Don, that would work pretty good for drying wood, thanks for posting it… I want to keep mine down low, less sq ft to warm up and there’s no need for me to go into it, I’m just planning on shoving fresh cut and split wood in one end and shoveling dried fuel directly into hopper out of the other end. How are some of you other guys drying your wood? I know it will dry lots of places in summer but what about when the snow is blowing sideways and you want to go for a ride? Herb
I have a metal trash can with a lid I put on my wood stove in my shop in the winter…wood stove is made out of an 80 gallon vertical air compressor tank…that flat area where motor and pump mounts is perfect to set the can on…holds about 100 lbs or more… usually can dry a in a day… then dump into a 55 gallon drum…and put on the lid… I have a couple saw mills close by that are glad to donate their slab wood.
Howdy Herb,
One the best wood drying and storage setups was an old school bus…
If ya got a back forty, it’s hard to beat.
The windows from north side can be removed and empty spaces closed in with sheet metal…
Then remove the metal between the uprights on the south side, to allow placement of the windows.
What ya get is a large solar dryer that is very sturdy, weather proof, cheap, great ventilation, portable if it still runs, not to mention ugly as sin. 
I have done this, works very well.
Wish I had a place where I could do it again.
BBB
TerryL
Edit
The pic below should get the point across.
windows could be double height for the full length of the bus.
Lets get together and gasifiy that bus, then we could load it up with wood and take off, by the time we need fuel the next hopper load would be dry.
Just being stupid.
That bus would make a fine dryer. Herb
This is what I came up with, it’s not done but close. All used material except 1" insulation under the tin on ground, mostly from an old porch I helped a neighbor take off her house. What do you guys think? It’s going to get wet and cold here this week end sounds like. latter Herb
Looks good for rain. Open it up in sunny weather though. That tin is blocking some much wanted solar energy.
O I should have mentioned that is fiberglass, it does look like tin in the pic. It’s old and dirty on the bottom side but the price was right!
Hey guys look here.
Read the text well.
Look at the pictures:
www.fluidynenz.250x.com
Left Hand side bar. Open up “Power in the Hills”
Doug Williams here is proving there is enough unconverted to mrchanical shaft power heat energy in a gasifier/engine-generator combo for it to just in time dry down and condition it’s own as-cut raw fuel wood and even have enough heat left for some space heating. His Solar sucks as badly as mine. Only been FOUR solar drying days here since the 27th od August. ALL outside wood now has just been sucking up water from the 18+ inches of rain over the last 45 days.
For those actually having out of summer solar enough to do woodfuel condidtioning the keys will be:
- you have to set up TO LET THE MOISTURE OUT. 1000 pounds raw cut wood will have ~400 pounds of water in it. To get it down to 20% you will have to remove ~200 pounds/ ~25 GALLONS OF WATER!!! Metric guys just use killograms and liters for this - the precentage proportions remain the same. DougW shows LETTING THE MOISTURE OUT by open topped conditioning under an area cover. His area cover is sloped outward to guide underside moisture out. WayneK doing the same in-shed on flat bed trailers.
- Heat. You have to use heat to force a relitivly humidity change between the the air surrounding and the wood chunks. Just like most things More Flows to Less. In this case moisture. The heated air will fill up with wood moisure. Then you need to let this moisure laden air out. Replace with more heated then relatively lower “moisure sponge” air. Not let it out quickly enough and it cools just a bit inside it will rain back down on your wood and you will lose gain. So you have to have air flow to let the moisture out.
Solar your best heat gain will be having your rain top panels set at a latitude adjusted angle just like a PV solar cell bank. This would actually give you a nice directed sheet of upward flowing air draft. - Fuel chunked stacked depth needs as Wayne says to be only 3-4 chunks deep for moisture flowing up and out without the inner pieces staying cold and rewetting the top pieces. 22 degee angled solar here at my 43 degree lattitude the chunks will want to tumble down and lower end stack up. Doug Williams lets it stack up relatively deep and used engine cooling fan and electric blower to force the heated air up through the thicker fuel stacks.
Stationary with lots of space easier to set up to do this. Look at the pictures of Francois Pal’s wood products mill site system building ChrisKY has been forwarding.
You vehicle guys certainly have the system heats and the woodfuel needs. But very hard space and weight cramped to set up for an on-board woodfuel conditioning. You betcha’ use solar if you got it. Use Artic/Continetal deep freeze drying as you have that too.
Just because it would be hard to set up for on-vehicle condition I’m now waiting for the sharp guy who will “cell” set up a flat bed eliminating his cooling rails and woodgas cooling/heat exchange wood condition over the rear most cell portion. Forward cell for exhaust heat wood condirioning. With the engine hot coolant RV/Bus piped back back through the mid cell for woodfuel conditioning. Only wat I could see here in non-solar rain forest counrty for a vehicle system to be self supply possible.
Otherwise in the wet here or Coastal have to set up a whole external stationary woodfired fuel wood conditioning system for gasifier fuelwood.
There goes your over all fuel economy use. Burn a pound to dry a pound to go into the gasifier.
OR - build a Big woodstorage shed and bear/squirrel/farmer work like mad through the whole 60-90 day dry season collecting up and storing enough fuel wood to vehicle drive the rest of the year. Just what has to be done with firewood here; and Hay most everywhere.
Regards
Steve Unruh
The Deutz tractors had this system during the second world war. Containers connected to the exhaust on top of the rear wheel fenders. Said to be very effective if my (poor) german serves me right.
Thanks for the info, I have better pic, from the other end. I know it should be clear fiberglass but use what ya got you know! Herb
That was really good info, it lets me know what it really takes to do the job. I know mine is nothing compared to something like that. It’s good to know it’s possible. We have weather coming in tonight. I’m glad I have mine this far along. At least my wood won’t get rained on. I’ve just been drying on drive until now. Thanks for the knowledge, Herb
This was the first full day of operation for the HotBox. It rained here last night so it got off to a cold wet start. At 2:30 this afternoon it was 76 in the box and 65 outside, it was sunny most of the day. It’s full of fuel, not setting records but at least the fuel didn’t get wet last night . It only cost me $10.00 total, most of the stuff I had, I’m throwing in my labor, it’s been proven over many times it not worth very much! just kidin’ Herb
Thought I would put up some pics of how I process fuel. I cut logs off 2-3 ins. long and then split them so I end up with triangle blocks.
pic1. Bandsaw cutting off 3" long “cow patties” up to 20 in round
pic2. Hand operated spliter I made, works good, not as fast as hatchet
pic3. I think we all know about this system
Good Morning Herb,
Thanks for posting.
Looks like you are in the wood chunking , wood burning business!!
Good morning Wayne and everyone, yeah I like driving the Caddy so that means I’ld better come up with a good way of working fuel. My son-in-law is in the tree business so he drops off logs. You get a lot of mass out of a 20" cow patty and they split like butter because they are so short. Does anyone else work up fuel like this? Very low equipment costs, very low energy costs, the only other time I’ve seen it done this way was on the post Steve U (thanks Steve) put up a few back from here.
Took a couple of more pics. Herb
Wayne, I figured you had probably been there done that. How did you cross cut your cow patties? I presume you went with your chunker because you would have slabs from your saw mill left over, right? That is a serious chunker you have. What are you using for the cutter itself? Thanks Wayne, Herb
P.S. I really enjoy your site, thanks for sharing all the “stuff” you learned over years and countless hours of trial and error, I appreciate it.
Good Morning Herb,
The cuter on the wood chunker is the truck rim. The video below shows it well.
On the cow patties ( disc ) we would cross them out with an ax ,hatchet or small spiting maul.
The sawmill strips and edgings are about the right size for the gasifiers and just needs to be cut into pieces . I used a table saw for a long time before I made the chunker.
Thanks Wayne, lots of good info. Finally got the brakes fixed (4 rusted steel lines replaced) on the Caddy last week and it’s back on the road. I put about 60 miles on it last Thursday and some folks called wondering if I could take them for a ride latter today. I still can’t believe how nice it runs on wood! I got fuel out of my hotbox for the first time for the ride Thursday, it was nice and dry (12%)but it was cut from a fairly dry log so not a very good test for hotbox. In the warmest part of the day it’s about 12 degrees warmer in there then outside and it never gets wet so i think it’s a “winner”. latter, Herb.
Had to make another post to tell you guys about this! My friend/partner in this Wood Powered Caddy project had a family reunion today and some of the folks wanted a ride. I just got back a little while ago. I took two carloads of people out on 141 (4 lane) with traffic running 70/75 and over and joined right in. I had only lite it 15 minutes before that. When I got back my wife asked if they were impressed, I said, no, they were past impressed, they were astonished. O well, Just another day gassin" Herb
PS. Gave them all DOW cards