Don Burke? Is that you? :lolcry:

 

I like to grow... :blush:...It's rewarding...:)

Well, I loaded it up yesterday with twin gas pipes and a chimney throttle. The fuel was pretty shrubby this time, old garden bushes and walnut shells, like this-

 

I packed it to the top, dragged it down to a pumpkin patch and set it going.

Some smoke leaked out the lid (torn-up sheet as a seal!) and around the brick in the bottom hole (the air inlet) but a hit with black PVC tape fixed that. I ran it from about 8pm when the wind was zero until just after midnight when the flames stopped roaring out of the chimney and the amount of smoke coming out had dropped. The drum gets up to about 70deg, not enough to melt the tape, but the axle in the chimney was glowing red-hot!

I shut it down by just taping over the inlet at the drum base and took the chimney off to tape over the hole in the lid. When I opened it up this morning it was slightly warm, and over 90% was charcoal. With the fuel being shrubby it didn't transfer the glowing smolder fom one bit to another at 100%.

 

I sieved it through a baker's bread tray, so about 20mm squares, and I'll smash up the bigger pieces later.

With the lousy summer a lot of veges are late, the tomatoes are just ripening now. The courtyard beans are just reaching the deck, but the early ones by the tomaotes have formed a long tunnel to walk under. They're up the deck rails to the top.

 

We've got about 70sqM as vege gardens, so we give stuff away when its all too much. One 6mx2.5M plot will get the biochar and I'll empty the concrete compost bin in with it. I've never bought fertiliser of any sort, we just compost all the vege scraps, weeds, chooken shit & stuff.

 

Biochar was designed to utalise wheat stalks and similar lightweight dry fibre, so this is pushing it a bit. I'll make a sliding door throttle for the bottom, a better seal for the lid and try it again. I think it needs an extension on the chimney with a vent cut in it so the flames are all combusted inside it.

So that's your secret weapon :)