Joseph Bolton

Cooking with solar: my first impression of how this would work best was a solar panel, battery, and an instapot pressure cooker. Those things are so low wattage, intermittent power usage when up to pressure and temperature, that they'd be fast and efficient compared to reflector based ovens.

In the most prolific area of the US for biomass production where I live, a ton of corn stalk "hay" sells anywhere from $20-30 delivered within a few miles of the field and farmer.

This has to be one of the cheapest fuels available. Unless you live next to a sawmill and can get free sawdust, consider corn stalk hay bales as a source of cheap heat!

Thekla McDaniels wrote:Wood petrification?  I would love to know more about that!

Here's some of what I remember seeing, and there is more out there that follows more or less this same method and results.

https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/cb/33/8c/86f6e073276777/US4612050.pdf

So the leaking skylights solutions: in particular the most common problems come from requiring calking to keep out water instead of watertight geometry and caulking.

In the roofing business you will see solutions that mention ice dams, you'll see improper flashing, protruding fasteners, and all kinds of low quality installation problems that leak that have nothing to do with skylights in particular. Actually all these leaks apply to every other location on a roof, but also to skylights.

The watertight geometry I've see solutions to deals with the uphill side of a square opening in a roof that would tend to trap water, leaves, and eventually leak, if that makes any sense. Providing a sloped flashing for that flat area of ponding would make the water run off rather than sit until the caulking fails from mildew and age. The leaking roof isn't made a problem because of the skylight, rather, the skylight installation created a ponding location that the builders didn't solve, and that gives the skylight an underserved bad name. Solve the ponding and prevent the eventual leak point. All the other leaking issues are just quality issues and improper application of what is already known how to fix. Preventing ponding for some reason is neglected in this particular case, but even that isn't a totally new problem needing creative solutions. It's just a new geometry issue when you install a skylight that is easy to solve.

In the example of 1950's small aircraft windshields I'm familiar with, they are all non-pressurized. Actually there is a slight negative pressure when flying, so any leak would tend to suck in water when flying through rain. That's why there are drains on the pitot static plumbing.

Ned Harr wrote:I am biased against skylights,.........I would aim for zero roof penetrations.

should I be biased against skylights? Or should I compromise and allow a roof penetration or two...... (I'm familiar with traditional skylights--both opening and fixed--and those solar tube things, but surely there are other types I don't know about...)

I hear you, and I've experienced both no-penetration roofs and had skylights. There is no debate in my mind that skylights are absolutely worth the penetration of an otherwise plain roof.

There are many options for getting light into anywhere, and this option in the video is way more trouble and expense than it is worth, but curiously innovative:

Roof penetrations done right are zero risk forever, and if you want instructions on how that can work, let me know. My background: aviation maintenance and mechanical engineering. How much do you think the windshields leak on all those aircraft built in the 1950s with original plexiglass still installed today? Most of them, not even a drop at +100mph through rain.

We can make a penetration for a skylight on a roof not leak a whole lot easier and just as reliably and for a whole lot less money.

I see this thread seems to have fallen from the radar a while back, but the topic is still completely relevant and extremely interesting.

Has anyone ever had any success with the wood petrification methods or done any reading on turning wood to a stone-sealed-on-the-outside layer?

I remember reading about a rapid wood petrification method that made wood unable to be chewed on by horses and such. It seemed ideal for protection from underground rot as well, but I didn't try it myself yet.

Can someone explain in a little more detail how the claim of a RMH stove is using 10% as much fuel to produce the same heat as a modern woodstove?

If the modern woodstove is being assumed to be 70ish percent efficient, how are you able to claim that the RMH is being 700% efficient?

Since 700% RMH efficiency isn't possible, are you just claiming that the modern stove 70ish percent efficiency is really just a lot lower, like an order of magnitude lower? That puts a modern woodstove at less than 10% efficiency of combustion and heat transfer to the house it heats. I've never heard of such a claim, but I'd like to understand what the claim is and how that can work.

I understand how RMH work, but I'm having trouble with the claims of them using 10% of the fuel for the same heat output as something measured at well above 50% efficiency.

How does that work?

Just for a comparison, a single wall 8" diameter piece of stainless chimney is 0.5mm thickness. Either of your thicknesses are a lot more than is typical for chimney pipe.

What is the diameter? Thickness without diameter doesn't make sense.