Eric Marshall

Thanks a lot! That’s very helpful

I guess I was talking about something like what this guy seems to have built. Is this just a stove door on a masonry firebox you think then? Or maybe he took an old wood stove and just lined the inside with masonry or ceramic and insulation so the metal wouldnt go molten on him and used that as his firebox.

So I’ve been working my way through The Rocket Mass Heater Builder’s Guide by Erica and Erinie Wisner and I would really like to build one of these things some day, but one thing I’ve been thinking as I see so many for sale houses with perfectly good wood stoves is that it seems like such a waste to toss one out.

I’ve seen videos and examples online where it looks like people have adapted an existing woodstove to a rmh, but I don’t understand how that would work given what I’ve read in Erica & Ernie’s book with the firebox-to-heat-riser ratio. Can anybody walk me through how you could use the material in an existing woodstove in a rmh design? Or has anybody thought of any other cool ways to recycle a woodstove after converting?

I love the idea of the aquaponics potential here. That probably would have been where my mind would have gone first. And, unless i’m not understanding the original design, i believe an aquaponics system would still function in the same way- as a natural water cleaner. Though you’d have to share your swimming area with some fishy friends.

But I have one thought on your fallback of a floating garden. If you really are done with the pool why not just jackhammer up the bottom to connect it back to the natural soil and fill the whole thing in with a layer of gravel and then topsoil and turn the whole area into a regular garden? Sounds like it wouldn’t function as a swimming pool any more anyways if you went with the floating garden plan- the pool would have no filter and a garden wouldnt be compatible with a chlorinated swimming pool.

Hey all, first time posting here

A fellow permaculture-minded friend and I have had a running discussion about going in on a lot of land and divinding it up as a possibly cheaper way for both of us to get some land to work with. We wanted seperate areas to live on because each of us has slightly different ideas of how we want to use the land and have seperate families, but we had also discussed the possibilty of starting a joint venture perhaps on a shared, adjacent lot.

I was curious if anybody else had done this kind of thing before or had any advice. Especially looking for advice on the legal side as far as the logistics of subdiving a lot of land and how to ensure that if somebody can’t pay or wants to move and sell their share the other party isn’t stuck with the bill. I trust my friend, but am not looking for an intertangling web of who-owns-what that we will have to sort out some day.

Thanks yall 😃