Willie Shannon

Thank you, I appreciate your comments and your help.

If you go back and read my post I talked about using fire brick splits in the burn tunnel, which I now know is called the port. I wouldn't use bare cement board at the port area.

Anyway, I was really just asking to see if anyone has tried it, I guess no one has. I'll try it out when I get time to mock it up and report back.

Sorry when I said burn tunnel I meant the hallway leading from the burn chamber to the heat riser.

Yes scots John, thats the gist of what I'm shooting for. I'll use firebrick in the areas that get hot and just paint the top area with water glass to keep it from burning. I'm going to try to mock it up this weekend using a 60" 5 minute riser and 2 55 gallon barrels stacked.

Thanks,

Has anyone ever experimented with cement board coated with water glass to create a "batch box" for a rocket stove? These materials are very cheap and it seems to me if you place fire brick splits at the burn tunnel end of the chamber and just coat the rest with water glass it should be able to withstand prolonged use.

I'm thinking about trying this, creating a box, coating the inside with fireglass, wrapping the outside with ceramic fiber blanket and then covering that with another layer of cement board for finishing. Any reason this wouldn't work?

Thanks,
Wileythenord

I did an experiment with some store bought spaghetti squash and spaghetti squash seed bought at the local big box mart. So far my germination is identical with both. I planted roughly 12 seeds of each in their own seedling pot and I have 5 seedlings of each variety sprouting.

I love Paul's method, but all that is mentioned in B2E isn't the real world. In one breath paul says they don't like his plants because of the water and in the next breath says he plants extra for the bugs to have food too...Nothing scientific in his hypothesis.

I went the seed route too, and out of 100 seeds I've only had 4 germinate. I'm still calling it a win because I paid like 1/3 the price for the seeds rather than the cutting, but I was hoping for a little higher germination rate than that :p

I was hoping to make it semi-invasive on my property for rabbit, chicken and other feed as a supplement.

Without the mass a rocket stove isn't going to gain you much, you will probably be burning more often to keep the temps up in the airstream.

The stove in that video isn't quite a masonary heater as I believe all of those brick are refractory and helping to insulate the burn for complete combustion, not for radiating heat. This stove would still need masonary brick at the exhaust end in order to hold and radiate the heat over time. Which leads to more and more weight. If your airstream was super insulated you might be able to just run off a rocket stove burn for a while, but I'm guessing airstreams aren't known for their insulation...

You might have better luck looking with a modified "pocket rocket" or still using a bench but using a shorter run and understanding that you won't be gaining the burn eff you really wanted the rocket heater for in the first place.

Of course, I'm a newb, I'll yield to the advice of Allen or Santamax or a Wisner, they will have more info for you.

We have gone through the same thing with part of our family. When I met my wife, her son and her was living in a triple wide trailer that was upside down due to 2008 and had no chance of making up the difference, I had just lost my house after draining my savings to keep it while looking for a job for a year and after we dated for several months we talked about just rebooting.

She filed bankruptcy and we bought a camper and moved it onto some land. We started building our house debt free and started setting up our land for the future. After we got married she got pregnant, so we had to make some sacrifices and get into the basement, but we made it happen. Now we save money until we can afford the next piece to the house and we do it. All the while raising our own food and enjoying life on the edge of the woods and the river. I'm teaching my stepson how to live off the land and how to live debt free.

Our family and friends have not been supportive, calling us crazy telling us to go in debt for a house or even to rent a house. Some of our friends have said we can't raise a baby and a 7 year old in a basement, what if someone calls DHS? We've even had local pastors drop by and offer assistance. Its crazy! I'm an engineer and my wife is an Estitician, we make plenty of money and give our children everything they need. I can't believe other people try to make our business their business!

Keep on keeping on, we all understand what you are going through and we know you are doing the right thing!

Hey there, welcome to permies!

I live in Meigs County, TN, not sure which county you are in. Red Clay is the norm around here.

How quick are you looking to get the soil fixed?

You could gather the leaves from the back side of your property for a couple of seasons, shred them and compost them and after you have a good amount of leaf mold spread it over your soil.

You could also obtain sawdust, usually free if you are willing to pick it up from a sawmiller, and manure from a cow/horse/pig farmer to create a nice back to eden type soil over your bad spot.

Another approach would be to just create large compost piles with manure, grass and sawdust for a few seasons and spread that over your area.

If all that doesn't sound appealing, you could haul in topsoil from somewhere else to cover it.

The last resort:

Renate Haeckler wrote:Willie,

How do you feed mangels to chickens? I grew them last year and they were large and hard. We cooked them (curiosity) and they were quite good, the kids and I decided we wanted them for us, LOL. Cooking and mashing beets every day for the chickens seems rather labor-intensive!

Slice em and put the discs of beet out with the chickens, it may take a few minutes to slice one up, but the original poster was looking for something to grow to supplement feed. A 20lb beet will go a long way towards feeding some chickens. I bet after harvesting you could immediately feed the greens to the chickens too, chickens seem to like normal beet greens and swiss chard readily.