The Rocket-stove Boys

Week 6: waterandfire

2008-10-24T10:34:00.000-07:00

"How can you love your neighbor if you don’t know how to build or mend a fence, how to keep your filth out of his water supply and your poison out of his air; or if you do not produce anything and so have nothing to offer, or do not take care of yourself and so become a burden? How can you be a neighbor without applying principle—without bringing virtue to a practical issue? How will you practice virtue without skill?"

—Wendell Berry, “The Gift of Good Land,” in The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry (2002), p. 299

We dearly hope to be a neighbor... bringing virtue to a practical issue and developing skills to practice that virtue. Be a neighbor.

Water: the ups and downs of a water pump

Water, the building block of life and many times hope.

It makes us clean, it refreshes, strengthens, and fills

us. Hundreds of thousands of us around the world

do not have enough. The availability of water is often

decided by the feasibility of lifting it thirty feet from

where it rests below us. Our engineering challenge is

to design a pump that can be made from materials

available in the third world, is inexpensive enough

for even a very poor farmer to make or purchase,

and is able to pump water up from the bottom of a

thirty foot well. Crazy? Yes. Impossible? Maybe.

Never? Only if we don't try.

We have gotten off to a rough but promising start... we know this is going to be a long ride.

Here Caleb is making a very simple mimic of the

MoneyMaker Hip pump put out by Kickstart

International. The mechanics are simple:

1: Pull the pump handle up

>Oneway valve B cuts off and Oneway valve A

allows water to be sucked into the pump

cylinder.

2: Push the handle down

> Oneway valve A cuts off and Oneway valve B

allows water to be forced out of the pump.

Video description of how it works:

We were surprised at how well the pump worked

once we got a fairly good plunger design down.

After some testing we learned that the pump does

much better at pushing water up hill than pulling it up.

The height change here is only about 15 feet; only

half of our target height.

Here is a video of it working on level ground:

And then not working well when pulling water up hill:

We are not even close to giving up on this dream!

We will keep you posted as plans and designs develop.

Fire: peltier junctions continued

Paul Elliott spent a good three or four hours hand manufacturing and installing the heat sink for the peltier junctions project. (for some background on this project see week 2's "Power of Hotness"post)

The theory is that when the heat from the chimney heats up the base of the sink the top part will heat up as well through conduction. The peltier junctions will be sitting on that top plate and create electricity from the heat differential thereby powering small items such as LED lights to illuminate a dark cooking hut.

Unfortunately the metal did not conduct as well as we thought so Paul will be forced to go back to the drawing board material wise on this one. Next week will hopefully bring a new and better design.

Paul also tricked out our portable sawdust stove by adding a third can.

This allows the stove to have half again as much heat as the original design. It worked wonderfully and we even used it to make three batches of Chai of over a gallon each and could have probably made more!

One exploratory experiment we conducted (headed up by Kara Tobe) was to boil down Holly leaves in hopes that we can use the wax on the leaves to make a natural sealant.

It didn't work as well as we hoped... but ya gotta keep truckin'!

Truck on with us next week as we go back to the drawing board and even use a little engineering mathematics to tackle our problems!

mmmm... Backwoods Boy-R-D!

Week 5: fromsawdusttoashes

2008-10-16T10:54:00.000-07:00

“Every day do something that won’t compute. Love the Lord. Love the world. Work for nothing…Love someone who doesn’t deserve it…Plant sequoias…Practice resurrection.”

-Wendell Berry

Here we are working for nothing... planting sequoias... playing in the mud... burning sawdust... practicing resurrection. Won't you join us?

Sawdust Stove: goes Portable

Inspired by our success with the cob Sawdust Stove Paul Elliott converted two metal coffee cans into a light portable version. Using his mad fabrication skills he whipped this beauty out in under an hour.

After filling the can with sawdust we spiked the contraption with a little lamp oil to help it start.

Once he got it started Paul was able to boil water in a small pot in less than 10 minutes and kept it boiling for over 30 more minutes!

WindMill: Swivel Mount and Tail added

Caleb Meeks, with the help of Randall Gabriel, gave our windmill its tail, body, and swivel mount.

The tail and body were fabricated out of thin plywood and two-by-fours. Next the all-thread shaft connected to the turbine was fashioned to the body using screws and four sections of metal band. All materials were scrounged or scavenged from around the shop.

This poor little bike we bought at Goodwill for $6 was stripped down to serve as our swivel mount. As you can see in the photo, the fork that usually contains the front tire was bolted to the windmill body. So, what used to be the steering mechanism, is now our swivel mount.

Watch our Windmill turn into the wind!

We are still brainstorming for new blade designs and are excited to learn just how well they will work. We may even be using the paper mache test specimens made last week to develop a durable lightweight blade that can be made from all natural substances!

*Next week look for our version of the Kickstart MoneyMaker Hip Pump as we reverse engineer this technology that is already helping thousands of rural farmers out of poverty in East Africa!

Week 4: good-recipe

2008-10-08T16:11:00.000-07:00

Smoke never smelt so good! Like a Giant's pipe, the new-lit shavings turn to curling gray mist. Now, they are minuscule glowing embers and the smoke has gone. A lean bright flame emits from the clay mouth, soon to boil our soup!

Paper or Plastic?... or honey or sugar or...

This week we started a set of experiments with natural glues and their applications. Paper Mache sample wafers and bowls were made out of varying ingredients in hopes that we will be able to identify differences in performance. Is the recipe too brittle? Does it cure well? Is it bendable? Is it elastic? These are the kinds of questions we hope to answer. The goal for this experiment set is to use materials easily available in the third world to make a water-proof housing for the windmill motor. And I am sure the applications don't stop there.

Our recipes consisted of:

1pt flour, 2pt water mixed with either

A) nothing,

B) 1/2 pt sugar,

C) 1/2 pt honey.

Newspaper strips were dipped in this and layered. We even did one with plastic bag strips just out of curiosity... probably won't work but it cant hurt!

Cara Tobe and Daniel Meeks tearing newspaper

Aww... brothers

We will let you know how they turned out next week!

Giant's Cob Pipe: Inaugural flight of the Sawdust stove!

Preflight prep consisted of taking the PVC forms

out of the cob and packing the motor with sawdust fuel.

Here is a "worm's eye" view of the base once we got the PVC forms out.

Watch as we go from mud on a pipe to super efficient sawdust burner!

It took a while to light it but once we got it going we were able

to make some really awesome soup!

mmm mmm good

Satisfied by a full days work and hot soup in our bellies we finished the evening off by playing with fire and taking one last glimpse at the stars. We can't wait to be back next week!

(Playing with fire)

Week 3: theturbinator

2008-10-06T20:51:00.000-07:00

Can you feel it? A crisp breeze runs across the tips of the meadow up to your face.

Sit still and let the chill of fall tickle you as you watch the sky. The blushing horizon

melts to bold darkness, looming over you with its black star-freckled face. And you are alive.

Come with us.

Part 1: Windmill takes a turn for the worst! ...or... no turn at all

Sad to say our beautifully built, followed the the online plans, sturdy windmill is not turning out as well as we had hoped. If we had access to consistent gale force winds maybe it would be ideal. We plan to put a new spin on the blade design in the future but till then we will give what we have a whirl. ;-)

We were able to simulate hurricane force winds with this fan and it spun fairly well!

The wind sounds louder than it was. Honest.

It really wasn't that bad and we do have some cool ideas about other blade designs. Including using all natural elements and sheet tin. Both materials are commonly found in developing nations.

Here is how we made it:

Paul cut out a plywood doughnut while Caleb and John Cannaday made the rest of the blades.

Next we bolted the blades to a plastic wheel using the the plywood doughnut and six small scrap PVC sections:

The Turbinator strikes again!

___________________________________________________

After working on the turbine we broke for supper and took a little dip in the river. That water gets just a little colder every week... but we get more and more used to just plunging in, so it evens out.

Part 2: Cob Dance and Power of Hotness (continued)

Cob Dance

Caleb was flying solo on this mission but didn't mind

having more elbow room to do the dance.

"It is nice to not have too many Engineers in the

kitchen." He says with a smile as he slaps a ball

of cob on to the Sawdust stove.

If the cob dries enough we should be able to test

our new Sawdust stove out next week!

The Power of Hotness: or "The Solar Story and The Project of the Peltier Junctions (pardon my french)." (continued)

Paul, the bright man that he is, rigged up both of

these solar cooking contraptions. The one on the left

is made from an emergency blanket, cardboard, and

tape. The one on the right is made from tinfoil ,

cardboard, and tape.

"Ya got ta get 'em out of the Shadows Paul!"

We will be exploring the realms of solar cooking

over the next few weeks so this is just a glimpse of

what is to come... Our goal is to boil a small pot of

water in under 15 minuets using only heat from the sun.

Paul tested out different sections of a rocket stove for

ideal P.J. locations. (see Week 2 for more details)

Lighting the fire proved to be the hardest part!

Thanks for coming with us! You really should see the

stars out there! God is awesome!

-Next week we hope to fire up the Sawdust stove

and start another of Caleb's projects involving

natural adhesives. So, stick with us!

Lots of dogs howling in the distaince... Kinda freaked us out.

WEEK 2: thecobdance

2008-09-24T17:42:00.000-07:00

There is nothing like the feel of a good

batch of cob between your bare toes. With intuition as your only meter bare feet are mandatory for regulating the mixture of clay sand and straw. Jump in on the cob dance... and learn how we plan to use this ancient technology to sing to today's needs.

Cob(noun) -A mixture of clay and straw used as a building material. (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/)

Part 1: Making Blades and Cutting with Fire

Divide and conquer was the first part of today's game plan. We split up into two teams; one cutting out the turbine blades for the windmill and the other fabricating a mold for the base of our new Cob Sawdust Stove design. Both teams needed a section of 6" PVC pipe which we, luckily, found behind a shed. Sawzaws, hand saws and blow torches were use to cut or melt our pipe into the desired shapes.

Making Blades:

Caleb and Paul cut the blades out. Don't they look great... the turbine blades that is

Cutting With Fire: Randall, Adam, and Kacy burnt a hole for the Cob Sawdust Stove base mold.

-A blow torch was used because in the developing world you might not have a nice drill bit to cut a hole out... and we didn't have one either. :-/

(Randall tells us what he is doing)

Part 2: Cob Dance and the Power of Hotness.

As the afternoon sun slid closer to the western horizon our attentions moved east... and to the kitchen.

Cob Dance: All of the crew except Paul headed to "Africa" (a East African style village built at HUT). The process of refining the clay and sand for use as Cob is simple. Our hands became a shade of rust red as we rubbed the chunks of clay through the sifter. Pure sand is procured similarly. We collected some semi-dry straw from a near by field and were ready to mix it up. All at zero cost.

(Kacy, Adam and Caleb do the Cob... uhhh... choreography)

After the cob is well mixed we slap, prod, and mould it into a cylinder for our stove. It takes time to dry out and harden so we are doing half of the stove this week and finishing next week.

Watch Adam and Randall sculpt this work of earthen art:

The Power of Hotness: or "The Solar Story and The Project of the Peltier Junctions (pardon my french)."

Keeping a smoky dark cooking hut well-lit is hard enough without electricity and only an open fire. But now these new fangled stoves have to go and be so efficient that they don't even give enough light to work by. Paul Elliott is cooking up a solution using Peltier (pronounced PEL-tee-ay) Junctions. These nifty little contraptions create electricity from a heat differential or, in every day talk, one hot source and one colder source. If hooked up to the exhaust from your Cob Sawdust Stove it could produce enough electricity to power, say, a light bulb (or a bunch of LEDs...) !

Here Paul is playing with the P.J.s... up to 2.2 Volts and .31 Amps with two P.J.s together, thats enough to power two Regular LED flashlights!

The cup of water is for keeping one side of the junctions cool while it is sitting on the stove... you can see that it produces about half the power without the cup of water.

We might have trouble storing the power created by our new P.J.s but not to fear! Paul disected a solar charger flashlight Macgyver style and thinks we can reverse engineer its charging mechanism... He is like Rodny from Stargate Atlantis!

"The name is Paul... Paul Elliott"

Never fear Blog readers! The Rocket-stove Boys will be back next week with new adventures and exciting ways to play in the mud! Stay tuned... we will be right back!

P.S. On the journey back to Harding and homework we caught a beautiful sunset and a gorgious terantula... God is the ultimate engineer and artist!

This is one big Spider! Good eye Paul.

He made it off the road safe and sound:

WEEK 1: thelayoftheland

2008-09-16T22:17:00.000-07:00

The air is crisp and clean as we

pull into the HUT parking lot almost giddy with excitement. We have anticipated this day for weeks, in some ways years, and now it is reality.

That is how it began. Our plan was simple this weekend; get a lay of the land regarding three of our main projects.

But first we came across some struggling HUT survivors and helped them resurrect their refugee tent. (Paul Elliott[R] helping Johnathan Striclyn [L] Johnathan is a co-conspirator in this DLG thing)

With the tent up we were back on the trail. Our plan was to test the hill top above "Africa" for a good location for a Windmill generator. A long, and somewhat wobbly, PVC poll, with lovely pink and black ribbon attached, served as our wind gauge. Below, you can watch Paul fail at keeping the poll still. Finally we did get the wily pipe to stay and, as we suspected, there was a sufficient wind current... Windmill here we come!

Our other two projects both involve water. We talked to Mr. Oneal Tankersly (struggling HUT survivor ;-) about where we should dig our Tilapia fish pond and a plot was chosen where it can be easily maintained as well as easily seen by visitors... visitors like, say, you? Maybe, we hope.

For our third project we let out towards the creek; climbing over rocks, scouting through brush, and under lodged logs in search of that elusive beast... white water. It took some scrapes and bruises and a couple of snake encounters (non poisonous don't worry) before we found our ideal spot... at least the most ideal one we could find (Pictured below). We need a good height change to create water pressure that we will harness using a hydro ram pump. Our plan is to use this hydro ram pump to deliver water up to the garden and our fish pond-to-be in "Africa" 300ft up. It could get hairy but we have some tricky ideas up our sleeves.

This is a video clip of Caleb Meeks saying something about the spot we found... not as educational as he had planed I am sure. "I will have to work on that." :-) -Caleb

Tired, hungry, thirsty, sweaty, and generally spent from a day of exploration and bushwhacking we headed for the cookin' fire to rustle up some vittles. The menu was: soup of the day (Caf. takeout-hodgepodge, Ramen noodle, and seasoning salt stew) , semi stale chips, Hot (burnt) potatoes, Caleb's fire brewed Chai (TM...jk), and water.

Here we are a brewin' the stew:

Yummm: (Randal Likes the Stew)

To finish off the day we took a dip in the creek.... it was very very cold.

(Randal Gabriel, Caleb Meeks, Paul Elliott)

The rest of the evening we spent stoking the fire and fending off mosquitoes while dreaming, scheming and planning for what we will do next week.

Let me just say, it is going to be great!

And to end things off with a bang we had a little fire works show:

Come Back next week for more adventures with the D.L.G.!

P.S. Silly Running Video: