Hi Caroline >double-walled SS things of various types, with a >firebox inside >What was that originally? I want one. ;)
Water heaters, for hot water on demand, not for a constant supply: "We also have some defunct but useable water heater tanks, double-walled SS things of various types, with a firebox inside and also kero burners which sort of airblast a spray of burning kero out of a nozzle. I don't think much of those burners, but they're widely used here." We have two of these tanks, but there are plenty of them to be had at the recycle yards and so on. There are a few different types, in two main categories I think - either they have a firebox or they don't, and rely on a kerosene burner instead. The ones with fireboxes usually also have provision for a kero burner, and these are what we have, one a vertical cylinder about 3ft tall and 15" wide, the other a horizontal cylinder about 2ft long and 18" wide. The space between the double walls is about 2", with water inlets and outlets. The burner is a separate unit which bolts on. The burner uses a small pump to force kero under pressure through a spray nozzle and there's a blower to add air to the spray. An 12-inch-long flame jets out the end of a two-inch pipe sticking out of the front of the thing. The pipe fits into the water heating tanks, pointed at the inside of the double wall. Uses lots of kero and makes a lot of noise. A wood fire works better, but I guess it's less "convenient", or something. We won't be using a kero burner. It does work with biodiesel, sort of, though the nozzle needs adjustment to work well, but we won't use it anyway, don't like it, not efficient, inelegant. >Then there's a >constant 60+ deg C heat supply from two one-cubic-metre compost piles >(in series), > >So how exactly are you "harvesting" this heat to heat a home? We're not, yet - as I said, it's one of a number of heat sources we'll be harnessing this winter. It won't be enough to heat a home. Especially not this home. Which isn't exactly a "home", it's a sort of barn/shed/workshop/studio/lecture room/office with some living space in between, and it's quite big, and extremely energy-inefficient (it's a 100-year-old traditional farmhouse that's been more or less neglected for 30 years) - not too bad in summer, really bad in winter. The compost heat will help, even though it's not nearly enough. As I said there are a lot of bits in the puzzle and we'll figure out how to fit them together as we go along. It might be more effective to use some or all of the compost heat to heat the biogas digester, for instance. At any rate we'll use it to heat water, and use the hot water for whatever. I have used the heat of a compost pile before, but not systematically. But it works. I always make compost, wherever I am, and for years I wondered why nobody used the heat, but I wasn't in a situation where I needed it or would have been able to use it. Then a few years ago I found that some people at least were using compost heat, at last. One system coils plastic hosepipe into the pile as it's built up and uses convection to move the hot water. A bit primitive, but that'll work. We'll do something similar. At least one of the two piles is always above 60 deg C (up to 75 deg C). The weather doesn't make any difference, it can be well below freezing but they'll still get hot. Yes, I know, each time I say this someone objects: "Not where I live, it's much too cold here, it just freezes." Sorry, but that's tantamount to saying: "I don't know how to make compost." Then they might propose getting it to work by providing an external heat source to heat it up artificially. Nope, that's not how compost works. There's a photograph in the Rodale Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening of someone making compost in the snow. Been there, done that. How much heat does a composter produce? In other words, how much can you harvest before you kill it? I'm not even sure that's a real question - it is a physical process, oxidation of carbon, a slow fire, but it's biologically driven: given the moisture and the air supply the microbugs will go on doing it until the C:N ratio stabilises (from about 30:1 to maybe 10:1 or something). But if you take too much heat out the temperature could fall below the thermophilic level and go mesophilic, no use for thermophilic bugs. This is something we need to learn more about, and that's our real purpose here now, more than just to heat our house. This is the final trial-run for our journey, where we figure out the detail of the technology we'll be using as much as possible, what we don't already know of it. There's much more to it than just alternative energy. We're doing well, we've covered a lot of ground already and learnt a lot, but there's still much more to do. Anyway, I'll probably post further info about all this as it unfolds. >I have an endless supply of wood chips I am trying to figure out how to >use. Why do they have such things as pellet stoves but not wood chip >stoves? I've never actually tried to burn them in the wood stove, So try. >but >seems like if it would work well, everyone would use them rather than split >and cut firewood. Don't let that deter you, find out for yourself. It can be quite surprising, the seemingly obvious things that it hasn't occurred to "everyone" to use. >So, how can I turn these huge piles of chips into heat? What sort of size are they? (The chips, not the piles.) What kind of wood? Why have you got huge piles of wood chips? >(I can 'premix" >them with chicken manure by using the animal house bedding too if this >helps.) I guess the C:N ratio of the wood chips will be somewhere between 200:1 and 500:1, for thermophilic compost it needs to be between 25:1 and 35:1, so it needs lots of N. The chips' surface area might also be too small, they might need to be ground smaller to compost them, regardless of the C:N ratio. Or larger chips could be used as a proportion of a compost mix, though it might take several rounds to break them down. Moisture content should be about 70%, that of wood chips will be much lower, so (as well as chicken bedding, depending on *its* moisture content) you can add a liquid nitrogen source, such as urine. It should be possible to compost them, one way or another. If the chips were small enough you could perhaps use them as a proportion of the chicken bedding in the first place. http://journeytoforever.org/compost.html Composting regards Keith >Caroline ------------------------ Yahoo! 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