planning thread

[swizzlenutz]

I don't have any waste motor or veggie oil or I'd test it out in a heartbeat for you. If you want to make the tree house then maybe you could also gain an advantage for free heat with an over-sized solar grabber or even gang a few together. Some guys are using the little solar fans that go on your car windows to take the excess heat out of your car. I'm not sure how they set it up yet but that should save on wood gathering until it does start getting colder. Even if it saves just a face cord a year then that's a face cord you didn't have to split. All you need is a good view of the southern sky. I'll try to see if I can find that one pocket rocket I saw a few days ago. That would be more suited for your tree house then a full blown rocket mass heater. You should be able to have 2 rockets then and nearly instant heat when you need it. Swizzle

[swizzlenutz]

www.flickr.com/photos/angimarkchloe/3698568972/

This is the pocket rocket I was talking about. I'd say a wee bigger then a typical pocket rocket. Swizzle

[yesimag]

Ya that looks like a pretty smooth design. If I could somehow incorporate an oven into the design the rocket stove would actually be saving me floorspace. It could replace the need for a range entirely, and if I'm in need of an extra burner I can always use the bbq that will likely be sitting out on the deck.

I guess the design decisions still hinge heavily on whether I decide to make the treehouse a 365 day home, or if I end up putting some substantial living space on the ground.

edit: I'm sure some oil wouldn't be that hard to come by, I'll mail you some if you like. ;D

[swizzlenutz]

I only have a backyard incinerator set up right now. In a few weeks I'll get the rest of the brick I need and try to turn it into a down feeder just for the hell of it. I'll see what I can do to find some waste oil. If I can't then I'll buy a quart and soak a few sticks in a small bucket.

I basically have a rocket built onto the back side of my fire pit. That way I can enjoy outdoor campfires with wifey on a few evenings and throw the papers and trash in the back to burn on other occasions. I wonder what McDonalds and Burger King do with their left over oil. Do you think they would both burn the same? I'm thinking that the oil soaked pieces should go into the feeder and not up into the burn tunnel. Overloading it with oil soaked pieces would likely kill your coal bed. I'm thinking if you soak your wood for a day in the oil and then flip it over and soak it for another day on the back end would be better yet. And then have a hardware mess rack to set the pieces onto. Have a drip bucket at the bottom to catch the excess and let the wood soak up the oil for a few days. Well it looks like there's plenty of different methods to try.

Maybe oil soaked cardboard could burn longer if soaked and allowed to dry. With some stiff wire, (coat hanger maybe?) you could roll the cardboard into logs and shove them through metal circle made out of the coat hangers and then soak them. I'm wondering if this method could get you some free heat without all of the fly ash from the cardboard? Once the cardboard is burnt then make a hook (from a coat hanger) to grab out the loops to get your next "logs" ready. I think what you would get is a firewood extender as opposed to a firewood alternative. Ok I think that's enough words for now. I'll see what I got for brick left and see what I need to get this project started. Swizzle

[yesimag]

Ya I think it will all work, its just about getting the fire hot enough that the oil burns cleanly. Having no firsthand experience with rocketstoves, I'm just not sure where the hottest point in the system lies. Soaking the wood sounds like an easy (and dirty) way to do it. But ultimately I'd love to incorporate an oil burner into the burn tunnel or wherever it would work best.

While I'm not against feeding in oily logs, my girlfriend probably will be. It would be much nicer if I (or more importantly she) could simply get a fire going to prime the stove, then turn on the oil drip from a reservoir and not have to worry about it. Overall I'm pretty lucky she's such a trooper and down to live in a perpetually under-construction one-room tree house. If I can design things to operate smoothly it should help ease her transition from suburbia.

I think the cardboard log idea would work well, although in my case I'll usually have more wood and waste oil on hand than cardboard. I suppose I could collect it from various stores around here that just recycle it, but the nearest store to where I'll be living is 20+ miles. And when I'm in a forest full of trees, that seems foolish. There's always chainsaw work to be done, and that's just on trees that have already fallen.

As for fast food restaurants, around here bio-diesel is catching on quickly. Most restaurants now _sell_ their used cooking oil to companies in this business. The grassroots bio-diesel industry is being pushed out by several california laws aimed at doing so. While I don't have the numbers on hand, there are some hefty fees to pay if you want to legally produce bio-diesel. In fact they've now made it illegal to even transport waste oil without a license.

This state is going to hell, hopefully I won't be here to see it.

[swizzlenutz]

That's big oil for you. Make it hard for green solutions so you have to keep buying from the monster. The have a lot of money wrapped up in lawyers to slow down green energy. If everyone went green then most of big oil would be out of a job.

One of the local car shops here use to have an oil stove/woodstove. They had a 5 gallon bucket full of oil that hung over the fire and a pinhole in the bucket dripped the oil into the fire. I remember my dad telling me about it but I never saw the set up. Maybe I'll have him draw me a pic of it. Swizzle

[dave]

That's the tax man for you. The state stands to lose big tax revenue for use of such fuels. Same reason you can't distill your own booze!

[Donkey]

The hottest place in rocket stoves is typically in the bottom third of the heat riser.
I'd put the oil drip just behind the heat riser.

[yesimag]

Ok so I've been doing more thinking (gasp, I know!) and I've slightly modified my plan. Seeing as someone who owes me 10k isn't being too expedient about paying, construction of the tree house may have to wait.

I've decided on a tipi as a semi-temporary living structure. With an insulated liner this should serve me and my girlfriend well enough through winter and spring. Better yet, I can harvest the poles from on the property, and I've found a place to buy a 20' diameter skin and liner for $800. The guy who makes them is evidently native american, and lives a few hours from me (read: no expensive shipping.)

This will allow me to better plan/fund the tree house and take the pressure off getting something up quickly so we have a place to live. Also working in a building that you simultaneously live in can be a nightmare, especially if its only a few hundred square feet. And all the while I have a real job too, so all this has to be done during my finite time off.

So fast-forward to after the tree house is done... I may leave the tipi just as it is. Or if budget and time permits, I might excavate a basement 20' in diameter, span it with trusses and put the tipi on top of it. To my knowledge it would be the first two story tipi. If built on a south facing slope (plenty of those around) I could have a part of the downstairs lined with windows for some passive solar. Sort of a tipi-topped earthship. So if I go this route, the two-story tipi could house all my facilities. Shower, toilet, laundry, kitchen, etc. This would also afford me space to put a large rmh either upstairs or downstairs. Also hot water lines could be run from the tipi up to the treehouse.

I've even thrown around the idea of building a "treepee" where I would erect a tipi on a platform built upon a single tree with the tree coming right up the center. Although the presence of two tipi's in close proximity might attract unwanted attention from the U.S. Cavalry.

[swizzlenutz]

What state are you from again? I only know of one native american in our area that spent the whole winter in his teepee. Most folks around here build yurts. Teepee John as he was known would spend all but the coldest of winter weather in his teepee. When it got to -20 he had a small camper on his property that he stayed in. I read a story about him hosting a party and 20 people spent the night in his teepee. My guess is they all took turns passing around the peace pipe.

Well anyways. What kind of stove or heat source do you plan on using in the teepee? Is there a way to safely run stove pipe through the wall of a teepee? Swizzle

[hpmer]

I think one advantage of the teepee is that it has an open top so the vent stack could just be aimed up without having to go through the walls. I read somewhere that they have a natural up daft due to an inner and outer wall arrangement. The outer wall has gaps around the bottom which somehow contribute to the draft, while the inner walls are flush to the ground.

[swizzlenutz]

I knew they all had holes in the top. I didn't know about the whole draft thing. That's really interesting. I was just wondering if a regular fire pit in the middle would be used or a temporary rocket. I was just picturing disaster with the amount of heat that would come out of a plain rocket without the mass. A rocket mass heater seems like it would take up to much room in a teepee. So my next thought was a sealed top with a regular stove through the side of the teepee. I'm guessing a regular fire pit would be best although it would take some getting use to cooking on the ground. Maybe a standard 6 brick would be good enough for heating and cooking. It wouldn't take up much space and could probably be built on top of a steel table or a short stack of bricks to get it to the right height to cook well standing. Take off the pot and feed in sticks to warm the place up. Winter would be the toughest keeping it warm with something like that though.

So how do you plan on warming the teepee anyways? I'd like to see the whole setup. It sounds pretty sweet. Don't forget to smoke the inside of your teepee in the spring summer and fall to keep the bugs and evil spirits out. I believe indians used sage for that. I'll see if I can find it. Definitely take lots of pics. A teepee with wifi? LMAO Swizzle

[woodman]

The 20 footer is a good size I have an 18. I have a floor for mine and need to make a liner. For winter it would be nice to have the liner up the poles about 6' then go up to 7' or 8' and meet in the middle to leave say a 12'' hole to extend the stack. And then shove straw down between the liner and outer skin.

I to am playing around with a Tipi stove-heater. The center is the best place for the heat source.

A 30 gal. barrel with 2 bafels a grate and soon to be 18''X20'' top plate.

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[swizzlenutz]

I've never been in a teepee before so I'm not sure about how roomy they are. So how do you have your stove hooked up to release the smoke. Just a pipe a few feet in the air and let the natural draft do the rest? Another thing is if the smoke goes out just fine then the natural draft has to pull air back in. Where does that air flow come from? I'm just trying to get a visual of how the whole thing works in a regular teepee. I'm wondering how a small trench would work. Dig it about as big as your fist from outside, under the cover and right by your fire. Cover the whole trench with bark and dirt and pack it back down. That should ensure a decent fresh air supply. Now I wish Teepee John was still around. I would have liked to have met him. We use to drive by his place everyday. I think my dad didn't care for him because he was "different", but I think that was the way he was raised. Swizzle

[woodman]

I have had open , or camp fires in tipis and the draw is between the liner and the outer skin. The liner being tight to the ground and the outer covering up off the ground slightly. The smoke flaps on top should be on the down wind side.

But in the frigid cold i would try you're idea