Jeff Watt

craig howard wrote:If you add some mass to it, there is less chance of burning the syrup.
The most critical time is right near when it's done.

I don’t finish in the pan. I get it close as I dare and then let it cool down and drain the pan and bring it inside where I finish on the stovetop with full control. This is one advantage to the current non rocket stove set up. I can let the level in the pan get a little high and load the stove up and call it a night about an hour early knowing it will continue to boil down some while I sleep. Then in the morning I drain it into a bucket and bring it into the stove. I have gotten pretty good at knowing just where to leave it to find it where I want it in the morning. As I am generally only ever doing batches of 1-2 gallons (finished) at a time this works fine for me.

The J and L hybrid idea is interesting. I’ll have to give that some thought.

The clapboards do have a tendency to collapse into a huge pile of coals even in the normal stove this can be an issue. But they burn fast and hot and I can get them free and dry. I think a dual stove set up might allow me to clean one out while keeping the boil going. I don’t really see feeding two stoves as that big of a challenge as they will be literally feet from each other. If one end of the pan is boiling more vigorously than the other that’s not an issue for me as I don’t have baffles in the pan and I don’t do a continuous finish process like some of the bigger operations do where they are pulling syrup from one end and adding sap to the other. I do batches.

A few years back I had my sugaring setup using a first gen prototype of a rocket stove. I actually went through a couple prototypes of this a few different seasons and then moved to a non rocket stove set up. I want to go back to a rocket stove next year and while I watch the sap steam off this year I am doing some planning in my head.

My pan is 16”x41” long. Previously I put a rocket stove at one end and a long narrow passage under it with the chimney at the far end. This caused the flames to have to move along the bottom of the pan to get to the chimney. It worked ok but I really only got a vigorous boil right above the stove and a lazy boil about 1/2 of the way down to barely a simmer if anything at the back of the pan.

I want to build the next one with two stoves. And a similar passageway under them to a chimney at the back.

Previously I used an L shaped stove, I like the idea of a J stove because it’s self feeding. However the problem is unlike a normal cook stove or rocket mass heater, this thing can run continuously for 6-8 hours or more to get through all the sap. This creates a lot of ash. I think it’s a lot easier to clean out an L stove than a J stove and I’m pretty sure that’s why I went with this design last time.

Other than having to keep poking the wood forward, is there any other real disadvantage to sticking with L stoves?

Alternatively anyone ever build or see a J stove designed with some kind of ash pit with a cleaning door? Would love to see pictures of this as that might be the best of both worlds.

I can get a nearly unlimited supply of kiln dried pine/spruce clapboards from a local mill with really high standards and plenty of cull. These make almost the perfect fuel for a large rocket stove I think.

I didn’t really know where this should fit I don’t think there’s a heating forum. Anyhow I want to create a hybrid water heating system I have a pile of old solar hot water panels, I would also like to do a wood stove hot water loop. I like the idea of thermo-siphons for their simplicity and lack of fail points especially in an outage situation. The problem obviously is that the tank needs to be up high. Practically speaking I can only put a tank so big on the second story of my house. The ideal place for a large storage tank is my basement. I had the idea of a hybrid system. What if I had a smallish tank maybe 25 gallons upstairs with a thermosiphon when this reached a specified temp say 130 degrees it could dump the the basement tank being refilled with cooler fluid from that tank. The upstairs tank can be vented to atmosphere in the event of an extended power outage or pump failure that tank can overheat all it wants. There’s many more details I could discuss but that’s the gist of the basics. Anyone ever see anything like this?

I’m in the early planning stages now but plans can be found online for basic digesters I likely won’t reinvent the wheel I’ll just use someone’s proven idea and adapt it to the materials I have on hand. I do have a couple 500 gallon poly water tanks i am currently not using, I could salvage one of those for this project. You are correct some way to stir it is essential in most designs.

Just a standard wet style methane digester. Some sort of a large chamber probably with a floating drum style storage tank.

I’ve read sawdust gums up the works in digesters as it has too much fiber. I have a pair of working steers (term for young oxen in training up to 4 years of age) they weigh about 1000lbs each right now, they make a lot of manure. I have always wanted to make a methane digesters. The problem is I bed their barn in pine/spruce sawdust I get from a local clapboard mill. It’s smaller dust than the planer shavings type stuff you get at the feed store but not tiny like what you’d get off a table saw it’s more like what you’d get off a chainsaw. Anyway it’s always mixed in with the manure. Does this make it unusable? I was thinking perhaps if added with water and stirred up before pouring in the sawdust may mostly rise to the top and could be skimmed off, but I haven’t really experimented with this at all yet. I think making this “slurry” is part of the process anyway right? What about hay as a feed stock? The area around there hay feeder gets pretty thick with a mat of manure and wasted hay. Lots of stuff talks about grass clippings but I haven’t seen hay mentioned. Hay is really just dried grass clippings…

Haven’t had it in years but I remember as a kid a camping favorite was “Big Mac in a pot” you would dice up an onion and cook it with ground beef in a Dutch oven or any pot over coals. When the beef was cooked through you drain off the fat and add a bottle of thousand island dressing and a package of shredded cheese. Mix it all up and stir till cheese is melted. Serve on buns with dill pickle slices. It’s basically a Golden Arches themed sloppy joe variation but it’s easy and tasty and was always a hit around our camp fire. It did make for a tough pot to clean sometimes….

I'd like to hear from those of you who have gone from heating with a conventional woodstove to a RMH some real world feedback. I live in a 1.5 story cape built in the civil war era (somewhere between 1858-1871 unsure of exact date) The attic floor is insulated to probably R40+ and I have newer windows but the home is far from tight by any means. Its sitting on a dry stacked rubble foundation so downstairs floors are cold and drafty and the doors could use work...2x4 walls minimally insualted. House is about 1100 sq ft. It is basically split down the middle with an open kitchen/dining room on one side and a living room that takes up the other side of the downstairs. Central staircase with 3 bedrooms upstairs. Its your standard 1800s cape design. Currently I heat with a 1970s L. Lange Co. stove. 1302 is the model I believe. Its a Norwegian style "cigar burn" stove. The stove actually heats the house pretty well I burn roughly 6 cord to heat through a Vermont winter. The stove holds coals well overnight and is warm but not really hot in the mornings. A typical winters day might mean going to bed with the livingroom in the mid 80s and waking up with the living room around 52 degrees. If its really cold out (read minus 5F or below) I will also burn coal in my cookstove in the kitchen. This really throws awesome uniform slow heat. I love burning coal in that thing for that reason but its a pain and dirty and easily out heats the kitchen with both stoves going downstairs if its not too cold out. I might also burn a quick wood fire in the cook stove to take the chill off on a weekend morning. A full load of wood might burn 4 hours max before there is not a red coal to be found in the small firebox. A coal fire will however burn 14+ hours of steady heat out of that same tiny fire box.

Anyway I have been debating swapping the living room Lange to a rocket for years but just don't know if its the right move. I don't really have the room for a bench system Id be most likely looking at a batch style vertical system. My main concern I guess, is in this drafty minimally insulated house I am not sure if the slow low heat of the mass will be enough to keep my space warm or at least as warm as I currently do. I also thought a rocket stove would be hard to manage with the hours and schedule I previously worked. But I recently switched to a new job so there are no more 15 hour gaps between being home to tend the stove. I am now home in the morning/early afternoon and my wife is home in the evenings so two burns a day would be fairly easy to achieve.

So....input?

I have access to loads (read nearly unlimited amounts) of waste apple cider vinegar I was doing some research on methane digesters and read conflicting things. I saw it explained that the basic methane process is thats sugars convert to alcohol which converts to acetic acid (vinegar) which converts through methane digestion. I also read that methane digestion only happens, or happens best, near a neutral PH. So which is it?

Could I fill a 275gallon IBC tote with ACV and add chicken manure/plant waste and make methane? Or would I be better off with a slurry of just water and the compost material. I am confused please enlighten me.

TJ you hit the nail on the head everything is a conundrum of timing and order, need the oxen to pull the trees to clear the land, need the cleared land to feed the oxen, to pull the trees to clear the land....Before someone brings it up I do understand draft power is probably far from my fastest and likely not even be my cheapest option here but I have always wanted the oxen and I think there are a great many tasks I could make them come in handy at. Equipment could clear the land fast but its also expensive and can make a mess in a hurry. I can still see the scars from when the previous owner had the land logged for softwood probably 20 years ago.  

As far as soil type I could show you one place on my property where within a 150' radius I have a vein on pure blue potterys quality clay, nearly pure sand, and areas with so many stones you cant stick a single spade in the ground without hitting one. I also have many wet seeping spring areas. I have ledge in some places but its mostly farther up then I plan to clear and I have steep and I have steeper areas. In short I have just about every soil type and condition. I don't know the exact pitch but its steep enough that I hike it once or twice a winter for a back country ski session. On the projects list is a rope tow ski lift but thats another story.

I am in Central Vermont by the way. Anyway money and budget are low, I would not say time is high there are generally twice as many tasks as can be accomplished on any given day, but I can always make the time for what needs to be done.

"You will never 'find' time for anything. If you want time, you must make it" -Charles Bruxton