Free Fuel - sawdust cooker, rocket stove.

Well it's far too long since I wrote here, but I / we have finally cracked the 'free fuel' with sawdust burner. We have been pondering this for over a year and this winter with thought and experimenting we have enough good results to share this knowledge.

If you have a top loading log burner or wood fired cooker you can use dry sawdust (not shavings) and get a good hot fire that lasts between 2 - 24 hours depending on the size of container, packing, and dryness of the dust.

Basically you line the bottom of your burner with tinfoil (aluminium foil) and make a single hole in the centre, about 1.5 inches diameter.


Then place a wick from the burn chamber down to the ash bin underneath where you will light the sawdust. We have found that a strip of cotton cloth about 4 inches long x 1 inch wide works well.


Then place a tube vertically over the hole with the wick up the bottom of the tube. The tube should be about 1.5 inches wide - you can use wider - it increases the burn rate. The tube can be plastic, metal or cardboard - you take it out after packing.



Then start putting in the sawdust - about 3 to 4 inches, then pack it down firmly with something sturdy - a log in our case.



Add more dust and pack again, continue like this until your burner is about 2/3 full. The more you pack the sawdust the longer it burns.



Then gently and slowly pull the centre tube out of the dust. This leaves a central chimney which is where the burn will start.



Light the wick from the ash box and that's it.



The burner gets very hot and will smoulder for a long time.



We did this burn for 3 hours, then added logs to the middle to get our oven hot enough to bake in.



After 5 hours from lighting there is still sawdust around the edges and corners of the burner and in 3 hours it raised the temperature in the room by 3 degrees.


Shaving logs to come next and outdoor camping or BBQ burners.

How to make a recycled bottle garden

Take an empty plastic bottle, without its top, and cut a 3-sided flap/door in the middle third.


Then fill one third with compost.


Cover the bottom third with old compost bag or card or paper to protect the roots from direct sunlight.


Make a hole to plant your seed or transplant your seedling.


Plant seed and cover with compost and water a little.


Wind wire or tie string round the neck of the bottle and hang on a wall.

You can use this in a window too - hanging or freestanding. You will need to water less often because the bottle creates its own micro climate.

When the plants become too big you can either cut off the door or cut the top off the bottle.

Happy planting!

Greenhouse

The greenhouse is filled with seedlings. We had a few hot days to start everything off, but now we have rain. So all change and we have installed guttering on the back of the garage and greenhouse to catch as much rainwater as we can before the real heat arrives.

Many of my pots this year are toilet roll inners with a milk carton outer. Once the seedlings are up I will plant the loo rolls in the ground and replace with the next batch.

Banana sculpture

Just thought you might like to see a different way to eat a banana. The artiste is 2.

More hatchlings

Just one left to hatch - it is cheeping - and one that might not hatch at all.

The incubator stuffed with chicks.









The little one that wasn't quite right - its umbilicus wasn't absorbed properly.

Hatching Cou-nu eggs

So I'm not used to blogging yet, here are the chicks in reverse order haha....






The eggs started peeping last night at midnight and the first hatched today at lunchtime. So far there are 4, hopefully more later.

New Items on my DaWanda shop.

Here's a quick preview of todays goodies. For more go to the link at the right hand side.