Billy wrote:
....
Keep up the good work. Your efforts are very interesting.

it sure beats tv.


You may want to invest in a metal trash can. Once the fire is going,
throw in the small stuff, and put the lid on the trash can.

i suspect there is too much oxygen
and opening the lid would introduce more.
from what i can tell there has to be heat
and lack of oxygen. if i filled the trash
can with stuff and then was able to get
another fire going in a larger trash
barrel like a 55 gallon drum and then
set the smaller metal trash can on top
of the fire in the drum that might do
it, or not, that would be one of the more
simple designs.

the question would be about how much fuel
i would have to put underneath to bake the
contents of the trash can to charcoal. and
i probably would need some sort of one-way
valve to let off the steam and gasses.

this being a low tech and low budget
operation i only have access at present to
some flat sheet metal pieces that i can
use to lay over the top of a trench.
piling dirt around the edges to seal it
up and some wet dirt on top to keep the
metal cool so that it doesn't warp is
about the level of technology here. i
almost scored some heating duct tubes from
my brother but he forgot i wanted them and
took them to the metal recycler. oops.

one other interesting aspect is that
by firing the stuff in a trench in the
ground any liquids given off that aren't
driven off as vapor are absorbed by the
soil under and around the trench. i'm not
sure if there are much in the way of
nutrients in that liquid (i suspect most
of it would be water or alcohols, but my
reading so far isn't very detailed on the
volatile byproducts) but a steel contraption
would lose that. it remains an item i'll
continue to look into as i get time and
rainy days.

i don't have enough new dry materials to
do any more test burns until either this
fall or next spring. the metal instead of
cardboard over the trench will likely be
the change i'll make to see if that makes it
much easier. i'm not looking to scrounge
new organic materials either at this point.
too much other stuff going on that needs work
or weeding. a few interesting angles are
possible with some local enterprises yet it
will be a bit before i'll get a chance to
explore them.


Tropical rain forests have laterite soils, not clay. Water absorbs CO2
from the atmosphere, and becomes carbonic acid (H2CO3). The carbonic
acid, in turn, disolves metals in the soil, leaving a soil rich in iron
and aluminum. The soil is usually very porous and will not hold
nutrients (being a rain forest, water retention is not a concern).


thanks for the correction/information, i knew it
was very poor soil (not what you would expect from
such a rich canopy overhead) and was surprised to
find out that most of the nutrients are quickly
recycled or leached away.


The classic example is from a book called "The Ugly America". IIRC it
concerned a tractor salesman in the 1960s, who was spreading the word
about the "Green Revolution" in farming. He plowed a rice paddy as a
demonstration, somewhere in South East Asia. When he finished, the rice
paddy disappeared, because he had destroyed the lining of the paddy
(organic or clay, I don't know), and the water went down the laterite
like water down a drain.

never heard of this one before. huh.

similar to the design of terraces and
how much a simple change like introducing
a different species of worms can destroy
the ability of the edge to effectively
hold water requiring a change from rice to
different crops.


Keep us up dated.

sure thing.


songbird