my own kombucha and have come across this on several occasions. I'd like to know if it works well. Cheers!

Beau Davidson wrote:

paul wheaton wrote:Hmmm ... Maybe the back door for cooper cabin?

I'm guessing a regular, rectangular door, rather than the round one that was intended?  Though maybe round is feasible, apart from Skye's hardware element.

Yes - although the back door for cooper cabin ...  might be an interesting shape ...

J Kerley wrote:Number one non plastic suggestion for this project (hope all this bacteria wont eat the wood).
I make my own kombucha and have come across this on several occasions. I'd like to know if it works well. Cheers!

Scobys are cool.  I've messed around with scobys.  I mean, who in their right mind isn't fascinated by symbiotic cultures of bacteria and yeast?

But I'm not going to use scoby plastic in this project.  It is an unnecessary complication, and generally doesn't play well with moisture, which I need to retain for the mycorrhizal colonization period.  Then, scobys tend to get really ganky on whatever surface they're sitting on as they dry.

I would rather limit the experimental aspects of this project.

There will, however, be some scoby fun happening in the food preservation track.  Check it out: https://permies.com/wiki/178200/Preserve-Million-Calories-Food-Preservation#1406695

Will the Mycelium stabilize the sawdust, and reduce the air circulation? How do you achieve stasis? What if the Mycelium proceeds to eat away the door skin?

Tom Philips wrote:Will the Mycelium stabilize the sawdust, and reduce the air circulation?

Yes

How do you achieve stasis?

After water is reduced below 10% through air drying, the mycelium goes into hybernation and eventually desiccates.  Similar stasis properties to air-dried lumber at that point, as biological processes are concerned.

What if the Mycelium proceeds to eat away the door skin?

It will colonize via exposed surface area - so the sawdust will be completely engulfed and partially or completely consumed, but the mycelium will not infiltrate deeply into the skin - just enough to form a surface bond.  If you observe oyster (Pleuterous) mushrooms in the wild, you'll notice that it grows between the bark and the sapwood.  The fruiting bodies eventually displace the bark, then the mycelium has no space to occupy with available nutrients.  At this point, it gives way to other fungal species and insects that continue the decomposition process - but the oyster mycelium's work is done.  Make sense?

Cool idea! I guess Beau Davidson is a fun guy! Any idea of the insulation value of the door?

T Blankinship wrote:Cool idea! I guess Beau Davidson is a fun guy! Any idea of the insulation value of the door?

haha. Fun. Guy.  

Studies show it meets or exceeds r-value of fiberglass batts and mineral wool.  

here's a bunch of uncle Google's suggestions for further reading.

I'm at the airport, heading for the Lab.  Continuing to think through this design.  I have some limited sketches, but I have yet to determine the thickness of the door, so it will be a bit TBD until I can have a look at the actual place of installation.  I am thinking about 2 peg-fastened CLT panels with a mycelium core.  I'm also hoping to put a little interior truth window showing off the purty mycelium core, but that will depend a bit on what glass panes are available.

Here's some picky pictures of the actual place of installation, and some sketchy sketches of the current design.

The door is *not* a rectangle. (Rectangles are boring, anyway.) The left (interior perspective) side of the door runs along this forked roundwood post, rendering a subtle curve, with a wider clearance at the food than the head.



Paul likes the way the greenhouse door was constructed, so I'm ripping off that design a little bit for the interior framing. Here's what its internal structure looks like.


On this door, If the mycelium successfully bonds with the interior and exterior facades, then the angle braces will have been unnecessary, but I'm putting them in there so that it will be redundantly structurally stable even without the mycelium core.

Here's a wee sketch of the proposed internal structure for this door.  I'm thinking 2x4 studs, matching the thickness of the wall.  That will leave a 3.5 inch wide cavity for the mycelium to fill.


Shrunk the door because Paul says the building grows and shrinks a lot with the seasons.


Here's the idea for the exterior.  Since this structure is site-harvest, roundwood timberframe, it has a little seasonal wiggle to it, so Paul likes to have a good amount of clearance between the door and its frame, and then we rely on a protruding exterior facade to overlap with the exterior siding of the structure to create a seal.

I'll run boards across the surface to mount the hinges, which will be floated to the left so that the left side also has a facade-overlap seal.

Latch mechanism is forthcoming . . .

Door progress.

Grey helped me locate a root ball for the preonoke hinge.



It was deep into Fred's plot, so I went in and slabbed it with one of the Lab's electric chainsaws.  That way I could haul it out without traction.  There was a lot of interest in freehanding slabs with a chainsaw without an alaskan mill.  If anyone is curious about that, I'll split it off into another post.  Basically it looks like this:



Here's my log turning into a slab.















Trimmed up the door's exterior skin and got a dry fit.







2-by prototype of the hinge.



Back to the shop with the root/buttress slabs, where we begin to fashion the hinge.













We were able to source some spent substrate (used mushroom fruiting blocks from a commercial mushroom farm - thanks Mother Fungi!!!) to fill the door cavity.

Preonneke hinge up and swinging!  What a fun project.  Literally could not have done it without Rich, Mike and Amir.

We had a good ol' fashioned door stuffin' party yesterday.  It was so much fun.  

David is working on the handles, furring, and magnetic latches.

I had lots of thoughts today about the future of this door.  Full write-up to come.

Progress report on the mycelium insulated door.

Due to the (ehem) sub-optimal laboratory environment up at Cooper Cabin, the goal of this project became an examination of various sanitation protocol tolerances when installing a mixture of live second-flush myceliated substrate and site-generated sawdust.

The biggest hiccup so far is contamination with either trichoderma or penicillium - not uncommon in these endeavors.  There is still a possibility that the vigorous Pleurotus ostreatus mycelium will out-compete the contaminant, but the outcome is yet to be determined.  Although the contamination likely orginated in the commercially produced pine cladding, the reporposed support structure, or our casual install process, it is my thinking that the use of 100% pre-colonized substrate for installation will yield far more reliable results.  This will be the starting point for subsequent trials.

Interesting development this week is that the mycelium is actually fruiting through the toungue-and-groove skins, yielding delicious, edible oyster mushrooms.  Yum!


source: caleb's brk

The limitations of installing this door in short order, while montoring its progress from afar render me dependant upon the monitoring and recorded observations of others, so I am deeply endebted to Caleb for his attention to the progress.  Thank you Caleb - pie for you!

Beau M. Davidson wrote:Progress report on the mycelium insulated door.

Any updates on this project available?

Who won the battle for the core?

Did the wood survive?

Yeah, wood is 100% intact.  Oyster mycelium won.  We did pull out some of the contaminated substrate through the window and replaced it with clean, fresh straw.  I wish we had stuffed it with mycelium, but there wasn't any on site at the time.  

Door was ctually still drying when I was there last July, which was a surprise to me.  I have greatly reduced moisture in subsequent projects.

Beau M. Davidson wrote:Yeah, wood is 100% intact.  Oyster mycelium won.  We did pull out some of the contaminated substrate through the window and replaced it with clean, fresh straw.  I wish we had stuffed it with mycelium, but there wasn't any on site at the time.  

Door was ctually still drying when I was there last July, which was a surprise to me.  I have greatly reduced moisture in subsequent projects.

Thanks for the update! I can't help but wonder if the straw might wind up as mycelium anyways.

Is there a thermal imager at the labs or some way to verify how insulating it is? If this door is doing that primary function well, and providing food, AND providing medicine, it should be called the hat trick door...

Coydon Wallham wrote:Is there a thermal imager at the labs or some way to verify how insulating it is? If this door is doing that primary function well, and providing food, AND providing medicine (hope someone harvested the penicillin for the apothocary), it should be called the hat trick door...

Everything you say is true.

Also, my door is probably not very snug.  I expected some leaks areound the edges.  The intent is to maintain a felted wool pad at all closure points to improve seal and reduce draft.

I'd still like to see some imaging.

I have been trying to hunt down some long term (as in newer) information about that mushroom tiny house that you have references for the reason to use the mycelium. But I won't brave the app formerly known as twitter at this point in time and on tumbler nothing new seems to have surfaced.
Is there anything where I could read up more technically about this stuff? (I own mycelium running and entangled life but most references to insulation there are either old data (mycelium running) or more general in Entangled life..) I am so reluctant to just message the company who is rather oblique on their website regarding their stuff (not that I do not understand but also they said they'd incorporated to drive this mycelium shift, but tm and patents will in fact ALAYS slow things down, sigh) I am just so curious about this stuff and expect some building to have to happen within the next 4 years or so

But I am also a bit confused: was the Oyster mushroom harvest intended?

Thank for any information on this
S

I never heard Beau mention the fruiting bodies as part of the plan. To clarify since this is the internet, my comment about food and medicine production was a light hearted way to emphasize how, even when things go wrong with this technique, it results in more positives than negatives.

It's amazing that those oysters could grow through the tongue-and-groove connections in that door...

Why are door jams/edge of doors done square?  If the were done at a slight angle just greater than the radius of curvature from the hinge they would pinch shut on closing and have clearance while opening but closing tight 2 directions to the jam when closed.  And if they were built in stair steps the thermal bridging path could be longer and more sealing surfaces.  A single stair step doubles the number of sealing surfaces.  Picture angles are exaggerated so they show clearly.  Yellow and light green are the door and white is the jam.  Rest is seals

C. Letellier wrote:Why are door jams/edge of doors done square?  If the were done at a slight angle just greater than the radius of curvature from the hinge they would pinch shut on closing and have clearance while opening but closing tight 2 directions to the jam when closed.  And if they were built in stair steps the thermal bridging path could be longer and more sealing surfaces.  A single stair step doubles the number of sealing surfaces.  Picture angles are exaggerated so they show clearly.  Yellow and light green are the door and white is the jam.  Rest is seals

That's very much like what we have in mind for the Round Door project.

https://permies.com/t/41290/designing-door-hobbit-house-style#323175
https://permies.com/wiki/177516/Building-Door-PTJ-Project-led#1394589

Sonja Corterier wrote:I have been trying to hunt down some long term (as in newer) information about that mushroom tiny house that you have references for the reason to use the mycelium. But I won't brave the app formerly known as twitter at this point in time and on tumbler nothing new seems to have surfaced.
Is there anything where I could read up more technically about this stuff? (I own mycelium running and entangled life but most references to insulation there are either old data (mycelium running) or more general in Entangled life..) I am so reluctant to just message the company who is rather oblique on their website regarding their stuff (not that I do not understand but also they said they'd incorporated to drive this mycelium shift, but tm and patents will in fact ALAYS slow things down, sigh) I am just so curious about this stuff and expect some building to have to happen within the next 4 years or so

But I am also a bit confused: was the Oyster mushroom harvest intended?

Thank for any information on this
S

No, wasn't in the plan.  Entertaining, though.  :)

I've talked about it in a half dozen other places on permies at this point.  I install much drier now than I did on this door project.  

There is a mountain of data out there.  Search "mycelium insulation" in any scientific database.  Hundreds to Thousands of studies to date.  Though none (that I'm aware) of my specific approach.

Here the ten-year update of Ecovative's tiny house: https://www.instagram.com/ecovative/p/CwV7TtBODYF/?img_index=1

10 Years of Mushroom Tiny House! #throwbackthursday 🍄 In 2013, we tested Mushroom® Insulation, a sustainable building material alternative where the walls were alive and grew in place. Mushroom® Insulation grew into wood forms over the course of a few days, forming an airtight seal. It dried over the next month (kind of like how concrete cures) and you were left with an airtight wall that is extremely strong. The perks: Saves on material costs, great thermal performance, fire resistant and environmentally friendly!

A number of advancements have been made in our mycelium technology over the past decade.
Since Mushroom Tiny House, we’ve developed our AirMycelium™ platform, with the ability to produce millions of pounds of @myforestfoods tasty mycelium bacon and @foragerofficial mycelium textile and foam materials each year. There is now a new facility next door for @mushroompackaging 🍄Through it all, positioned outside of Ecovative HQ, the Mushroom Tiny House stands as a constant reminder of our “roots”.