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This is REALLY fun to think about; and, my favorite kind of post.

I will be ruminating on this and will get back~

Interesting! Looks like these photos are from the very beginning/onset phases of that building. . . by the time I had gotten there in 2019, they had modified this Rumsford (sp?) quite a bit. . . The whole section with the brick and the darker color acting like a hood wasn't there, and a tall smooth elegant single curve of Cob that encompassed the whole corner went pretty much all the way to the ceiling~

Code people would hate this! Options of roaring open fires 5 feet tall taking up the whole corner and going up near the ceiling! . . .  (Don't they know the entire house is fire proof?) Also, if you want to have a small fire. . .  how elegantly the smoke follows the warmth of that 8 foot tall wall all the way up and never goes drifting into the room. . .

Maybe someone has some more updated photos?

Or different examples! Some of the others on Firespeaking were getting a little closer to the vision. . .  The idea is that the schematic of the flue can basically be arranged as a small feature at the top of an expansive and smooth wall, and if you train the smoke from the beginning where this flue is, it will know where to go. . .  With a nice tall wall, any size fire can be built, and the flames grow beautifully tall and natural like a campfire, never running into anything up above. . .  Has anyone else seen one like this?

I have a friend who is building a ceremonial space out of Cob. They want a Rumpsford stove, but they don’t know it yet. . .  “I was just thinking of a beautiful hearth that would be able to keep the space warm and also I like to see the fire when I am sitting in ceremony, so I know that is not always the most efficient, but it’s important for my intentions with the space” . . . . Rumpsford all the way right!?  

But when I was trying to find beautiful images online to backup my explanations to her. . .  I came up completely blank!  Google would only show me ugly little code-driven angular versions of something that should be so elegant, beautiful, TALL and flowing, like the hearth in the community kitchen at the Cob Cottage Company in Oregon.

Does anyone have pictures of this particular hearth they could share???  Pretty please!!!  Or any additional photos of well done, elegant tall Rumpsfords. Google was kind enough to supply me with a nice technical schematic, which I will try to share here. So. . . I could theoretically build the thing. (I've built two successful RMH).  But I’ve never actually used a Rumpsford or even started a fire in one. . .  am I thinking correctly that a good way to light one would be to build up the burnables below; but before lighting, warm-up the flue at the top . . .  like. . .  maybe partially by smudging!? Perfect for starting any ceremonial fire. . . .  Anyway, help me keep the vision of what a good Rumpsford should be alive! Does anyone have images they could share? Is anyone aware of any physical cob Rumpsfords in existence anywhere near the Bay Area in California? Any Rumpsford thoughts or wisdom you might like to share with me or my friend?

I was reminiscing about days gone-by, when I had land to play with, before it was taken away by scared people who didn’t understand what kind of stove I was building. . .  

Once upon a time I had a pretty cool cob house about half-built up. It was built around a unique Rocket Mass Heater which was complete and functioning nicely. I felt the design of this stove had made a significant improvement upon the shoulders of the more traditional RMH design. But to ruin the end of the story. . .  the house was never completed, because we got booted off the land ~ partially because this strange stove design really concerned the fire department when they saw it. I could talk more about this, but the point of this post is to share a possibly considerable improvement for anyone considering building an RMH.

The RMH is so amazing because it solves so many of the problems that traditional wood burning comes with. But one problem the standard RMH design hasn’t solved yet has to do with airflow. We know a fire is like an air pump. It needs to have an air intake from somewhere. If, as in the standard design, we take this air from a feed box in the middle of the room, then the air is secretly being sucked and squeezed through every crack, window or door of the house, drawing cold air through the space. One solution to this is to have the feed tube near the front door. . . this partially solves the problem, but comes with another airflow problem anytime you open a window or door, dramatically changing the airflow, and effecting the fire. . .  I even saw this effect frustrating Ianto as he was trying to demonstrate lighting the stove in his home. Plus that’s a very sloppy solution because there’s really still a ton of cold air leaking in from everywhere and spilling from that area between the feed-tube and the door. So…….. I have a semi-tested idea that I’m pretty sure fixes all of this, *evil Wheaton grin. :)

Instead of a feed tube like shaped like a J, I had a situation more like a short upside down T, where one part of the T is going straight through the wall of the house! I had a small metal garbage can with a tight fitting lid and a hole cut through the bottom of it situated along the feed tube at a comfortable human angle (The vertical part of the upside-down T). This way I could comfortably see, feed and tend to the fire from inside like a normal RMH, but as soon as I put the lid back on, the airflow was sealed completely so all air feeding the fire would draw from directly outside the house, no longer creating a negative pressure inside the interior space. Does this make sense??

Another benefit of this system is that there are now two ways to feed the fire. One of them is from just outside the front door, near the outer wall, where there is a very long and straight feed tube directly to the center of the RMH hot-spot. If your zone is anything like ours, we have a ton of long sticks and branches that drop from the trees every year. It would be nearly effortless (compared to any sort of chopping/splitting/processing) to simply gather these in bundles, put them in a big shed where they would stay dry (I recognize it would not be nearly as space efficient, so this is contingent on having abundant space to play with perhaps), and then simply stuff a couple long sticks through your outside wall and straight into the fire . . .  I always wanted to devise some kind of bungee system to apply a little force to the end of these sticks, jutting a few feet out from the wall, so they would automatically press further into the fire as they burned down slowly over a couple of hours perhaps… maybe some sort of a trap door that gravity fell on top of the sticks as they burned and slid inward. . .  this would dampen the airflow as the mass of sticks diminished and then seal the warmth in once the final stick was shoved inside the wall by the bungee. . .  I never made it to this stage of the tinkering. . .  

One feature of this design is that the fire may have been less drawn “down and into itself” like it is in a J tube, where the heat seems most intense on the roof of the tube right before it opens to the heat-riser. . . . In this new design with the straight feed tube (when the lid was tightly closed) the air shot straight through the tube and seemed to hit the back wall more, and send the flames directly up the heat riser. . .  The change may have effected airflow inside the burn chamber . . .  I’m not sure if it was an improvement or not. I'm not even really sure how different it was, because this is the only RMH I've worked with for an extended time. This is all theory. . .  Maybe more heat was going up the riser and into the remix chamber? Or perhaps the wood was not burning as hot in the first place, without the magic turbulence the J-tube introduces from the beginning of the airflow path. . .  I’m not sure! . . . . It seemed like it was burning totally awesome to me! But I didn’t work with it long enough to take measurements. . . .  The exhaust felt and tasted cool and clean . . . .  but I didn't take measurements.

I would love to share thoughts, feedback, questions, other design ideas, other problems and possible solutions, as we try to keep everybody warm, safe, and healthy, with those good permie morals of -- on the cheap and lazy? :D

This post is saving a very small part of my life right now, and that makes me all warm and glowy~

Ok, so as it stands now, I find myself regularly charging my new-to-me 2011 Th!nk EV with a gas powered generator: Booooo!!

This situation has arisen because we live off-grid up in the mountains, and our batterey-inverter situation just isn't cutting it for charging with 110-120VAC. (I am considering a buck/boost converter to help with this situation too)  Our Honda eu2000i will charge it just fine but...  Gasoline!  *Planetary belch!

So I just bought (forgive me this bit to global-manufac) two 100W, 18V panels, thin flexible ones that together weigh less than 10 lbs.  This little Th!nk has a roof rack on it, and I am planning to devise some system for being able to clip these panels onto the roof rack with an easy adjustment for side to side movement (for aiming at the sun). It will give the flexi panels a bow, so they will be arodynamic-ish, if I want to drive around with them, but I could also pop them off and use the roof rack for gathering supplies.

I don't care that it's going to take a ridiculously long time to charge the car (24kwh/200w=120hrs of full sun, or 15 days). I only need to charge it up an extra 10-20% to make it over the hump and get back to town (I have only been charging with the Genny for a few hours here and there.) So with my real charging need being about 15% of the total capacity, I will need about 3,600 Watts from these little panels, so I figure ...  5 days in Winter if I'm lucky? Something like 1-2mi/day in Winter maybe? Booya! I'm gonna make it...

My big question is this....  how am I going to custom diy (on the skinny) the boost converter these panels will need to direct DC-DC charge this batterey.  (F a charge controller more complex than a manual on/off switch and a voltage read-out)

I can't even figure out what the nominal charging voltage is for the drive battery on a 2011 Th!nk ~ not much information out there since they were discontinued so quickly...?  But I figure I will get the voltage once I pull the seats out and get in there.  So with my two panels in series I will need to go from 36V to... ? (Guessing something in the 250-400V range?)

Only needs to be 200W beefy...  maybe 400 watts, because I might plug it into some more panels when it's parked at home. I just don't know enough about electronics to really understand this buck/boost converter schematic I downloaded. I don't understand what components I would need to change/adjust to modify the parameters I am trying to effect. So help me self-learn! Where can I get some basic electronics learning materials which might include for-dummy in depth explanations of this type of circuitry?

I have heard of brilliant people like Duncan on the diy EV conversion forums making their own motor controllers, and I am so inspired by this! I am not there yet, but I also don't feel terribly far away in my e.skills.  Maybe DIYing a 400W Voltage Boost converter would be in the scope of salvaging components from TVs / microwaves?  Perhaps it would be an approachable entry-level project compared to motor/speed/regen controllers, and sound synthesizers?

So help me help myself!  Any advice or ways to get started?  I have these panels on hand ... The only thing stopping me, from retiring this petrol-genny, is a little know-how and hopefully a very little $.

I am wondering if there is, or might be created, a spreadsheet to help organize all of these, PEP and PEX and PEA and SkIP etc.  A skilled person could make a searchable spread sheet where the points (and it seems, sometimes cross-over points) could be tabulated with a running total.  

It sounds like a really fun game, and I want to play! But I'm a little technology challenged and also data$ challenged.  I feel like Im getting points all day long!  But could I please just search a spreadsheet for "planting fruit trees" and enter any applicable PEX etc?  

What about research into Fresnel heating technology ...  Any points there?  

Is there an easy way for the lamen to score all their points, without having the tenacity of a paper RPG Dungeon Master?

Help me learn more!

Ok, I recently inherited a big metal frame greenhouse; and in short order, I have realized how inefficient it is.  So I am excited about this wofati greenhouse idea!  Especially since I am looking at a potential growing site on a fairly steep SW facing hill...  This would be perfect ~ built right in!  

I have seen youtubes of Oranges growing in Northern Nebraska by using angled earth birmed North wall with reflective insulation material, and long expansive deep earth ventilation systems. I like Mike Haasl's idea of adding additional horizontal deep earth tubes inside the wofati umbrella!  The dirt is always going to be warmer under there  Spread that love around more!

I have one important question. How much is this going to cost to build?  (Will you be drilling the 20' shaft?). Since you're raising money with a kickstarter, would it be cheating to build 10 or 20 of (something like) these solar cooker tubes into the wall (probably with cob?) just above a stem-wall on the South Side, protruding from the front of the building at a degree angle ideal for Winter Sun?  They would not take up any space inside, and their opening could be positioned under the growing tables on the South side of the walkway, increasing convection from the cold pit, and heating the massive growing beds on the tables right above the tubes. These evacuated glass tubes are dark colored on the outside, but reflective on the inside, so heat is captured really well inside.  With no lid, this heat would flow right into the greenhouse.  I have one of these, and it gets piping hot, even on cloud-covered days!  You might even be able to fit the parabolic reflector under each tube. The whole array could easily be covered in the summer.  (Forgive my Amazon link!  Maybe these can be sourced used somewhere?)  GOSUN Survival Gear Solar Oven Sun Cooker https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KLKJB72/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_EtB7EbF8P3JH7

I also love Faber's idea!  Add angled mirrors to the North Wall! (Forget the reflective insulation!). Mirrors will reflect the light onto the plants, and the dark dirt they are growing in, thus heating the ground (a better place for the heat to be than on a dark colored North Wall).