Scott Arico

I know that this is not exactly what you all are talking about, but given that a lot of the trees West of the Rockies are conifers, I thought that this was relevant. Has anyone heard of 'stump culture'? Apparently it is a way of coppicing conifers, and a lot of christmast tree farms use it. Here is a link that describes it: http://www.mast-producing-trees.org/2010/11/stump-culture-coppice-for-conifers/

Kaleb Rolly wrote:Hello,

If I were to use cuttings from this tree or grow from the seeds, what would be the chances of producing thornless offspring.
Kaleb

I have seen here that the thornless gene should be dominant, but that assumes a lot of things. For one, each of the flowers are going to have the possibility of a thorned gene being present and could produce throned offspring. Also, it assumes that the throned gene is completely recessive. There are some gene that are marked as recessive, but can be phenotypically present anyway, especially if it is a case of incomplete dominance. If it were a case of incomplete dominance, than even your heterozygote individuals would exhibit some thornedness, as well as the homozygous recessive individuals. I do not know the answer here, but that is something to keep in mind.

One thing you could do, if you have the time and spcae, is you could do a simple breeding experiment and collect seeds and plant them. Once the saplings are old enough to exhibit a throned trait (if they are going to), just remove all of the ones that have throns and only allow the thornless individuals to survive. This would increase the rate of this gene's trasnmission through the generations, and as long as you keep an eye on future seedlings and thin as necessary, all of your future trees should be thronless. You could even go so far as to take the pollen from thronless tree and physically pollinate other thronless trees to ensure that that is what happens (this will take much more work, but has a lower risk of throned offspring).

Hope this helps!!

The quote below is from another forum post, but I thought that it was good in illustrating my point:

Justin Jones wrote:
Input: woody biomass

Output:
- char
- heat (in the vein of RMH)

Ideally, I would combine such a system with some sort of willow and/or black locust coppicing system so that I am continuing to generate wood but also have plants pulling mroe carbon into ground and themselves all the time.

I am looking similarly for an efficient way to generate heat and char to stave off the oil demons while building my soil's carbon store. In that line of reasoning, has anyone ever hooked up a wood-gasifier to an RMH? My thinking is that the gas output would burn in the combustion chamber and generate heat (as all fires do), and instead of generating ashes that have minimal carbon and available nutrients, using the biochar from the gasifier to sequester carbon into my soils. Could such a setup create a carbon negative wood stove?

OR, would buring the wood gas in an RMH generate more heat than the apparatus is able to withstand and create a maintanance nightmare?

Thanks for your response Glenn. I am still unsure about the insulated barrel causing a loss of "push" through the core itself. I would imagine that retaining heat would provide more available resources for the mass farther downstream. I guess on explanation is that the drop in temperature from the burn chamber to the barrel is what provides the first "push" and then having a hot chimney continues the pull with its negative pressure? But the same can be said of having more heat available in the system initially that would heat a chimney more... Any thoughts to help with my spiraling thoughts?

I have been compiling (more like hoarding) information about RMH's for a while now, and am trying to figure out some things regarding designs, construciton, etc. so that when I build my more permanent abode, I have a good head-start on things.

Context: I want to build a RMH that uses a tamped earth floor as the mass and heats the house via radiant heating through the floors. I figure that since heat rises, and no one likes a cold floor, that I can kill many birds with one stove. Follow Up: Will insulating the barrel prevent the secondary burn of the flue gases that make these stoves efficient and effective heaters? Or, will it allow a much stronger draw and retention of overall heat that can be transferred into my mass and utilized later (ideally what I want)?

My first of two questions is, how does completely insulating the barrel affect performance of the stove?

Follow Up: Will insulating the barrel prevent the secondary burn of the flue gases that make these stoves efficient and effective heaters? Or, will it allow a much stronger draw and retention of overall heat that can be transferred into my mass and utilized later (ideally what I want)?

And my second main question is, why does the exhaust pipe have to come away from the burn chamber instead of going directly underneath it as you pass the hot air into your mass? What I mean is, since fluids flowing in two different directions exchange heat the most efficiently, and because we want a hot chimney downstream (think of the air like a river) of the burn chamber, wouldn't it make sense to have a section of your chimney pass under the burn chamber to guarntee this effect and also more effective heat transfer to your mass? Or, would doing so rob the burn chamber, and ultimately the whole system, of necessary heat that will be used to combust the flue gasses secondarily and thereby generate the efficient burn we all know and love?

...Remember that wood's ability to suck up moisture and transport it along its grain structure almost defies the laws of physics. (You can only 'suck' water upwards about 30 feet using atmospheric pressure; how on Earth do trees grow and transpire moisture up to over 100 feet tall?!? They have wicked cool tree-magic.)

There was actually some contention in the late 80's and 90's in the plant physiology field as to how trees are able to move so much water so high. After many studies, what they discovered is that the evapo-transpiration hypothesis was the best explanation for this tree magic. Essentially, when water evaporates from the leaves for cooling, it creates a partial vaccuum inside the leaf that will pull water from the xylem to relieve that pressure difference. And if all the leaves are doing it, than it can create very large pressure differences that will move water hundreds of feet up. Have you ever seen a little tree or herbaceous plant with water coming out of the ends of its leaves/needles? (you should only see it on a cool morning) Well, that is the plant trying to refill its cavitated xylem where air bubbles have formed becasue the pressure was too great. This is also why girdling works in most species, as the xylem is severed and no more water is available and those buds do in fact dry the tree out rather quickly.