Saturday 21st February
Swirl Stove Demonstration by Andrew: Part 2
Andrew is back to set up his hand-made Swirl Stove invention! This time with a new addition…
…a custom made regulator. Comprising of plastic container with circuit board and LED light…
…connecting the battery to the fan and making ignition easier.
Fueled by small pieces of kindling,
sawdust and dry wood chippings,
the flaming devise was a hit with today’s visitors,
and kept Energy Cafe in constant supply of boiling water…
right into the night.
Check out review by Hackney Permaculture
Bonfire Basket
After a hard day’s work, the ’staff’ of the day gather around the millstones to relax, make a bonfire and cook.
So far we’ve put pans straight onto the flames…but it hasn’t been so easy to regulate the heat for different types of cooking. How to do a stir-fry?
Andrew comes up with a simple but sophisticated solution: planks across the millstones, a grill balanced on top, above the fire – an instant ‘hob’.
Hmmm – oil not quite up to temperature for frying.
Tan solves the problem with a bit of wire mesh. A hanging basket that gets the pan closer to the heat. Brilliant.
The millstone bonfire has evolved into a multi-functional stove: potatoes in the oven, stir fry on the hob and toast on the grill. Who needs gas?!
Oil Drum heater/stove
1. chop wood into kindling
2. Raise the oil drum slightly off the ground using paving slabs or something similar – to allow air flow through the base of the drum
3. light a small fire ( make sure newspaper and kindling bone dry!
4. keep adding kindling
until the flames get going, then add logs or as we did – waste palette wood.
when the fire is roaring at a constant temperature, place a grill on top..
The drum heats fast – good for keeping warm from head to toes. Its also an ideal multi purpose stove
for boiling water, melting snow and
toasting sandwiches.
until sunset we harvested the snow…using the water to soak glass jars and wash up in
we’re on the hunt for lots of water containers, tanks, buckets etc…serious water harvesting to do as the thaw sets in.
not only to collect grey water, but to look at ways to filter water naturally. Check out this bike powered water pump and sand filter...this would be ideal on site! anyone out there who would like to build it – or something similar during Energy College ? just by chance we have all the materials here to make it.
Wednesday 28th January
Peter demonstrates how to turn an empty oil drum into an outdoor heater and stove
Tools to hand: Angle grinder and drill with large heavy duty drill bit.
step one: take an empty Oil drum, angle grind off the top lid – as close to the lip as possible
step two: grind the edges – to remove any sharp loose bits of metal.
step three: Turn the drum on its side and starting from the bottom …drill holes through..
approximately one inch apart all the way around the drum.. continue this for about three or four rows ( this allows a good air flow )
Step four: Drilling is quite a monotonous and tough job – so to make it a bit less time consuming we decided to continue the process by making rough slits in the sides with the angle grinder…
so it looks like this!
very pretty!
step four: turn the drum upside down and drill more holes around the edge of the base rim.
approximately one inch apart..(practice makes perfect)
step five: drill a hole in the middle of the base.
Cath gives it a name: “Drilling for Oil “
Great Peter! Thanks! we’ll put it to the test on a cold wintery day!
Shaun Makes a Stove Out of a Gas Bottle: (Steps 1,2,3,4, & 5)
Step One: take a completely empty Gas bottle
Step two: remove the top handle and cut a hole on the side to fit a flue pipe
Step three: mark out a small rectangle on the opposite side to the hole
Step Three: Cut out the rectangle using an angle grinder.
Step Four: add hinges to the left hand edge of the cut piece to make a door.
Step Four: Take a metal flue and cut 12 strips about 2 inches long into one end
Step Five: Place the flue over the hole on the top of the bottle. How to fix it?
To be continued….
“Biochar is an astonishing idea…
After demonstrating the multi-uses of his Swirl Stove, Andrew sent us this summary from an article in The Guardian.
…Burning agricultural wastes in the absence of air leaves a charcoal composed of almost pure carbon, which can then be crushed and dug into the soil. Biochar is extremely stable and the carbon will stay in the soil unchanged for hundreds of years. The original agricultural wastes had captured CO2 from the air through the photosynthesis process; biochar is a low-tech way of sequestering carbon, effectively for ever. As importantly, biochar improves fertility in a wide variety of tropical soils. Beneficial micro-organisms seem to crowd into the pores of the small pieces of crushed charcoal. A network of practical engineers around the tropical world is developing the simple stoves needed to make the charcoal. A few million dollars of support would allow their research to benefit hundreds of millions of small farmers at the same time as extracting large quantities of CO2 from the atmosphere.”
And… “Nat is still planning to send a Lucia, he says it runs on dried rabbit droppings!”
Thursday 4th December
Inspired by his visit to Energy Cafe last week, Andrew returned today with his fantastic invention: a Swirl Stove.
Made from a customised flue, the stove ignites with a micro amount of electricity from a battery.
Andrew added sawdust pellets and a drop of parafin to get it going.
The flame spins in a smokeless swirl…
How long will it take to boil water in the storm kettle?
Just three minutes and one handful of pellets!
The wood chippings that Andrew donated burn just as well. A great advantage of this stove is that: “it could continuously produce char from dried tree surgery waste…and still do your cooking.” It did a great fried egg!
“This is: The Boy Scouts Guide to Making Willow Charcoal in the Swirl Stove”
You will need: willow branches and a tin can with lid.
Chop willow branches into even lengths…
…so they fit into the tin can with the lid closed.
Fill the can with lengths of a similar width and close the lid.
Place can in Swirl Stove…
…bury with fuel (sawdust pellets or wood chips), put the kettle on and wait…
…for 40 minutes. Remove can with tongs and let it cool.
Hey presto! Beautiful sticks of charcoal for sketching with.
Thanks
To Rachael for crocheting a little basket for Energy Cafe…
and for lending her storm kettle…
here’s how it works..
Foundation for Sustainable Technologies
Thanks to Lucy for emailing info about this project in Nepal: www.fost-nepal.org/
Worldstove
Thanks to Andrew who emailed today: ‘A chap promoting the worldstove, Nathaniele Mulcahy, has offered to send one of his small “refugee” cookstoves over in the next fortnight’ www.worldstove.com/lucia_stove. We look forward to the demonstration!
ARTI India
…and some links to Indian stoves and other energy saving inventions… www.arti-india.org/content/view/52/67/
Sawdust ovens
Cape Verde
Ken Boak sent us these links
Grilling Sweetcorn in Finsbury Park
By pure chance we came across this example of a simple sweetcorn grill at the Rise Festival in Finsbury Park last weekend. We are hoping to have a white sweetcorn grill (see post below) so are on the look out for something similar…
