Benjamin Dinkel

I find almost all RMH to be beautiful.
Including the ones I made recently:


Mediterranean lightweight 6" J-tube



8" J Tube with half barrel bench

Thanks Thomas.
It was super fun to build and performs well so far.

I was surprised to see the barrel still warm the next morning after a 45 min fire. I'm assuming it's the full fire brick heat riser that stores a lot of heat and slowly gives it off to the top of the barrel.

This is what the heater looks like now, almost completely dried, before painting.



The clients will wait for it to completely dry and then paint it in a blue, I also like the white.
The colors of the barrel are very pretty to me.

thomas rubino wrote:Oh, it would be nice to share it with the neighbors, but selling to the power company is a losing proposition.

It often is, but depends on where you are. Here (in Spain) there's contracts in which you use the grid as a virtual battery. You only pay them for what you take more than what you've given them. Which to me is a pretty sweet deal.
Unfortunately I'm 100 meters from the next connection point and a neighbor got a quote for around 10k euros to get connected...

Hey M,

first of all congratulations on your purchase. And for thinking outside the septic tank concept!
You're right. With a composting toilet and a working grey water system the septic tank is not necessary. And the saved trees might benefit from water and nutrients.

I really hope you'll encounter a designer/engineer for your system.
Are there no companies that specialize in grey water use around? In Europe I could come up with at least a couple of leads.

Matt, I can understand the direction you're going. But if you design it the right way (with a potential septic tank that get's added later on by the new owners or you before selling) I don't see the problem.

Or my favorite:
Get grid access and give it to your neighbors, be that for free or even selling it to the grid!

Heat some water for taking a bath

Pre-Heat the thermal mass of your house (in winter)

Run a dehumidifier (if you have moisture problems)

Run an electric food dehydrator

Day 9 (of continuos work) was a bit of a frenzy.
We applied a coat of clay and lime plaster with a mesh.




And then a last layer of lime plaster with whitish sand and rubbed it all into its final form.




Now the clients need to patiently wait for the plaster to dry before giving it all a coat of silicate paint

Day 8 we just did some minor touch ups and built a wooden structure for the sofa cushions.
We had a fire in the morning and evening to speed up the drying.
And the barrel stayed warm all day. And it started easily.

Tomorrow we'll plaster everything

Today we finished leveling the cob of the bench, added a fun round window back rest, installed a chimney thermometer and covered the chimney pipe. The rest of the day was spent on the prep of a different project on site.





Yesterday evening the clients experienced a stalling burn after 15 min. Tonight we tried again and got a good hot burn going for at least 30 min before calling it a day.