I do agree that homesteading is way broader than wood gasification and we should tread carefully. Opening the floodgates to everyone and their brother… might be a mistake.
One difference at DOW from most of these is the paywall. How does that affect users attitudes?
Perhaps folks should have some “skin in the game” i.e. they’ve paid for a membership. I don’t want everything locked up behind a paywall, but if you’re invested in the site, you are more likely to keep it clean and civil. Maybe it’s invitation only, like some of these FB groups? That would weed out the casual internet trolls at least.
Since it exists, I see no need to compete with it. I’ll probably give it a whirl and maybe reach out to them, there may be an opportunity to promote woodgas in there.
Thanks for all your feedback folks! This was an interesting discussion.
I agree, you must have some skin in the game to be respectful of a site. As soon as free people come along and see where they can treat it like a tourist town they do. Yes I live in a low cost RV site in a tourist town to survive. People come here, get drunk, break rules of the town, think because they don’t live here that they can crap all over the town and leave when they please. Do we want this happening on this site? No!
I am quite selective of being a member of any group because I am interested in engineering, not drama. This site provides all the best of gasification.
Being quite open about my heart transplant, I know any time I have gotten since twelve years ago is a gift and I am trying to give away what I have done before dirt nap time comes around.
FYI I have to weld in a cattle pasture, can’t weld when the owners wife get worried about fires or one of the old women chides here into making me stop because they are jealous. No one comes way out to see I cut up the old truck and lined the ground around my welding table with sheet steel from the pickup, they just make things up without knowing anything.
Why this is important? This site doesn’t care about all that. They know I am heading toward a goal on a candy bar budget. It is a safe place and I will not be told I am heading in the wrong direction by a solar panel salesman.
Chris, please bring new topics and we can keep the intensity of this site. As some of the richest men in the world concluded, a country can only develop when it has freely available energy. I am a stationary engine guy. I have been working on rebuilding the inline six from the pickup I was given, actually abandoned in the field.
My intention is to make it into a welder, generator, heating and cooling unit as well as it’s own wood chipper for fuel. I am designing to be able to tow it around behind a truck that I can attach the line to the vehicle or to a field machine such as a sawmill or tractor.
My point is here is the best place to post that type of material, not a site that which looks at only one aspect. The idea could be homestead, because it is a low cost energy source, but it is really about gasification. If you want to use a gasoline generator site, go to one to get detailed information. Want to go solar, find a detailed site. Want easily built gasification with courteous experienced people, come here.
Too many words, but I think in details.
I reference permies.com sometimes but sometimes the information and solutions are sketchy if they exist. The same thing with homesteader sites. They fixed a problem, but the solution isn’t as good as it could have been or they quickly fall back to retrotech. But they send me offers for books at least monthly.
What I would suggest, is changing the home page so it is more inclusive of other gasifier systems. We also need to settle on 1-2 designs for small engine gasifiers that are easy and work for newbies that is better written out. That could be premium. If you want to run a large engine we point to the book, the small engines… we have a lot of information but sorting through all the topics has to be a pain for a newbie.
Then creating a ‘homestead’ Topic, that can be either threads of people’s homesteads, or homesteading topics. Like ‘water systems’ or whatever else you have encountered. In fact, charcoal filtration is covered somewhere. Tom can add his knowledge as well.
Maybe it attracts more people or gets people more involved.
I still make charcoal but it goes to biochar right now. It is all low tech and not worth posting.
I’ve created a new subcategory for Homesteading. Nothing else is changing, it is still officially “off-topic” for the DOW site. But there are a lot of discussions on the topic, so I thought a new category was appropriate. Several existing threads have been moved over there.