thomas rubino

Yes, rock wool can be used around the outside of a riser. Superwool is better if available.

What to do when for three days the daytime highs do not top 53F and nighttime lows are 48F?
What you do NOT want to do is light off your masonry stove...
But when you only have wood heat, after a few days it starts to feel pretty chilly indoors...
The answer is the old Great Majestic wood cook stove in the kitchen!
It has hardly been used in several years, since Shorty moved in.
This morning I had enough. At 5:15 am, I found myself out at the woodshed, splitting some dry cedar & larch wood.
Now at 6:30 am, the whole house is nicely warm, but not overly warm like Shorty would have made it!
Hard to get a just little heat from a dragon... but the Great Majestic is happy to fill an important position during shoulder seasons!

Hey Adam, Great Idea!  
Heating with brick is the best way to stay toasty warm!
Matt Walker's Stoves are beautiful and super efficient.
You might also be interested in Peter Berg's Batchbox design, with a brick stratification bell.
I have three, as well as a Walker Black and White oven.
Here are some photos

Hey Ben, a bit of RMH history
Years ago, I asked Matt Walker how many half barrels an 8 " J can push, and his answer was 5 barrels.
Matt's 1/2-barrel idea was well before Batchboxes became mainstream. At that time, nobody knew the parameters between them.
He built his half-barrel J-Tube in a bar back east, stunning the fledgling RMH world!
Meanwhile, Lasse Holmes & friends were playing with fire on the west coast and invented the Batchbox design, which Peter then refined into an ultra-efficient powerhouse, and inserted it into a stratification chamber (Bell), which is known today as First Generation Batchboxes.
Matt was also the innovator who disassembled his 8" J-Tube with a piped mass and installed one of the new 6" Batchboxes into the 8" piped system.
This was where we learned that a 6" batch and an 8" J-Tube were comparable in performance output.

Fluffy went out partying last night and seems to have ended up in the wrong house this morning

Hey Aeron, since this is a shop heater rather than a home heater, you might find my shop build interesting.
A unique hybrid build: I use double barrels for instant heat and a brick bell to store it.
When I built this, I was told it would not work...  they were wrong, it works great in a poorly insulated shop in Northern Montana.
https://permies.com/t/279929/Rebuilding-remodeling-Shop-Dragon. This is a rebuild thread.
Here is my original thread from many years ago,
https://permies.com/t/94980/Brick-Bell-Shop-Heater
You might find this one interesting as well
https://permies.com/t/140568/Dragon-flames

After looking it over, I suspect you treat this with care and keep it clean.  
If it stops doing its job, you retire it and order a new one!
I really do not think this could be applied at home, but as there is a first time for everything... I could be mistaken...

Amazingly enough, there was zero literature that arrived with these.
The bag says "machine washed," not machine wash.
This is from their website.
"Simple. Wipe with a damp cloth or rinse in cool water with mild soap, then air dry. Avoid hot water or machine washing to protect the beeswax coating. Takes 30 seconds."
So no high heat, or you might damage the beeswax.

Hi all.
I recently made a purchase based on reading an article, rather than my usual method of seeing something in person.
Liz and I have been noticing that bread products seem to go stale or mold much faster than they used to.
Go to make dinner, and, oops, the bread has gone moldy again!
Gee, I would like a cheese sandwich, but the bread is hard and stale again!
Yes, freezing is an option, but not a favorite one.

Then we discovered these, https://eazywell.net/products/premium-100-cotton-beeswax-bread-bags-by-eazywell
In high demand and not as cheap as some offered through Amazon.
These come from France, but I feel the wait was worth it.

I like to bake Italian bread; it goes so well with my Italian cooking.
Sadly, it seemed to start going hard by the second day, and by day three, it was eaten or went to the piggies.
When I bake bread, we have a tendency to have bread and butter for our meal, it's just so good!
When our new bread bags arrived, I quickly decided that it was time to bake some bread!
As usual, I only made one loaf. Why make two if one goes to the piggies?
And also, as usual, we ate 2/3 of it right away (damn, it's good!).
The remaining third went into our new bag.
The following day, amazingly enough, the bread had not hard crusted, and was still soft and tasty!
Day three, four remained the same, but on day five, it was finally starting to form a hard crust!!!
I quickly polished off the last slice!
WOW, how cool is this!  We now take our store-bought bread out of the plastic bag and place it in our new bread bag!

How cool to locate a simple old-time product that is still made and still works!
Check them out, the wait is worth it!

https://eazywell.net/products/premium-100-cotton-beeswax-bread-bags-by-eazywell

Hi all;
Normally, you would find my posts in the energy or piggie forums.
This could be my very first post in the gardening forum!
Being home all the time now, I find I have more time on the computer... who would have guessed!

I watched a fascinating video with a totally crappy AI voice-over.
The gist of it was 2 tablespoons of yeast and one tablespoon of sugar, mixed in one quart of water.
After activating, this is diluted with 10 parts water, and the resulting mix is applied three times.
When first planting, when the foliage is greening, and lastly when fruiting.
They claimed this mixture introduced biodiversity in the soil, promoting strong root growth, with corresponding plant size and fruit quantity.

Is this true? It seems too easy...
Gerry thought it sounded like what biochar does to the soil.
Any expert gardeners here at Permies???

I mixed up a batch, and I gave my seaberries a nice yeast watering!
They were already growing like crazy. I am very pleased with the nursery that I purchased them from.
I'm hoping to see even more new growth now that I have set them to "rise"!