Nancy Reading

I'm very fond of alder as a quick growing, Nitrogen fixing tree. It produces quite a bit of firewood and lots of twiggy bits. Angelica is another biannual like parsnip that produces quite a good amount of slightly woody growth in it's second year. Perennial kale I suspect could be quite productive if strategically pollarded....

bump

Scott Perkins wrote: that the front and back bricks might have 3/4 inch space built in
to allow the flame to shoot out along the sides of the cooking pot if it is big enough to straddle the highest prominent (left and right) blocks.

I suspect you'd lose the chimney effect a bit...

Thinking about the design above - haivng the bricks sideways like that allows the pan to be supported part off the flame path so reduces the heating if neccessary whilst cooking, so it could be quite a practical feature.

M Ljin wrote:Is that an external combustion chamber? I don’t know anything about car mechanics.

Maybe Nancy Reading has a better guess? If she wishes to look at it that is…

I think it is related to the wood gas burning cars as r ranson says.
I found this:

Some of the smaller stoves fitted to cars burned charcoal. The advantages were that charcoal was lighter than wood, and it was easier to store because it took up less space. However, it was much more sensitive to humidity than wood. Other wood gas systems burned a mixture of charcoal and wood, while a few were powered by anthracite. Burning any of the aforementioned materials produced a flammable syngas that replaced gasoline once it had been properly filtered and cooled.

source

If you burn charcoal (carbon) in a shortage of oxygen, you make carbon monoxide which is a flammable gas. (That was what 'town gas' used to be and quite toxic to animals that breath it as it replaces oxygen in your blood and you suffocate.) I suspect that you would want an old fashioned relatively simple low compression engine if you want it to run for any length of time (and no emissions standards to pass )

edit: We've got a thread about woodgas powered cars (amongst other things) here

It looks like you have two different plants there -

I'm wondering if the brighter green one is chickweed (Stella media)?


It is a common annual - quite nice as a salad leaf. I can't really tell from the photo though.

The other looks like some sort of Oxalis - maybe oxalis corniculata:



That can be invasive I gather depending on your climate. Again edible leaves, although tend to be a bit tough in my experience.

Anthony Jones wrote:The logs I harvested on my 23+ acres rotted due to delay in building my off-grid home but created opportunity for hugal beds.

The problem is the solution!

Another couple of suggestions for you Nicole:

Skirret - likes it damp and cool, so pick a shady spot if you get hot summers. Perennial with nice tasting roots, a little fiddly to clean

fawn lily, Erythronium revolutum - woodland plant with nice tasty bulbs and pretty springtime flowers.

I don't know - if they were talking about evaporation from the soil (as opposed to transpiration from plants) then I would think that the presence of trees would shield the ground from wind so having less evaporation from wooded areas makes perfect sense to me.