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Testing the Limits – Adobe Heaters in Argentina

campana-mardelplata-encendida

I have recently built three single-skin masonry heaters in Argentina using unfired bricks and would like to share some thoughts and an account of the experience.  All three were based on the design presented by Alex Chernov at the 2012 MHA Annual Meeting at WildAcres, with minor modifications to accomodate brick sizes, hardware, and site considerations.

I have spent the past 4 years living in the Patagonia region of Southern Argentina.  Natural gas is cheap and widely distributed, but many people here, and in neighboring Chile, continue to live with wood fires as part of daily life for much of …

Portable Rocket Mass Heater from Paul Wheaton of Permies.com

portable rocket stoves

Rocket mass heaters are still evolving. I have made gobs of videos about them, written articles about them and discussed them on my forums.  And I have now spent a fair slice of time with Ernie and Erica Wisner coming up with some design enhancements. The focus has been on rocket mass heaters for renters, for wood floors and a new aesthetic.

For renters, can we create a rocket mass heater that can be loaded onto a truck in an hour?   Can we also make one that can be taken off of a truck and built in under an hour?   …

New Rocket Oven design by Flip and John

John and Flip Anderson have been working with Aprovecho Research Institute and building smokeless cookstoves in Haiti. They came up with this neat “rocket oven” design that answers some of the questions I get from folks about combining the dome oven design w/rocket technology. By simply using clay and organic matter and applying principles of mass and insulation they have created a beautiful, versatile, oven that can do significant baking w/very little fuel. For more about their work on developing business opportunities and helping with deforestation problems, goto www.RechoRoket.com. Here are a couple of their videos (they’re also working on …

Download a gift for Christmas, 2012: How to Make a Rocky Mountain Dulcimer

Ray Jacobs makes beautiful instruments

“In the end, we shall have had enough of cynicism, scepticism and humbug, and will want to live – more musically.” This quote (Vincent Van Gogh to his brother Theo), came to me from a friend, just before Christmas, as I was finishing this gift book about how to make a gorgeous-sounding 3-stringed instrument from scrap wood and cardboard. Details and story in the book, so more people can make their own music with their own neighbors. There’s an onscreen version below, and a (very amateur) sample of what it sounds like. A $10, (full color!) paper version is also …

Build Your Own Barrel Oven Book!

9780967984698

Hand Print Press has published a new book about a hybrid style of wood-fired oven called a Barrel Oven!

Build Your Own Barrel Oven
A Guide for Making a Versatile, Efficient, and Easy to Use Wood-Fired Oven

The tools for a sustainable future continue to grow! In this book, Max and Eva Edleson offer a comprehensive guide for planning and building a practical, efficient and affordable wood-fired oven. The Barrel Oven offers surprising convenience because it is hot and ready to bake in within 15-20 minutes and is easy to maintain at a constant temperature.   It can be the seed …

Mud Mural at Colorado State University Pueblo, with Kiko Denzer

Getting mud to stick on the wall

Maya Aviña teaches fine arts at CSU in Pueblo, Colorado. For about the past ten years, she’s been immersed in natural building, which she has also made into the focus of her research at the college. Last year, she invited me to come be an “artist in residence” and do a mural project. The challenge was to bring life into dead space: a bleak, harsh, hard-edged, institutional (college) courtyard of grey and yellow concrete pressed down by massive, overhanging soffit walls of more cast concrete. It looked (and felt) like a pen in a zoo designed so the animals below …

Cob + Firebrick = Masonry Heater Experiment

finished-heater-small-242x300

When I was 27, I moved back to my hometown in northern Minnesota to start a small organic vegetable farm. I sold produce to the wife of a stone mason, and he was looking for help in the winters. I told him I didn’t know anything. “Don’t worry,” he calmly replied, “I’ll train you.” I learned, of course, that hauling an endless supply of block and stone from one place to another doesn’t take much training. But he also handed me a copy of David Lyle’s history of masonry heaters. Three years later I was working for Albie Barden, building …

Roberto Monge’s Oven Story

DSC_0012

Roberto Monge’s father – Alfredo Del Transito Monge Menjivar – grew up dirt poor in a jungle village in El Salvador, one of 8 surviving children in a family of 14. By good luck and hard work, he earned a law degree, found paying work, got married and started a family. I didn’t know him, but according to his son Roberto, the elder Monge felt indebted to his campesino roots; when he had to choose between a military dictatorship or a revolutionary people’s movement, he chose the latter, later assuming the position of Attorney General of the Poor in the …

Masonry “Heater Hat” Videos: Construction Details

about 300 pounds of masonry moderates a small space

This little heater hat has worked superbly! I think it’s a great do-it-yourself option for anyone interested in turning their box stove into a much more efficient, cleaner heater for their home or shop. However, I’m reluctant to publish formal plans or how-to info as I’ve built just a couple of heaters, and I consider this one to be an experimental prototype. (If you’re inspired to try something of your own, take good care; be sure to include a better clean-out design that what I allowed for here, and send photos!)

A heater in the home poses serious risks — …

Lily Gordon, 16, helps build ovens in Tanzania

David S. Cargo, who assembles info about community ovens for the St. Paul Bread Club sent me a link about Lily Gordon, a remarkable young woman, now 16, who has been helping villagers in Tanzania to build ovens so they can make their own bread (previously, bread had to be transported from so far that it would often be inedible when it arrived).

At the age of 11, Lily Gordon started raising funds for the village of Shirati, Tanzania. For her 11th birthday, instead of gifts, she asked her friends to bring money for the children of Shirati. The party …

Ovens, builders, a new (oven) book for German readers

lehm-backofenCVR

Out of the blue one day I got a phone call from a guy named Ian Miller. He said he had built a few ovens, baked a fair amount of bread, was married to an Austrian and (among other things) interested in translating Build Your Own Earth Oven into German. With that began an adventure that is now resulting in a new (German!) edition of the book, published by Stocker Verlag, out of Austria (they also publish Austrian permaculturist Sepp Holzer, which makes it even more of an honor). Very interesting to let go of the book and let someone …

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A yurt of sticks and mud

IMG_4767

2011 has been a year of yurts, w/two opportunities to try out this simple design of sticks and mud — a more permanent adaptation of the traditional, portable, Mongolian design. One was for a friend and neighbor. The other was a workshop at Aprovecho Institute, as part of their sustainable shelter building series. Lots of people helped! Both were made with locally harvested bamboo and fir poles (arranged reciprocally to make a self-supporting, conical roof w/a central skylight, which I’m still trying to figure out how to cover cheaply…) Here’s a little picture book about the whole process.…

Open publication

Guest Article: An Earthen Oven Odyssey by Joe Kennedy

Cob oven section bb

I have been making earthen ovens for over twenty years now. I made my first one in 1991 when I was working with architect Nader Khalili at CalEarth in the Mojave Desert. We were making a lot of adobe bricks at the time (friendly Persian-sized ones – 8”x8”x2”) and also building domes of regular fired bricks. I’m not sure what got it into my brain to make an oven, probably an old picture of the ovens at Taos Pueblo. One day I made a round foundation of adobe bricks in a mud mortar bed right on the ground, then hammered …

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Spoons, 2010

facedspns

carved from green wood: roughed out with a hatchet and/or a northwestern style adze, then shaped and finished with crooked knives and a straight blades (click on the thumbnail for an uncropped view of the entire photo). Some of the detail work is done w/little burins. The bowls I carved with a crooked knife, straight blade, and a neat jig designed by Bill Coperthwaite (author of A Hand Made Life). Bill’s spoon is the little yellow (birch) ladle with the scooped indents where the handle meets the bowl — his addition to the tradition of spoon design. After I started …

Solstice, 2010: bring in the mud! (into the house, that is)

about 300 pounds of masonry moderates a small space

This time of year I don’t usually get too muddy, but I brought some mud into my office last month so I could have a better and more efficient source of heat — finally! This little “heater hat” effectively turned my little iron box stove into a mini-masonry heater — with an oven! (note the wooden door on the right, just above the iron stove door). The wood that used to over-heat me, briefly, in the morning, now keeps me comfortably warm all day, and into the next morning (depending on how long I fire it and how cold it …

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waterglass for binding earthen surfaces & pigment

spoons12

“Waterglass” for protection & paint

Waterglass has become my preferred binder in places where it’s needed. The chemical name is sodium or potassium silicate. It’s an inert mineral compound similar to window glass, but under heat and pressure, it’s soluble in water. I get it from a ceramic supplier for $9 a gallon. It’s clear, viscous, and pours like heavy cream. It dries into a clear, brittle substance that crushes to a fine powder, but it has significant binding power, and is used in some refractory cements, as well as numerous other industrial applications.

I’ve only discovered it in the …

Booklist

  • Build Your Own Barrel Oven
  • Build Your Own Earth Oven
  • Dig Your Hands In The Dirt
  • Make a Ray Jacob's Rocky Mountain Dculcimer
  • Satisfy the Image: The Wisdom of Your Dreams & Guided Imagery for Self-Balancing
  • The Best of Making Things, A Handbook of Creative Discovery

Find more at the Bookstore...

Most Recent Articles

  • Testing the Limits – Adobe Heaters in Argentina
  • Portable Rocket Mass Heater from Paul Wheaton of Permies.com
  • Spring 2013 News: Earth, Fire, Art…Music & Dreams!
  • UK Earth Oven Project to help Bedouins
  • New Rocket Oven design by Flip and John
  • Download a gift for Christmas, 2012: How to Make a Rocky Mountain Dulcimer
  • Bluegoat Restaurant Oven, w/insulation-in-a-basket
  • Hug Hut at Muddy Creek School, Philomath
  • Earth Oven variant: insulation in a basket over jumping bricks!
  • Build Your Own Barrel Oven Book!
  • Mud Mural at Colorado State University Pueblo, with Kiko Denzer

Most Popular Articles

  • Recent Research on Rocket Mass Heaters (and Bell Design)
  • Guest Article: An Earthen Oven Odyssey by Joe Kennedy
  • Cob + Firebrick = Masonry Heater Experiment
  • Masonry “Heater Hat” Videos: Construction Details
  • Solstice, 2010: bring in the mud! (into the house, that is)
  • Earth Oven variant: insulation in a basket over jumping bricks!
  • Dan Wing on Trailers for Mobile Ovens
  • Build Your Own Barrel Oven Book!
  • Bluegoat Restaurant Oven, w/insulation-in-a-basket
  • Video: clean & hot: how to light a fire in your oven

Blogs

Hot From the Oven

  • UK Earth Oven Project to help Bedouins
  • New Rocket Oven design by Flip and John
  • Bluegoat Restaurant Oven, w/insulation-in-a-basket
  • Earth Oven variant: insulation in a basket over jumping bricks!
  • Build Your Own Barrel Oven Book!
  • Hawaiian School Garden oven
  • Cob oven ‘zine from Jorie Kennedy and Lizzy Rieke
  • Roberto Monge’s Oven Story
  • Lily Gordon, 16, helps build ovens in Tanzania
  • Rainer Warzecha, sculptor, oven mason, collaborator, Germany
  • Ian Miller, baker, oven builder, translator
  • Ovens, builders, a new (oven) book for German readers
  • New Community Oven in New Jersey
  • Video: clean & hot: how to light a fire in your oven
  • Adjusting mass for optimal performance

More....

Home Heat

  • Testing the Limits – Adobe Heaters in Argentina
  • Portable Rocket Mass Heater from Paul Wheaton of Permies.com
  • Cob + Firebrick = Masonry Heater Experiment
  • Recent Research on Rocket Mass Heaters (and Bell Design)
  • Masonry “Heater Hat” Videos: Construction Details
  • Video: clean & hot: how to light a fire in your oven
  • Solstice, 2010: bring in the mud! (into the house, that is)
  • waterglass for binding earthen surfaces & pigment

Working with Children

  • Hug Hut at Muddy Creek School, Philomath
  • Hawaiian School Garden oven
  • New Community Oven in New Jersey
  • Mural Video, student-made, Woodburn High, 2005
  • School murals / the joys of mud
  • wheat harvest

Other Projects

  • The Cardboard Dulcimer Book

Authors

Kiko Denzer

Current Work

  • Spring 2013 News: Earth, Fire, Art…Music & Dreams!
  • Download a gift for Christmas, 2012: How to Make a Rocky Mountain Dulcimer
  • Mud Mural at Colorado State University Pueblo, with Kiko Denzer
  • A yurt of sticks and mud
  • Video: clean & hot: how to light a fire in your oven
  • Tribal Genealogical Patterns: A Universal Language?
  • Links
  • Solstice, 2010: bring in the mud! (into the house, that is)

Essays & Writing

  • Mud Mural at Colorado State University Pueblo, with Kiko Denzer
  • Terra Preta and “the Biochar Solution”
  • Tribal Genealogical Patterns: A Universal Language?
  • Living More with Less
  • Don’t be an Artist

Sculpture

  • Hug Hut at Muddy Creek School, Philomath
  • Mud Mural at Colorado State University Pueblo, with Kiko Denzer
  • Rainer Warzecha, sculptor, oven mason, collaborator, Germany
  • A yurt of sticks and mud
  • Columns
  • School murals / the joys of mud
  • Spoons, 2010
  • Low-Relief Mudwork
  • waterglass for binding earthen surfaces & pigment

Fire / Ovens / Heaters

  • UK Earth Oven Project to help Bedouins
  • New Rocket Oven design by Flip and John
  • Bluegoat Restaurant Oven, w/insulation-in-a-basket
  • Earth Oven variant: insulation in a basket over jumping bricks!
  • Hawaiian School Garden oven
  • Masonry “Heater Hat” Videos: Construction Details
  • Lily Gordon, 16, helps build ovens in Tanzania
  • Rainer Warzecha, sculptor, oven mason, collaborator, Germany
  • Ian Miller, baker, oven builder, translator
  • Ovens, builders, a new (oven) book for German readers

Structures

  • Hug Hut at Muddy Creek School, Philomath
  • Mud Mural at Colorado State University Pueblo, with Kiko Denzer
  • Rainer Warzecha, sculptor, oven mason, collaborator, Germany
  • A yurt of sticks and mud
  • Two-tier yurt with Bill Coperthwaite

Workshops & Presentations

  • A yurt of sticks and mud

Contact

  • Kiko's Contact Form

Ann Sayre Wiseman

  • Ann's Author Page
  • Books by Ann:
    • Nightmare Help
    • Satisfy the Image: The Wisdom of Your Dreams & Guided Imagery for Self-Balancing
    • The Best of Making Things

Max Edleson

  • Co-wrote Build Your Own Barrel Oven.
  • Edits the Home Heat archive.

Eva Edleson

  • Co-wrote Build Your Own Barrel Oven.
  • Manages the Bookstore.
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    • Testing the Limits – Adobe Heaters in Argentina
    • Portable Rocket Mass Heater from Paul Wheaton of Permies.com
    • Spring 2013 News: Earth, Fire, Art…Music & Dreams!
    • UK Earth Oven Project to help Bedouins
    • New Rocket Oven design by Flip and John
    • Download a gift for Christmas, 2012: How to Make a Rocky Mountain Dulcimer
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  • Most Popular:

    • Recent Research on Rocket Mass Heaters (and Bell Design)
    • Guest Article: An Earthen Oven Odyssey by Joe Kennedy
    • Cob + Firebrick = Masonry Heater Experiment
    • Masonry “Heater Hat” Videos: Construction Details
    • Solstice, 2010: bring in the mud! (into the house, that is)
    • Earth Oven variant: insulation in a basket over jumping bricks!
    • Dan Wing on Trailers for Mobile Ovens
    • Build Your Own Barrel Oven Book!
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