Steve I follow your conversations on a daily basis, but I am still SO confused with this program you are on. What exactly are you preparing for or are concerned so much about that you are putting yourself through this exercise?TomC
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Steve I for one grab a hold of everything you have to say. It did snow here today as you predicted a couple days ago when several well connected locals predicated temps in the fortyâs. Got up off my ass and tore into an old On an I took in trade last fall. Fuel system, points,you know the drill. Anyway been running home and shop, lighting, well, fridge, freezer, coffee pot, shop furnace blowers, grinder, band saw, And more all at once with no problems for nearly an hour now . All is good so far. Next will be the more modern commercial 240 volt onnan for the wire feed.
This is what I am using now
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TomC from reading your posts it seems to me we have some winter living similarities.
We need space heat in different locations.
For PNW wet-side here we need space heating for ~250 days each and every year.
âIdeallyâ I need this space heating in five different separated locations. I only âpayâ to maintain heat now in 1 1/2 of these locations. Full heat in our little 1906, 1300 square-foot, remodeled house. Insulated. Modern double pane argon gas windows. 1/2 heat in the folkâs 1960, small, 1500 square foot ranch house. WE now use this as a guest visting house; 30-90 day temperary-use shelter house for folks in emergency needs. We are register with the Fire department as available. House fully furnished. NOW insulated. Now all new double pane windows.
Full heat means 65F-75F insides with the wonderful woodheating.
1/2 heat means 10F above outside air; or 55F (whichever is higher) with Grid electric forced air furnaces. Unoccupied MUST have this to prevnet toxic molds from forming in the fabrics and papers and LOTS of books inside.
I no longer heat the green house with 275 gallon annualy of stove oil. Disconnected the hot and cold water plumbing. Let the heritage need-heat plants all die-off. Favored: potted and into the house moved. Yes. Could have used a wood-stove there.
The tool-shed really DOes need heat to keep the machine surface tools from air-dropping condesate rusing. Never been heated. I oil a lot. Then just do not sensitive tools use for half the year.
My new metal shop building will actually inside rain at times from inside frosts melting off.
This WAS always supposed to be heated from a gasifier system heats shedding and a woodgas running IC engine-gen operating. Hey. I got old, tired, and weak.
Or. Yes, Could have a FOURTH wood-stove to have to light-up, woodfuel and maintain.
So like you I only use this a few months out of the year. Too damn cold.
Ha! TWOâs wood-stoves to wood-slave over in the houses is my limit anymore
Tom, you and I are Northern living. Most of the year around; Heat Needers!
We must stop being design/develop influenced by needs of get-rid-of-heats Southerners.
THEY all view an IC engine gnerator system as as just making a little bit of electricity. And makes a whole lot of Waste Heat. Oh! My!
Back-asswards for Northern; need heats living.
For us an IC engine generator system IS a heat maker FIRST; that by intent makes some much needed electric too.
Eihter the wifes little Honda now; or now this Yammer-clone can HEAT 10,000 to 16,000 BTUâs an hour into either my greenhouse, tool-shed, or metal shop building in addition to fully lighting these.
Just plumb the exhaust outside. METAL pipe out to farm off the exhaust heat. Down slope that piping for then H2O exhaust condensate dropping out.
Tom your little 2-stroke youâve said you have can heat your curtained off shop space while making some of the electrical power for 6 hour, one gallon of gasoline. $2.00 and you have 6 hours of winter working. Be the same heating as THREE plug in electric heaters.
Ha! 6 hours all Iâm good for anyways, anymore.
Do you see the point that when you stop playing the Make Energy Game of Life; for others; by their rules; for their needs: it just become so much simpler?
Again I am not an Energy Missionary.
I do now insist interchanging only with those willing to use their own creations daily in their own lives to use-proof them.
I have no more life-time to play the save the world games anymore.
Disgusted always by it anyways.
It breaks one of my core fundamental ethics.
You are always wrong to go out and impose your ways of doing thing onto others. This can only be achieved by first taking thier ways of doing things away. Who decides this? You God? Iâm not.
I work hard just to be 51% of the time, right
Steve Unruh
JimLaP Iâve seen two of these opposed cylinder flat head engine woodgasssed well.
One a guy in NorCali. He did have video up. Now down.
The other a fellow in the US upper mid-west. Never any video. Just on another forum; personal correspondences, with proof pictures. They both achieved out of woodgas what they wanted for them and thiers. Now seem to want to move forward with Living with what they have.
They got ~1/2 power with the ignition points re-set to get some timing increase. No other engine modifications done.
I did look at a nice older for-sale Miller 1800 RPM engine welder with an air-cooled dual opposed. Only wanted $1000.
Back then I saved up longer and two years later got the new fuel injected Miller/Kohler twin welder having seen the good reults by MikeL. and then WayneK with EFI. And the same Kohler engine family as I was already familiar with woodgasing.
Ben Peterson started out with a Lincoln single cylinder Wisconsin? welder-gen for woodgasing.
Iâll look for the video link.
Regards
Steve Unruh
Welder system here - 0.54 min mark to 2.10 minutes:
Thanks for the heads op on these Onnan,s wood gassing well Steve I will have to try it. Apparently I was only running at half power today Feeding my breaker panel with a single 20 breaker. I was afraid with such small intake passages the might not wood gas well. !/2 the RPMâs is a good thing.
Benâs old Lincoln makes mine look like the antique it is. I dug some snow away from mine so it could thaw out of the ice yesterday. but it snowed rather than thawed today. I think this will be first to choke down the smoke. What I wouldnât give for the liquid cooled Miller. Some day. I gotta get Benâs book.
- List item
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Tom,
I too was a bit confused at first but I think I understand now.
Steveâs challenge is merely to use 16 pounds of wood daily. To heat, make electricity, or shaft power.
We live in a world of turning on a light switch, turning up the furnace or jumping in our vehicles turning the ignition on and off we go. Heâs asking us to use 1 gallon of gasolineâs equivalent once a day for our own personal energy use. Making a daily effort of not being dependent.
This is how I interpret this thread.
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Well Steve; You just amazed me with what you know about me. As I have said, I have a memory problem, so was impressed that you remembered my shop was just a canvassed off area.
A couple of questions about those new rectifier generators you are working with. Did I understand you to say that they will idle down with a diminished power requirement? The other thing; Mike L talks about some sort of outer space activity or maybe a nuk bomb, that will KILL all the transistorized or computer controlled stuff. Will these new rectifier generators get knocked out in that situation?? That is very low on my âworld fearsâ, but I do keep it in mind. One tractor still has a magneto.
All of my generators run flat out no matter the load and would drive me nuts with in minutes of running inside a building⌠And I would say it is very seldom the 10,000 BTUâs would make a dent in heating my shop. I do have a wood stove but like you, I am limited to about 2 hours in the shop. It takes longer than that to get the shop up to a âcomfortableâ temperature. I bite the bullet and work in the cold until my body gives out.
Steve it appears to me your only âwold fearâ is the electric grid will go down. ( my #1 fear is the âdollarâ) If the grid goes down you want to be able to continue using electricity and maybe recoup some heat. I donât feel generating my own electricity is something I have to practice on a daily basis. So I am still unclear why we should use a gallon of fuel a day to generate electricity when we still have the grid. SorryTomC
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Bill you have taken on a new challenge, which I think I did 35 years ago. I feel I have all the bases covered now, except my health, that we can exist pretty much no matter what happens. I have no interest in taking myself off the grid and denying myself the conveniences that are so readily available to me. I prepared myself financially to afford these convinces. So I guess I donât understand, because maybe without really knowing what I was doing , I have prepared. Granted I havenât practiced some of the things I am prepared to do , but I am sure when the time comes, Iâll make them happen. Your situation will settle down in 5 years and you will have all your ducks in order not feel a need to practice being prepared.TomC
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Well I forgot this being any use, we heat our shop with wood, I have no idea how much a day, prolly 100 lbs a day or more in our twin barrel stoves. But thats not a challenge, this typical Michigan life a lot of us heat with wood. It cost us 1200 a month to heat with NG Im not doing it, thats more than I make a month lol.
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Yes MattR this certainly counts. You having to source that 100 pounds a day, every day for your l-o-n-g heating season puts the sweating-it perspective into later then making shaft power with wood-for-fuel.
E.G: does a fellow really want to commit to having 2X that heating fuel effort just for the ohh-rah, of Iâm electrically suppling my whole shop now? Not.
Stay shop on grid. Make little transitional systems knowing you could if ever needs-must make bigger.
Best regards
Steve Unruh
Oh. You ever want to make a heating with gasifiaction claim you have to ditch out of the barrels. Go thick steel, with tip-in stove brick lining to get any service life from the continuous glowing hot char bed contacts needed. Ha! How I do ~20% of my 100 pounds daily as gasified in my woodstoves.
So for any wondering Iâve been âwoodgasifing for heatâ at ~20 pounds a day for 200 days of the years since 1997. Got the destroyed cast irons to prove it. Pictures archived old drupal DOW here if AdminChris wants to dig them out.S.U.
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Yeah Tom C I still do try hard to remember peoples things. Just do not ask me to remember what I ate for breakfast. Or even if I did have a breakfast. Afternoon headaches tell me I remember wrong. Dumb-assed Steve. That was you remembering eating two days ago. Eat something NOW man!
The speed on the Honda 2000 inverter units does vary from 3000 to 4300 RPM depending on the electrical demand on the unit. How hard the engine is being actually power loaded in each RPM step makes a difference on the sound âenergeticâ levels.
The bigger Honda and Yamaha inverter units are said to operate at a lower RPM range of 2800-3600 RPM.
The smaller sub-78 CC engined inverter units operate as high as a top RPM of 5000.
Tom there are presented to Congress 2004, and then a later 2008 Reports on effects of EMPâs and the other magnetic wave events. Focus was on the costs needed to protect the Grid, transportation, and financial sectors. Long. Long reads.
For us individual the true answers is they do not know what of ours would be affected and how much.
Stupid doomsdayer stories would have you believe that nothing engine equipped since 1961, 1974 or some other Tech point will even crank over once EPM jolted. Bullshit. It is damn hard to kill an electromotive starter solenoid! Major worldwide distributed automotive stuff is durable. Building will shaow protect some. Hills/mountains protect others. YOiu just have to know how to 2" jumper wire the mini-relay sockets to get it to crank. Power up the fuel pump. Power up the ECM. Practice NOW.
Make up a drop over cover out of sewn heavy metal screening for one of these little inverter generator units. Cable ground that to a 6" copper coated grounding rod. Keep it power out unplugged when not in actual use. Reaaly nervious about the unluck of an evnet when plugged-in vulnerable in-use. Have two. One âprotectedâ on stand-by.
Tree killing lighting annually withing 100 feet of the house here, Never lost a laptop. Cell phone. Or major appliance. Ha! Hell on the always wired-in desk tops though! WE just do not use them anymore.
Really personally for me it is the same as it always has been since the late 1960âs.
Learning to individually/close family live on just the energy a person could grow/collect/make on a reasonable homestead. The old book, âFive Acres and Independenceâ.
E.F. Shuemachers books too.
Key is a checkpoint on energy expectations. Small energy systems generations is this.
Everything else I have to do is to meet the expectation of the greater surrounding society. They have a weel documented history of noticing and hammering down any nail that sticks up.
The TAXMEN.
Mowing âweedsâ for neighbors and fire patrol acceptances.
Keep us liabilty insurable for the State requirements of my wifes Nursing licence. That is her pasion and contribution to the greater good of all.
THESE all cost me gallons of bought out fuels annually. I WILL buy out fuels for their dictated on me needs.
For mine/ours actual needs I try as much as possible to, again, grow/make out own.
Yes. I too hate the frenzied shed off energy of a constant 3600RPM screamer!
Near turns me into an axe-murderer anymore. (of 3600 RPM screamer systems)
Ha! Why use one GGE daily.
Well . . . a fellow can think he could just go out and fish and make do, come the needs. Hey he bought the pole, reel, and lures. Got the books and vidioâs.
ONLY the fellow actually out fishing year around in all kinds of conditions/weather will be the one actually catching and eating fish.
Practice makes possible
Steve Unruh
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Hey BillS. Yes that is correct.
But a true 20 pounds of 20% moisture woodfuel without the extreme into gasifier intake air and engine exhaust heat out re-cycling recovery as in the big vehicle WK systems.
Ha! On the Yammer-clone 2-cycles I am figuring now that the 2.7 0z/77cc of oil add to the US gallon of fuel is boosting that gallon by ~10,000 BTUâs.
So Iâm inputting closer to 124,000 BTUâs instead of 114,000.
Makes the costs easier to swallow.
Trashes the conversion efficiency comparisons even further of 4-stroke/inverter versus this 2-stroke natizRPM synchronous.
REgards
Steve Unruh
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Steve,
I remember my grandfather once told me a story from before electricity:
In wintertime when there were not many farm duties the whole family usually stayed in bed until almost noon. The only place warm was between the sheets.
When they woke up they had saved the expences of both breakfast and a basket of wood.
You already know I heat with wood. Avaraging 100 pounds a day, 9 months a year.
But those 3 months in the summer, I donât. Thatâs been bothering me - I canât join the club.
However, my grandfathers story made me rethink.
Those 3 summer months I go by bicycle to work. 5 miles there, 5 miles back. 10 miles a day. My old Volvo gets to rest. It would otherwise drink a gallon a day to take me there and home.
Does this count?
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For Jan:
From the producer gas era when benzine was in short supply the alternative for lighting at night.
I have never seen anything like this made for North America or western Europe ( or eastern for the that matter )
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Thatâs pretty cool⌠Seems like itâs a bit of a deathtrap, but pretty cool! 
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At the same time on our side of the pond we were buying gasoline power table lamps.
This brings up a very interesting question.
Would it be more fuel efficient to burn the fuel in a mantle lamp than try and charge a battery for an LED light?
BTW I suspect that in the hands of a responsible adult one could safely use a liquid fueled pressure lamp with at least a wide a safety margin as a handle or wick lamp.
Now if we are on the subject of lighting dare I consider the idea of producer fueled gas lights?
There was a time when gas actually made at a central gas works and plumbed into peoples homes.
Seems reasonable enough one could do the same with a producer gas plant if they built a small gasometer to store their own fuel
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Well given the fact that the earliest use of producer gas was for home lighting, we know it would work. BUT, Knowing that a major constituent of it is CO, I would be more than a little reluctant to pipe it into my home.
Now using it in a mantle lamp is an interesting idea! They give great light compared to a flame. I wonder if the woodgas would foul up the mantle?
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I have not watched the videos but I have read that it was more efficient to generate electric and light a bulb.
Producer gas was never used in homes but illumination gas was, etc. More difficult to make.
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I have an Aladdin lamp that uses both a wick and a mantle. Donât use them unless you are sitting right there to keep an eye on them. As they warm up, they burn better. If you have cranked them too high too early, youâre in trouble. Amanda over at aladdin-us.com is super nice and has some great Amish hand made jams too!
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Steve U,
Many thanks for all your posts and encouragement for all on DOW. I have read hundreds, maybe thousands of your posts, what a wealth of experience and knowledge you share with everyone here. PLEASE KEEP SHARING!
For 20 years I heated my Sawmill and 2 houses with wood. My life changed dramatically and I found myself 6 hours aways from my wood pile, wood stoves, tools, welders, grinders and torch eleven years ago when I changed carreers and ultimately transferred away from it all for the Railroad. I know I am one of countless others here on DOW with lathes, welders and Bridgeport Milling machine at my old shop at home on our farm, and actually knows how to use them. Nevertheless, they are all still there, 6 hours away and I am here with no access to them.
I was finishing my Bachelors Degree when I discovered DOW. College full time and working full time is no joke. Had to finish school for work, it was not an option. I then had my shoulder replaced soon after I finished my degree, 6 months of recovery for that. I found my truck, a great shape 94 Dodge Dakota last year. Then another set back with my heart last fall, 4 stents later, more recovery time, and another round of Doctor bills paid off, I am back in the saddle and working towards getting my truck to breath fire.
It has been a long road for me. I am am more determined and excited than ever about finishing my truck. I am now just shy of being able to weld at my house here in Nothern Indiana. I am currently putting in a new 60 amp line for the new welding equipment. I have had to practically duplicate everything for a welding shop since most everything at home is 3 phase industial power, not usable on residential power and not very portable either. While I was waiting for finances to catch up again from the last round of Doctor bills from last fall, I hauled in, and cut approximately 2 cords of Hard Maple up, chunked it all for starter fuel for dry when the time comes and all while working 12 to 14 hrs a day on the Railroad.
It is not always as things look on the surface with folks. I have been a doer my whole life. Most of the machines we ran at my Sawmill I completely changed and retrofitted myself or built many machines from the ground up to work in the operation. We could saw 10,000 to 15,000 feet a day depending on what we were working on and did for years on end! That is all behind me now but the mechanical and welding skills to keep a Sawmill and fleet of trucks for an operation of that size moving forward each day is still with me. Who could ever forget, it was my passion for many years.
Make no mistake, I can assure you that you continue to inspire me and others to create usable shaft power by means of a WK System and I will. I can also say I am very much more knowledgeable about woodgass power from trying to take in all of your experience and know-how. I understand itâs day by day learning that gets it done. Not afraid of making wood either, still makes me happy to fire up the chainsaw and swing an axe. I started my career splitting wood by hand to sell for my early income and the rest took off from there, not an easy life, sawmilling. Would still be doing it today if it wasnât for the government inevitably having itâs hands and paws taxing, controlling, licensing, permit selling and insurance poor driving us for everything associated with my Sawmill business.
I will automate the chunking process as time moves forward, but for now itâs all systems go to make my truck DOW this year! I estimate that l have approximately 8000 miles of wood chunked and drying ahead for then learning the other 75% (give or take a thousand miles either way).
Keep on posting Steve, you keep inspiring many many folks to learn and do! Iâll keep reading and fabricatingâŚwould be great to meet you in person some day!
Bryan S
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