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Combustion Engineering..


altezzaclub

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Well, seeing as I'm working on this project again I thought I'd egimicate you youngsters for your old age when you start growing a vege garden.

 

Most soils are low in carbon, pure activated charcoal type carbon, as it only gets put there in forest fires and these damm fieries keep putting them out. The carbon binds a large number of ionic minerals and organics so the plants can use them. So... you take all the woody/shrubby/ hedgey cuttings and dry them for a week or two. They're too woody to compost and it costs money to dump them anyway.

 

You get a $10 drum with a lid from the local apple juice factory & cut a hole in the bottom. Throw in 3 bricks and a coarse steel mesh cut to the circle. You get this- Its been used becasue I never took photgraphs to start with... :bash:

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Away it goes.... Then the neighbour but one comes over complaining about the very strong tarry stinking smoke! So you put it out. At 10pm he's back, because it didn't go right out, even though you hosed the shit out of it... so you go out & tip the drum out on the grass & hose it again!

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Edited by altezzaclub
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Counting that as a fail, you pay $20 for a crappy piece of tin tube and flare the base. You cut a hole in the drum lid and fit a fine "anti-flashback" mesh to it, then rivet on the chimney base, subtly modified so you can slide the rest of the chimney on and off. A hole drilled in it takes a length of Corolla brake pipe that is cross-drilled and hooked up to a rubber hose on a gas line.

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What do you grow, Altezza? I've always enjoyed gardening. I think it's because my mum used to have a vegie patch and before I started school I would always be playing around in the backyard, somehow I would always end up in the vegie garden, digging up carrots to munch on. Those were the days...

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However it is still unstable... so onto today's project.... A smoke throttle!

 

I was looking for a 50mm diameter cone to drop over a bit of exhaust pipe, but could only fnd this steel ball. That will get suspended on the bike brake cable wire which is drilled through the alloy bar, so I can wind it up and down 50mm. The smoke will come up the exhaust pipe and the ball will let it out to mix with the air going in the chimney cut. The cross-drilled brake line is going back in through the side of the chimney AND the soldering iron, so I hope they keep each other burning.

 

I was planning on cutting the chimney off again above the vent, then splitting it wide down its length and adding a 40mm strip of steel to make its diameter bigger. Then re-fitting it so I had a draught going in all around the edge, but all that seemed like too much work! It also worried me that the velocity in the larger chimney might be too slow to mix well... Any combustion engineers on here?

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lol Willis -everything!!

 

Spuds are under the house now, all stored with the garlics for winter, but we are picking zuchinnis, carrots, peppers, cucumbers, beetroot, onions, chillis, tomatoes, (just! Very late this year), beans (peas finished), Gem squash we are eating but other pumpkins are still growing.

 

The rhubarb & the silver beet I don't worry about! We've had the blackberries/loganberries/raspberries & some other berry.. they all end up as jams! Peaches are ripening, apricots finished, plum tree is too young and the walnuts I have to shoot the bloody cockatoos out of every day!

 

Seedlings now are the cabbage/broccoli sort of stuff coming on. Its a retirement hobby! We give stuff away to the neighbours, there's always an excess of something. But yeah, get into it while you're young, I wish I had learned more from my old man that just how to dig. He grew everything for the family when I was young.

 

Now I've tasted real veges again I realise the stuff in supermarkets is pretty artificial.

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Sounds like you've got an awesome garden!!!

I really need to get back into it..I've always thought about making some raised beds and working with those as opposed to digging up the soil here (rented property). Could be a "Did it Myself" project.. But it's in the long list of things I should/want to do.

Keep it up. Keen to see some pictures of your garden now!!

 

Yeah, I know what you mean about the supermarket produce. I still buy it because it's convenient but I do miss mum's home grown.

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I'm thinking it's just a beneficial additive to his compost and or soil mix, kickn5k. I'm also thinking it's relatively quick to make once. I've never heard of it being done before though. My main focus has always been on Macro and Micro nutrients, whether as additives in a soilless mix or in the soil itself and providing the best soil mix that I can eg. compromising between drainage and water retention, texture and of course the right levels of nutritional content etc. :D

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I'm thinking it's just a beneficial additive to his compost and or soil mix, kickn5k. I'm also thinking it's relatively quick to make once. I've never heard of it being done before though. My main focus has always been on Macro and Micro nutrients, whether as additives in a soilless mix or in the soil itself and providing the best soil mix that I can eg. compromising between drainage and water retention, texture and of course the right levels of nutritional content etc. :D

 

Don Burke? Is that you? :lolcry:

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Yes, its an addition to the compost.. If I burn the woody stuff I get the minerals only as ash, the carbon and the volatiles go out as CO2. If I compost it the woody bits stay whole and very slowly (over years) rot down and give off the CO2. So this way I lose the volatile organics but keep the carbon.

 

I've been using a couple of those black plastic Daleks from Bunning for compost, but last year I built a proper concrete block one about the sze of an office desk.. The chookens love it and it can easily be forked over, so it composts much quicker

 

Grow some tomatoes in pots next spring.. easy to do and the taste is great!

 

Tonight's food- just eaten the salad before this, but this is all out of the garden except the chop! The grilled cheese is one of my wife's home-made ones.. (Don't askI just eat what I'm given!) That's half a gem squash, a South African plant that is delicious. The spuds are from the feral garden, where I threw the excess seed potatoes in the 'swamp' and covered them with dry grass. They grew OK, but not as big as the ones that we planted in a dug garden, the soil was too hard I think.

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Edited by altezzaclub
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