Wills Brooks

Hey I'm Wills. I am 31 and have been living off grid for 6 years now in eastern NC. I like to think I "walk the walk" when it comes to sustainability and an environmentalist lifestyle. I built a cob/earthbag home, use a rocket mass heater for heating, drink rainwater etc. I am intrested in a female partner. I currently work as a soil scientist but am currently building the infrastructure for an organic market garden.

Kenneth- I live in a mild climate in a house with huge amounts of thermal mass. It's never been below 50 inside even when I was away and lit no fires. You must live in a very cold climate if the interior of your house gets below 32! Did you insulate your interior pipes? Glassware can be frozen without cracking as well. I do it all the time with chicken broth. All this being said, I may still add some propylene glycol antifreeze to the bottles before I cover them with cob.
As far as a steam explosion, how dang hot does the thermal mass on the rmh you built get? I can burn mine 6 hours straight and the bench dosent get much above 100 degrees. In fact I find temps over 100 uncomfortable to sit on! I really doubt loosely capped bottles could build up enough pressure to spray hot steam everywhere. I think you underestimate how much heat cob and water can absorb. All this being said, worst case scenario I got some water on my hands. Cob can dry. I have mixed over 100 tons of cob over the years. Rebuilding a little bench dosent faze me!

Douglas- I have seen issues related to differing material properties in a rmh, especially in the hotter areas. My lime finish cracked a little due to expansion and contraction rates between the cob and the lime finish. However what is the disadvantage of slow heat transfer within the thermal mass? The heat dosent dissappear or anything. Isn't the whole point of a thermal mass to slowly transfer heat to the room? If I wanted to quickly transfer heat wouldn't I just get a regular steel woodstove?
William- I added pex radiant tubing to my cob bed. It works pretty well at storing excess heat from my cookstove. I considered adding pex pipe to these masses but the radius required would be too tight. I didn't want to have any fittings inside the cob in case of a leak. I may use this method of enhancing thermal mass with radiant pex tubing in my guest room bed.

Well water boils at 212 degrees f. This would ne more immediate danger than the glass melting because steam pressure in a tightly sealed bottle could cause the glass to rupture. This is a good reason not to cap the bottles too tightly! Glass melts at 1400 degrees. Of course I am not proposing putting these bottles near the hottest parts of the stove. My stove exhausts around 200 degrees and the non flue mass part (on many rmhs this is the back rest) has never gotten above 100. So there are a few places this technique could be used in a rmh safely.

I have placed these bottles in places where they won't freeze or boil. Antifreeze or alcohol could be added if freezing was a worry. There are plenty of sections of my rocket mass heater that don't get too hot. Obviously it would not be good to put these water bottles near the combustion chamber or the flue pipes. On the mass part of the bench temperatures don't go much higher than 100 f, at least on mine.

I used empty beer bottles and mortar to make an insulated slab over a vapor barrier. Next I tapped 1 gallon jugs full of water into the mortar. I used a stiff mortar to build up a perimeter against the wooden form. I plan to fill the interior with either sand or clay dirt. I will cob and plaster to finish.

I have heard that water stores 4 times the heat cob does pound for pound. I have made 2 experimental thermal masses in my house utilizing recycled glass bottles and water. I have no way to test them or anything to compare them to but anecdotally they work pretty well, even in thier unfinished state. I think thermal mass could be added to a rocket mass heater or trombe wall provided the temps don't get too hot or too cold.

I think around half of the kei trucks I have seen have air conditioning. Automatic transmissions are available but rare. Personally with such a small engine I'd prefer a manual over the kind of automatic transmission they put in a truck like this. You have to use the low gears aggressively to get these kei trucks up to highway speeds somewhat quickly.

While my honda acty is very capable of driving 90 kph  for extended periods, I don't usually take it on long trips for safety reasons alone. Mine has a seat belt but no airbags. If I had a short commute at slow speeds I'd pretty much only use my kei truck. It's much safer than a motorcycle or a moped for sure!

Wow I like the looks of that thing! Where were those made? It's pretty intresting that multiple countries have made a similar vehicle to a kei truck.