Kevin, Amen to everything you have said, God Bless you In Jesus Name. Merry CHRISTmas.
Bob
4 Likes
Thanks bob mac glad you are a real beleiver in christ and the bible as many of us dow,ers.
4 Likes
52 degrees here in Northwest Indiana today. All our snow is gone, stuck around long enough for us to have a white Christmas. 52 the high for this week, but we will take the 30’s over -10 from last week. Seems like T-shirt weather today.
We have been blessed with Family and good times to remember. Someone once told me, as long as you have your health, your belly is full and you can laugh, that is really all a person can truly ever ask for, everything else is a bonus!
7 Likes
The weather felt nice too here in eastern ,MI about 52 f for about 8 hours, i loaded 3 federal cords of slab cotton wood and unloaded the truck and trailer loads, that got me thinking i am out of shape, meanwhile i lost 5 pounds of belly fat.My next build is a house trailer frame solor roof wood drying shed on wheels.10’ by 25’ roof had so many leaks i tore down and putting back up with grean house plastic roof and partial walls.and trailer trusses for roof suports.
3 Likes
Well it has settled into a typical winter here for us.
Just above and below water frezzing “cold” raining here day and nightime.
Sometimes the rain is just COLD wet.
Some times thick and slushy.
Sometimes soft and white.
Three solar yard ornaments Christmas givne to us refuse to daytime charge for longer use than ~ five minutes.
Coming out of nightime roads freeze down; or daytime slushy rain and the road driving idiots keep insisting on knocking down a grid power pole.
Diffnert this year.
Walk out onto the porch. Uncover the Wife’s Honda2000 inverter generator and one-two pulls fire it up. Cords already coiled from the last lay-out.
Finshed uo watching a DVD copy of 1986 “The Mosquito Coast” last night by generator power waiting for the wifie to get home from late night teaching. We the only house visible with electric lighting and Christmas display lights still on.
We watched the late-night news by gneartor power.
Fell asleep to self-made generator power.
Woke up to Grid power back. Made drip-pot coffee. Then realized the generator was still out their humming along. One gallon of Dino-juice at a ~400 watt keep entertainment electronics hot and nighttime lights going lasts 10+ hours.
Would be very hard to live-use gasify at this low of power use
6 Likes
Steve you just need a solar system with batteries then the generator can run at full load and dump the power into the batteries when the solar is short. That is my plan I hope to drop the grid this comming summer and use wood gas genorator for backup to solar.
2 Likes
PV solar here for 250 days of the year is a very bad joke DanA.
Studies show for those 250 days a year we have only one hour a day solar equivalent usability/production.
These PV solar yard ornaments are supposed to operate for 6 hours a night on what most folks get in a single days charging. Instructions say this “may” cut back to only 2 hours nightly usage “on a cloudy day charging”.
I get 5 minutes usage from these December full exposure days.
Not just unique to the ~11,000,000 here, PNW marine wetside.
Applies southern Chile down into the Patagonia.
Maritime eastern Canada the same only one hour solar production a day the majority of the year.
New Zealand south island.
Ireland.
Other; around the world, coastal pocket areas.
About 300,000,000 folks living in these extremely poor PV solar conditions.
Interestingly all these places do grow trees well with our gray sky replenishing mists. Tree woods are the best solar storing in these conditions.
For us PV solar is the hole-in-the pocket distraction.
For us pass on the always storms generated, too little/too much wind and streams hydro and just go straight into woodgas for power.
You are correct. For my LARGE 12kW Kohler-welder to operate efficiently I’d have to only woodgas operate for ~4 heavy loaded hours a day. Forced to storing off running production energy in a big battery bank. Ha! No PV solar ,then no forced battery bank need.
Woodgasing without the battery bank costs and maintenance expenses I would just woodfuel my between size Yamaha 2800 for the base “needs” hours of ~16 hours a day. That can be done on 44 pounds/20 kilo’s of woodchunks a day.
Even then would be annualized 3-4X the real costs versus our BIG-Hydro grid power.
Always. Practicality before idealism. With Freedom/Independence as the real driving factor to just being a write-a-check, mind-numbed, beholding, grid-slave. “part of the matrix”
Freedom ain’t free.
Independence ain’t free either.
Payed for in wood-sweating.
J-I-C Steve Unruh
3 Likes
Steve that is a bummer about your living in the land of gray sky’s. Solar works well here there are about 3 or 4 spells a winter where we get 4 cloudy days in a row. My uncle said one time this winter he had to run his genorator and his system was sizes with 2 days of storage.
I was just thinking if you could power a battery bank then you wouldn’t need to run the generator all the time to have full time power.
Here our power rates are soo high I can actually break even with the current billing rate if I go solar off grid in 12 years I think it was last summer when my uncle priced it out. They just put our rates up again now 70% of my bill is just fixed line charges and only 30% is the actual power I use. That is the thing that is driving me to try and fund off grid. I hate the fact that soo much of my bill is not for the product I am buying. But here in the north east we have crazy high electric bills.
2 Likes
Thank you Steve for that refresher
I was starting to get serious about a solar system but now will just work on a battery and inverter and wood fueled generator package.
Our power has been very reliable maybe 1 event of a couple hours a year
My son can score fairly good batteries (Ford mechanic) and I have a bank of 3 set up and have ordered one of the PSW 8KW power jack inverters ($360).
This woodgassing gets into your blood
3 Likes
Hello all
I had to make a quick trip into Birmingham this morning to pick up a new freezer , the old one when out.
I was parked right in the front door of Lowes as me and an employee was loading the freezer. No one noticed or mention my truck being different, not even the employee helping me load . 
BBB
7 Likes
Rats!
That is half the fun!
I always am thrilled to have folks say “what is that” and then introduce them to DOW including the website
That also says something about the quality of your workmanship as it looks like some industrial gadget, maybe a chimney cleaner?
3 Likes
Hey Michael .
I bet if I pop the hopper lid and hit the reverse blower I could get some attention 
8 Likes
I have had my neighbor’ (100 yds away) call me when he saw a cloud coming up from the far side of my house during a cold start up.
2 Likes
This summer and fall with a “WOODGAS” license plate on my 1995 Dakota, never had one person ask. My 1982 AMC Eagle has someone circling the car at gas stations at least every 2 weeks. I think I need a back bumper gasifier on this relic to act like a force field against the rest of the car. 
5 Likes
Sounds like you got yourself a nice new smoker… 
1 Like
Wife and I went grocery shopping today for the new year celebration. When we got back out into the parking lot a man was snooping around the Rabbit, touching the hopper and looking underneath the car. When getting closer I could see, just by the looks, this was only a “sustainable living” kind of guy interested in my build 
It turned out he had been trying to get a gasifier up and running for his generator for years. Ended up allowing him to take few pictures and gave him my number. I’m not sure he belived me when I told him the motor was running on woodgas when I cranked up and sat there ideling while saying good bye.
Bad startup gas didn’t catch up until we had left the parking area. My wife never noticed I turned the gasoline switch on for a few seconds. Working on the 75% every day since summer is starting to pay off, but I’m still learning new things every ride. SWEM 
15 Likes
I know that feeling! Its just amazeing how DOW connects people. People often come to me when l light up asking me to show how the system works, give me a thumb up and sometimes eaven invite me to therir place (a guy that walked to me last month has a engine from a ww2 woodgas truck home-l havent yet found time to visit him).
The wood powerd car has become such a atraction in our county l am starting to suspect police knows about it, but respect it to not give me a hard time.
Supporting this theory, l have my drivers licence for 4 years now. In thise 4 years l hadnt been stoped once, untill word got out of the wood powered car. 3 times in the last 4 months. The officir looks at the assembly with much curiousity, but respectfully dont eaven give me a alcotest (alcotest is preety rutine thing at a police stop here).
Edit;
While on the topic of presenting woodgas to others…
I found out (yes, by a guy that walked to my car in curiousity) that there is a company not far from my place that works with all kinds of wood applications and they bought a complete woodgas powered generator assembly from Germany (second hand) to power theyr factory and to sell exess electricity powered by their left over wood. This by its self is interasting, but from what l have heared the sistem works for 6 months, then they have to tair everything apart and clean every component of tar for the nother 6 months. I am planing to pay them a visit and see what their system looks like and what seems to be the problem.
12 Likes
Kristijan,
I’ve been close to a couple of police cars, but never stopped. I saw their faces ones when driving in the same direction in different lanes - first staring, then smiling and laughing 
That’s how most people react. I’m perfectly fine with that.
A Finnish guy came up to me at a parking lot a couple of weeks ago. He told me, in that typical accent, he used to have a still just like that, only it wasn’t mobile, and that the police stole it. We agreed I’m saving more money using it this way.
I know my build looks a bit rediculous on this little car, but most people don’t realise I’m able to haul wood one day and go sunday shopping the other - all for free. They pay thousands for gasoline and thousands to get their stamps in the book when having their oil changed - an expensive pleasure - for sunday shopping only (well, lots of trips to work to earn that money of course). I never understood how people can take credit for a chiny, good looking car when they have nothing to do with it. That’s rediculous.
Kristijan, bring an old brake disc for a gift when you visit that generator company. They might need a smaller restriction
5 Likes
Maybe you can get a job consulting for them. After all they should be impressed when you Dow into their parking lot.
6 Likes
I am not understanding this. What stamps and what book?
4 Likes