Perma Pastures Farm
Billy from Perma Pastures farm and Youtube Community. Link to youtube channel -> Perma Pastures Farm on Youtube.
Community Leaders:
- Organized by
-
-
Using compost as a radian heat source
-
Using compost as a radian heat source
Looking for creative ideas for building a 4 season greenhouse in Northern VT. How much heat does the piles from a chicken tractor produce? How long does it stay warm?
-
25 Replies
-
Hi Rich. I seem to recall that Sean at Edible Acres put up a Youtube video, I think last year, of the compost pile he made to heat a tank of water inside his New York greenhouse. I don’t remember the results or how much warmer it kept the greenhouse but you might ask him for more information.
-
Like everything in permaculture, it depends. Material in the pile, size of the pile, how much Oxygen is getting into the pile.
-
You might get a kick out of looking into Jean Pain style compost heating. He even powered his car on methane from the pile! Search that name on YT for some ideas. He had access to a lot of wood chips. I think Ben Falk up your way has had some success as well https://youtu.be/oF5iL-nUGMQhttps://youtu.be/oF5iL-nUGMQ
-
This is something I’m extremely interested in..especially for greenhouse heat and shop heat. Wood chips put off so much heat.
-
I have both heating a cooling issues. I see on YouTube where people have put in Geothermal temperature management systems for their greenhouses. Bet you could incorporate compost piles. A friend did Geothermal for his home and it worked great; he had the greenest lawn in the neighborhood.
-
You may be talking about “Climate Batteries” kind of Geothermal for greenhouses, based on air rather than liquid as the thermal transfer medium.
-
I have seen both liquid and air on YouTube. The liquid uses coiled buried poly-pipe, suspect 1″
-
-
-
Compost might do the trick but I’m seriously thinking about using a rocket stove.
-
My thought on rocket mass heaters was to build them into the thermal wall of the greenhouse. Run the chimney up thru wall to extract most of heat before venting to outside.
-
I’m thinking about running it underground and sending the chimney to the outside of the structure.
-
I was hoping to combine the clean burn of the rocket with the heat capture and radiatnce of the Kacheloven (the Eastern Europe stone ovens). They were designed to be fired once or maybe twice a day. The fires heated the mass and it radiated thru the rest of the day or night. The rocket heaters ( one under each side of the fish tank) would be down low. Their mass would be the platform for the tank and the water in the tank. The exhaust would be built in the thermal wall just like the chimney of the kacheloven. The gases being snakes thru slowly up and out. The goal being to help “charge” the thermal mass of the radiant wall. Any heat transferred to the air should be captured and forced back down into the soil be the design of the greenhouse as a solar batttery.
-
-
Clever design
-
-
-
My kneejerk thought is “why do you need to heat the entire greenhouse, air and all?” depending on what you are trying to do, there may be another way to approach this.
If trying to keep things alive to have winter harvests, and depending on where you are, It may be more efficent to have those crops, which I’m going to assume will be leafy greens) already grown when winter hits. Many of the plants don’t really “grow” during winter, but more or less hold on where they are, this being more a factor of sun hours (and possibly intensity) than temp. For this, Elliot Coleman technique of one or more floating row covers might do the trick.
However if wishing to heat the greenhouse for starting seeds etc earlier, the main concern is potting mix / root temp. For this just use the compost pile as a hotbed, on which you place the seed starting trays, possibly with an extra floating row cover if needed. Thus you’re only heating their feet (just like radiant in-floor heating) rather than focusing on heating the entire air mass of the space. Of course, it may knock a degree or two off the cold, but won’t need to generate near the BTU’s to do that and get the same result.
Of course, if you have raised beds and enough material, and don’t mind emptying them, then refilling, you could put the N rich stuff at the bottom or middle of the entirety of the entire bed, and let it bottom heat everything.
that’s just immediate musings. Oh, and get Elliot Colemans 4 season garden book, lots of good info on this stuff in there.
-
I hope to keep some year round plants that require warmer weather. My goal is to be able to keep it warm enough year round.
-
-
A hybrid growing system of sorts to build in redundancy for back up may be an interesting design. Incorporating aspects of the victorian/previctorian pineapple growing systems and also the rocket stove system. Build in serviceability and should be able to weather what ever is thrown at you as far as fuel resources. This could also incorporate aspects of the masonry stove to improve on thermal mass. Over engineering and putting on my Rube Goldberg hat, Billy, how much velocity do you think would be created within the stove exhaust system? Possibly enough to power a micro turbine or series toward the end to trickle charge a battery? A lot of free energy there in air movement after attempting to maximize the thermal transfer.
-
Pineapple growing system? First I have heard of it. Please elaborate.
One design thought is to have the two small rocket stoves and their chimney be a platform for an aquaculture tank.
-
I found this website that has a diagram and explanation of how the pineapples were grown:
-
Sorry that it’s taken a while to get back on. There were differing designs but basically a cold frame over a hot bed fueled by rotting manure from the stables. They basically used manure from the stables to create a hot bed. Some had variations with furnaces, etc. As far as specifics I need to find where I stored my notes from when I studied at Guelph. I had some diagrams that I had dug up in the library. I want to take a look at the link livolive posted. May jog my old brain. I started working on some improved designs since stove heat can be a bit harsh if not managed/buffered and manure can be a peaky cycle if not managed. The later can take resource time to maintain. Your masonry stove idea using thermal mass is a great idea for buffering the level of radiant heat.
-
-
-
Van Powell has a video on composting for heat rather than rocket stove. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIzWgBWF3SQ
-
Just going to copy paste what I wrote in the hot beds topic,
In the early days, they made the hot beds with frames and used strawbedding. Just a couple cm compost, and plant. Also pineapple in greenhouse in colder zones, old way market garden from Europe.
This winter we are able to do this in our greenhouse, “grazon” free.In the early days, they made the hot beds with frames and used strawbedding. Just a couple cm compost, and plant. Also pineapple in greenhouse in colder zones, old way market garden from Europe.
This winter we are able to do this in our greenhouse, “grazon” free.
-
Where did you get your grazon-free straw in NJ? I’m afraid to use anything I didn’t produce myself for fear of contaminating my garden.
-
-
I have played with Jean Pain’s work for years.
Here is my collection of links on this subject.
I experimented with wood chips to heat a 55 gal barrel.
In my collection of links below I found links in mother earth news, and found some commercial production of really improving the heating method.
-
depending on what you want to do. Eliot Coleman the four season harvest is a great source. From tunnels to ground covers to multi layer structures; also depends if you are talking about growing all year or harvesting. There is a diff.
-
I had a large pile of mulch next to my bananas and it kept them from getting too much damage. Good heat coming off that sucker.
Log in to reply.