Wow JO!!! You are going to get a head ache thinking about all of this stuff. I suppose that water in the wood/char is a bad thing because it takes so much heat away from the reduction zone. I basically go with very dry dead wood and I never empty any of the catches. The one place water shows up for me is in the hay filter. Not enough to be a routine part of a shut down. Be it right or wrong, my hopper is insulated on the outside. I don’t know why. Just to keep from loosing heat. I watch my vacuum gages and often wonder why some days they are higher or lower than others but as long as I am going forward, I guess it is ok. The other day when the vacuum went to like zero, and it stopped running, I had to check it out and found I was totally out of wood/char. Don’t really understand tight and loose char beds. Maybe now that I have my blower system where I can push and pull air through the grate, I will develop a better understanding. The other day after playing with the new blower, it did take right off, out of the driveway, and climbed the hill much better than normal.
My thought as I drive are more about mechanical things and possible changes. I listen to what is being said on this group and wonder if they have found something that I have missed and maybe should change. Your conversations with Max are very interesting because you are not talking about a WK and neither am I. Right now I am fighting with myself because I have a definite change I want to make, but it requires me taking the gasifier all apart. I am trying to hold off until the weather changes and I have to work inside. If I take the gasifier all apart, do I make the one change and put it back together for evaluation or do I make other changes as long as I’m at it. Usually my answer is the latter. In the mean time, it is raining and I can’t paint the fence and I don’t have a reason to get the truck out, so here I sit, boring you guys. TomC
Agree, and you learn something new every trip.
I envy your office 
That’s my kind of thinking. Always runs good in the low end. Upper end might vary a little bit. Doesn’t matter much.
What changes are you planing?
Tom , did I here you right. I don’t have a reason to get the truck out? What! have you lost your joy of a good SWEM as you go down the road. There should be only one reason why you don’t get the truck out, well okay two reasons. 1 I need to cut more wood, so I have some fuel for the truck to burn on, and two I forgot to cut wood for fuel for the truck to burn on. Cupech. Lol. @JO_Olsson, Jan-Ola doesn’t seem to have this problem with the rebak he is using.
Bob
Mainly, you said something about Dutch John’s theory of a ball size area from the nozzles to the restriction, and then 1/2 that amount in a ball from the restriction to the grate. I have never thought about what goes on below the restriction. Max started me on a change to reduce the reduction volume. I’m going to revisit that. I need to rebuild my cyclone— it is rusting out. Thinking about getting reid of my heat exchanger. All sorts of ideas, but basically reducing the reduction zone. TomC
IBob I have 15 or so bags of wood ready to go but I hate to just waste them. I have a woods, but the trees are big and do not lend themselves to chunking. I have cleaned a lot of the branches out of the woods but now the ones remaining are in the woods so deep that I would have to do a lot of dragging to get them out to the chunkier.TomC
Oh, I see your problem Tom. You have I chunker but not the right size wood of easy access. I have the opposite problem, no chunker, or rebak. Just a hatchet and chainsaws. just finished up bagging up 340 pounds of wood and put them into my new wood storage shed. The sides are not finished yet. Have you ever thought of dropping one of those big trees and cutting it up into slabs 3" thick and doing the hatchet to them when they have dried out to 20% moisture. It’s a lot of swings with the hatchet. I KNOW! 340 pounds takes about 6 hours of swinging, breaks included. It goes pretty fast once you get the swing of it.
Bob
Tom, it’s non of my business but I don’t see why you want a smaller reduction. Yours seems not restrictive at all since you run a 2:1 vacuum ratio at all times.
DJ’s estimation of a suitable reduction volume was 1/3 of the oxidation, if I remember right. I think we’re both in that neighbourhood. Yours is a bit wider but it’s the active part that’s right in the center below the restriction that counts. The rest will probably act just as insulating char, wich is a good thing.
I think that was only Max’s way of explaining a chubby volume that will radiate less heat than a tall narrow one.
If I were you I would buy a small junk car and weld up a mini gasifier to hook onto the hitch. Something like Kristijan’s. Those 15 bags of wood would last for a long time. Your fence will still be there for you to paint
Interasting theory JO! Wery possible. In theory, more steam goeing trugh the charbed eating the fines shuld give more hydrogen and CO, but allso a hotter gas becouse unreacted steam has biger heat capacity thain dry gas. Isnt that what is allso happening to you? In those moments l wuld love to have a gas analizer…
That’s interesting. Combined with a loose charbed and all the equipment already heated. Very likely.
About the loose charbed I look at it this way:
Wet wood take longer to toast and wet shunks survive longer. Result: loose charbed. Worst case raw wood still present down low when no oxygene left = tary gas.
Reduction takes place as long as temp is high enough. To much water steal heat to boil off the water.
I have a friend with a band saw and he keeps telling me, he will cut a couple logs up in to 2x2 sticker. But it never happens.tomc
That would be sweet if you could get that done, Tom. I am trying to come up with something in two spring loaded rollers that will split the 2" cut log slabs both ways for processing wood.
Bob
do you have a wood splitter bob.
No Paul, I have a split Mal, I need to buy a hydraulic wood splitter. Just haven’t done it yet.
Bob
Kristijan, what your gasifier is doing for power to go down the road is a good analyzer base to judge things on, and You are the Analyzer. I just want the power when I need it. I have been making small adjustments to my gasifier set up to fine tune it to get it to preform better. I learned that from you guys here on this DOW site. Thanks.
Bob
JO. I have read and re=read you post. I was taken back by your comment, that I probably didn’t need the modification I had planned. Now having read it so many times, I do see what you are saying. I read how your raising you grate helped the performance of you gasifier, so I thought making mine small would help. But from what you say you changed the depth of the hot char and I am planning on changing the restricted diameter. You make sense on that point.
I have given a lot of thought to buying another vehicle. Two ways to go. One is buy a Chev S10 pickup with the same V6 engine I am running now. The S10 weighs less and has a smaller frontal area. The second way is to buy a Trackerd ( be it a Chev or Geo ) That is a little car that has a good back platform to carry a gasifier. This program depends on how I feel this winter and if I can get my shop winterized
Thank you for the comments on the reduction zone IF I ever have to do a complete tare down, I may change the reduction zone, but for now I am calmed down on the idea
I told the wife you said the fence could wait. Ahhh not a good idea for you to stop by for coffee for a few days. TomC
DOW almost daily for the last 3 mounths. Past 3000 km (1875 miles) on wood today when taking our daughter to the train station. Made her hold the camera.
Thanks for the ride. I really like the new camera hold you have. Good job. At I think 42 seconds you show a gage in between the seats in back. Is that your “meat” thermometer? It looked like it contained two readings. Then again shortly after you show another gage. What would that be??? TomC
Thanks for the video JO BBB 
Yes, the one in the back is the hopper temp. (78 C) Second reading (150 C) is alarm setting.
The one between the seats are gas temp out of cyclone (193 C) Alarm 300 C.