The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Community => Coffee Lounge => Topic started by: deepinthewoods on October 23, 2012, 06:41:24 pm
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following sally int norths post,
it would appear a successful trial. could you share some more details sally, and has anyone else tried this?
as i have an equestrian centre for a neighbour it could be an interesting sideline for me.
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Using for fuel, as in, drying it and burning it ? Or is it some kind of methane harvesting (haven't seen the post from Sally yet ;))
Sounds interesting though (I too, also have access to horse poop :excited:) so will be watching for replies :thumbsup:
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I can announce that we have now completed our trial of dried horse poo as a fuel on our multi-fuel stove.
100% Burns well, doesn't smell (not that we noticed, anyway), and keeps the fire in all night. If you only burn wood with it, you can use the ash on the garden / veg plot, or whatever, and put the nutrients back in the soil after extracting the energy.
I don't know what else there is to say, really.
Oh, the ponies were stabled on hay half the time and out on grass the other half of the time. I collected a few buckets full of 'kidneys', dried them and then burned them.
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its a really well known source of fuel historically, more often associated with drier climates as drying the stuff can be a bit challenging in our climate, certainly the settlers that crossed america in wagons used horse apples as fuel as they crossed the prairie where wood wasn't always easy to find.
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I know how sad this is going to make me sound, but I'm quite excited about this :excited: :innocent:
Will have to get onto designing some kind of drying rack to stack in the shed and give it a go :thumbsup:
Silly question, but how do you know when it's ready to burn ?
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from experience long ago when you pick up a lump and its dry and hard, if you break it open it should be dry all the way through.
prehaps sally can photograph some horse poop for you :excited: :excited: :excited:
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Yep , makes a good camp fire too if you can get enough dried stuff . Drying is the only real problem in the uk .
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i think its quite exciting too, i know of 2 heaps on this estate, each bigger than my house, there are between 30 and 100 horses here nearly every weekend. if i could get it bagged, then aquire an old open barn to rent, rack it, and dry it, it could be worth a few quid eh? :innocent:
thanks sally, for the information.
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you want it fresh off the ground not off a heap so it drys rather than rots
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yes, im not considering using the heaps, but these show horsey people must poo pick, if i placed strategic bags around maybe they could bag it for me ;)
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sounds like a plan!!!
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doesnt it just!
where theres muck theres brass i'nt it. :D
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The stuff in the big heaps , if it is free for the taking , could be bagged and sold . Big trailer full of bagged manure parked outside the allotments .
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yup ive done that before when ive been on my proverbial. ill be raiding it over the next few weekends for the deep beds.
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Interesting! With 25 Highland ponies here that manage to poop plenty this could be useful information, it's about time they earnt their keep ;D
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Does it produce a nice roaring fire or does it just smoulder and give off heat?
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Wonder if I could sell goat manure as fuel. ;D
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I wonder :thinking: the big piles of muck.......... (so glad I'm not the only one loving this idea :roflanim:)
Could you (with gloves or a 'device' obviously ;)) shape it into briquettes of some sort and then dry them ??? Or is that just a silly idea ?
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the good stuff comes out in convenient briquette shaped lumps :excited: :excited: :excited:
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I wonder :thinking: the big piles of muck.......... (so glad I'm not the only one loving this idea :roflanim: )
Could you (with gloves or a 'device' obviously ;) ) shape it into briquettes of some sort and then dry them ??? Or is that just a silly idea ?
You can get those things that make old newspapers into briquettes, would that work?
This could encourage me to poo pick our fields :D
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you could make a mould, karen, and press it perhaps?
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:thinking: :thinking: :thinking: :thinking:
Now I reckon you could cut 'turves' from the big heaps and dry them on racking made from heras fencing and breeze blocks.
If it works for peat I'm sure it would work for poo... :thinking: :thinking: :thinking: :thinking:
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:thumbsup:
good thinking. an old polytunnel/ wind tunnel im thinking....
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:thinking: :thinking: :thinking: :thinking:
dry them on racking made from heras fencing and breeze blocks.
LOVE that idea :thumbsup: And I happen to have a few heras panels 'spare' :excited: This is sounding better and better ;D
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I think goat poop would work as well MGM
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It's a bit small for brickettes though. :roflanim:
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Save it through the summer there be enough for winter
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I think unless you compressed it into larger bricks it might burn up too quickly.
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Well after finishing watching The Good Life I wondered about this but thought I was being silly! :relief:
So would any poop work (not thinking carnivore poop)? And when you are all saying dry it do you just mean spread it out think and allow it to air dry?
I'm liking the idea of 'bricking' smaller poops :thinking:
Dans
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Oh dear, now I'm thinking of rabbit poo kindling :bunny: :bunny:
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:thumbsup:
good thinking. an old polytunnel/ wind tunnel im thinking....
Oooh now i wonder if you happen to know for one of them? :D :D
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I can't see why the poo of any animal couldn't be burnt - but yes, maybe best to stick to herbivores... BH's niece did Everest Base Camp a couple of years back, she said they had great long sausages of yak poo drying on the mountainsides which they would use as fuel.
The first lot we used had just dried on the floor in the stable - bad me, never did the last muck out when I turned them out for the summer. When I wanted the stable for something else, I saw the cobs had dried on the floor, so rather than composting them I just popped 'em in a bucket and we burned 'em.
The second lot we burned I'd collected in the field when the weather was dry (when was that? :o :gloomy: - maybe March? or we had another few hot dry days in May I think), picked up the drier cobs and put them in a bucket. Stopped when the bucket was fulll as it was just an experiment.
The latter lot, the cobs at the bottom of the bucket weren't totally solid, you could still break them open and the insides were... not moist, but not totally dry, IYKWIM. But they burned just the same.
I don't know that people would need horse poo in briquettes, Karen - the cobs my ponies do are just about the same size and similar shape to the coal cobs you get nowadays, so we found them easy enough to have in a bucket next to the fire, and throw a few on as required.
In terms of how they burn, they have been used for the following:
- get a smouldering fire going again - they did catch easily and burn well, so they did help lift a fire from the embers. I'd want to do a bit more experimenting before saying you just throw a few horse cobs on and wait, I don't think we tried them on their own to revitalise a dying fire
- keep a fire in overnight - the evenings we used horse poo, the fire stayed warm all night and there were warm embers in the morning that could've been reignited easily. Other nights, with no horse poo, the fire is always cold by morning.
- we didn't try burning horse poo on its own - it'd be worth trying, we just didn't try it; we added it to other fuel. Both wood and wood-and-coal burned significantly better (brighter and hotter) and hours longer with horse poo added
I wish we had tried horse poo alone now - I'll try that next time. I was more excited about the way it will eke out your existing fuel - a little bit of coal will go a much longer way with horse poo added, horse poo will get wood which isn't burning too well going and keep it burning; and horse poo keeps the fire and room lovely and warm while you're out doing some work, so you come back to a much warmer house and less to do to lift the fire than without the horse poo. Similarly, if you like a fire full time, it'll keep the fire going overnight and be easier to restart in the morning.
Having proven the concept, it's the wholescale drying that's got me thinking... :thinking: I can see how to dry smallish amounts, but I think we'll allocate a bay in the wood shed, pile good poos in there and see how it does. Once you've a system going, you'd be burning last year's pile while making this year's, I suppose.
The polytunnel idea is awesome. We don't have a polytunnel, but our neighbours do, they also have poines stabled overnight year round... I don't know if they grow things in the 'tunnel through the winter :thinking: :idea: I guess we can spread poo out on the floor of cattle shed over the spring / summer, in the gap between lambing and cattle turn-out and when we start stacking hay everywhere... Yesss, I can see that working ;D
In terms of drying 'free horse manure' - which is probably stable muckings out, including shavings, straw, etc - the mix is a compostable mix, so it would compost rather than dry unless you spread it out somewhere, like deep's fencing panels.
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Gabi has a 'friend' ( hard to believe I know) who's meglomaniacle ,control freak of a husband has made her live in the back of an old Transit for the last 12 years while he works on his great invention, he drags this machine round the sewage farms trying to dry turds to use as fuel in power stations, he's convinced that industrial spy's are following him trying to photograph his work, basically its a heated conveyor belt and it burns £90 worth of diesel to try a ton of turds to 30% moisture content, so not cost effective .
She is not allowed to use a telephone in-case the phone is hacked, and every few months he rents a different isolated barn to park the Transit in to hide away from 'spy's' she had to sell her house to support his invention , and he made her sell her lovely Arab mare to raise more cash. his obsession with s**t drying is lunacy.
Please don't go down the same road :thinking:
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Tiz, are you sure it's safe for you to tell that story? :roflanim:
Surely the large-scale solution would be to use the ambient heat in the power-generating plant to dry the manure? ::) Not an entirely socially acceptable solution on a household scale but perfectly practical in a power plant, one would have thought.
I am hating some of the larger scale power solutions at the moment. These anaerobic digesters are sending all the cattle indoors, breaking up farms to use fields to spread effluent then reap another green crop to - wait for it - not to feed the housed cattle, oh no, they go straight into the d**n*d digester :o Hateful, stupid, wasteful systems. At this rate we'll be self-sufficient in power but have no food to cook or eat. :rant:
So I'd worry about the longer term of a commercial horse poo-powered power plant. Rows and rows of tied-up ponies, munching their way through I don't know what fodder, pooping onto a conveyer belt... :tired:
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I must say I am intrigued at the possibility of my four poo factory’s actually contributing to the household. It’s quite an exciting concept. Don’t know how I would explain it to my friends though. They think I am slightly weird anyway. Going to direct other half to this post. As a true frugal Scotsman he will no doubt like the possibility of free heating. ;D
I would like to know how much heat can be achieved. I think it was mentioned before that it burns alongside wood. Is this the most efficient way to burn? How much is needed in comparison to wood alone?
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I would like to know how much heat can be achieved. I think it was mentioned before that it burns alongside wood. Is this the most efficient way to burn? How much is needed in comparison to wood alone?
I think we were perhaps not very scientific in what we did...
We have quite a lot of wood that isn't the best for burning - maple, for instance; if only all the windfall were ash! A handful of horse cobs alongside a burner-ful of maple will give a really good long-lasting burn, whereas the maple alone will quickly become a cool fire that could take some reinvigorating.
If I had ash to burn, I wouldn't use horse poo alongside it; it doesn't need it.
And BH has confirmed he did reignite dying embers with horse poo alone - it took a while (but they were very low, he says) but he does think you could make a fire of horse poo alone and it would burn well, hot and long.
We didn't do anything quantitative, though - sorry.
I guess I had about 2 stable buckets' full, and we burned that over the period of about a week, alongside wood and coal. We were warmer, and for longer, and burnt less wood and less coal during that week. We only light the multi-fuel in the evening, when we have our supper, and let it go out after we go to bed.
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If we all got rid of our horses we could afford coal. :roflanim:
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If we all got rid of our horses we could afford coal. :roflanim:
So if you cost the horse food out over a week , how much boiler fuel could you buy with the same amount of money ?
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But the coal etc does not snicker every time it sees you, understands when you feel down and nuzzles you gentle etc. so with keeping horses and use the manure for heating you get it all, the enjoyment and love and cheap fuel.
:thumbsup:
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That is very true Tiz, the horses are my wife's and she recons a better idea would be to get rid of me and she could afford to heat all of Wales.
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Our Fells and Dales use about 10 acres of rough grazing year round, and maybe £150-£200 quid's worth of hay and straw over the winter.
I bet I can get as much or more warmth from their poo as I could from 1T of coal! And be much greener, and enjoy the ponies too. ;D
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Hi everyone,
It has been such a revelation from my first posting of the advert for free manure!! I have been telling my husband for a long time we should burn it on the wood burner but he was not that excited about the prospect!!! Thank you so much for giving me evidence!!!
Manure is still available for anyone who would like it though as we have a continual supply.
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Have been reading this thread with interest and wondered: I guess grass-fed summer poo would take longer to dry as the "bits" are never as solid as in winter?
My horses summer poo sometimes resembled cow pats because they loved stuffing their faces with fresh grass (You'd think I starved them, big fatties ::)).
The fact that you can use horse waste as fire enhancer will be another argument to convince the OH we NEED a horse. Especially since he loves 1) fires and 2) saving money. In fact, giving we'd like to live in Orkney or Shetland where there's no wood, this means I NEED more than one equine!!! :innocent:
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I was thinking that when we get our place we should have one of the log burning boilers to get away from gas. Wonder if this would work with it?
The OH was sceptical about log boilers unless we managed to get some woodland with or very near the land. We could have horses on the land instead :excited:
I especially like the idea of being able to use the ash to put the goodness back into the land. Nice system with no waste!
Dans
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I was thinking that when we get our place we should have one of the log burning boilers to get away from gas. Wonder if this would work with it?
Dans
When we built our house we briefly looked into log burning/wood pellets boilers, but the problem is that the local (Scottish Borders) supply at the time was non-existent (7 years ago now). May have changed now.
If you move to the countryside, you are quite likely to have an oil fred central heating system anyway. A multi-fuel stove is a good add-on, and we have so far not used our central heating.
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If you move to the countryside, you are quite likely to have an oil fred central heating system anyway. A multi-fuel stove is a good add-on, and we have so far not used our central heating.
I've been to several houses where the solid fuel stove supplied all the central heating for an entire house, all the hot water - plus the cooking! They did have an electric kettle for when the need for a cuppa was urgent... ;D
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So if in the spring and summer(should we ever have one ever again) you gather the golden nuggets and hang them up in old (sprout ,onion, carrot)nets so the air can circulate, they should be perfect for winter use, presumably cow frisbys are more difficult as they tend to be a lot wetter and require more sunshine.
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So if in the spring and summer(should we ever have one ever again) you gather the golden nuggets and hang them up in old (sprout ,onion, carrot)nets so the air can circulate, they should be perfect for winter use, presumably cow frisbys are more difficult as they tend to be a lot wetter and require more sunshine.
Carrot nets is a stroke of genius :idea: Tiz
Cow frisbees harder to harvest... :o
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Loving this thread, our house is solid fuel rayburn for cooking/ central heating etc. (although we do have an propane fuelled hob and electric oven also. In the summer its fine the rayburn doesnt get lit and we save money on fuel. However in the winter months it costs a fortune to keep the house warm so anything that can bulkout our fuel is a god send. Infact have started on a drying rack system in one of our unused sheds.! :excited: :excited: :excited:
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Has anybody seen the Channel 4 show with Kevin McCloud building his own little shed in the woods? it was called man made home or something. He looked into producing methane for his consumption on his land (a bit different from drying horse poo, I know, I bet he didn't think of that) - but I thought it could work too.
Of course you'd need a massive tub to put the poo in, and let it ferment long enough, but then you have methane all right. I'm sure it could be connected to any gas kitchen stove.
Little issue is, if there's a leak you might not be able to smell it (commercial gas has some smelly sulphur compound added to make it smell obvious in case of leaks) and that could be dangerous.
Much bigger issue is, apparently the best poo for that is carnivore poo! So the worst, evil foul smelling dog poo, cat poo, even people's would work. Kevin went to collect lion poo for his shed!
Now, who is going to volunteer for poo picking?!? ::)
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I've been looking at goat manure with great excitement while reading this thread :excited: . Just been brought down to earth with a bump though when I remembered that we don't have an open fire. :dunce: :(
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Could use it to fuel a BBQ... :innocent:
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Noticed this thread yesterday and OH has already set up our first 'drying rack' in the wood shed - it is an old Zbed frame with chicken wire on top and a layer of horse poo. Very exciting :excited: but may take until spring to dry out ::) Have also ordered a briquette maker to see how that goes and will keep you updated!
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this has to be one of the best threads i have seen on TAS in ages for an idea thats simple obvious and could help lots of people save a bit on their fuel bills if it works!!!
if i ever get space i'll keep it in mind :-)
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If you you tube it there's a bloke in USA who is making poo bricks for his fire so must work.. As usual we are 10 years behind the yanks again.. If you google it some country's it is illegal and some are burning elephant poo.. Try drying that in uk ha ha :roflanim:
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It would last a long time though. :roflanim:
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:roflanim: :roflanim:
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Could use it to fuel a BBQ... :innocent:
I was about to ask, would it be ok on a barbeque. I am surrounded by horses and I'm sure their owners would love me to collect their offerings.
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Some people (not any of us, of course ;)) might be a bit discomfitted by the idea of smoke from horse poo wafting around their burgers... :D
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Might be the new thing, Sally. What could it be called? Au Cheval? With Horse Chestnuts? ;D ;D ;D
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Might be the new thing, Sally. What could it be called? Au Cheval? With Horse Chestnuts? ;D ;D ;D
:roflanim: :roflanim:
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Noticed this thread yesterday and OH has already set up our first 'drying rack' in the wood shed - it is an old Zbed frame with chicken wire on top and a layer of horse poo. Very exciting :excited: but may take until spring to dry out ::) Have also ordered a briquette maker to see how that goes and will keep you updated!
Where did you get your briquette maker Pauline ?
My neighbours 'horse apples' are a bit on the small side so I'd like to turn them into bigger 'logs' ;)
How are your piggies getting on btw ?
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Hi Karen
I got it on Amazon (http://www.amazon.co.uk/?tag=theaccidsmall-21), and it cost just over £20. There are loads to choose from on there. Hopefully this is a link to it worhttp://www.amazon.co.uk/Eko--Mania-Newspaper-Log-Maker/dp/B00177X5YS/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1351353950&sr=8-7k I have a couple of mini ponies with mini poos, so thought 'bricks' might better :innocent:
The piggies are fine, but as I thought when I first saw her the spotty one is trouble :o Have not put them in with Matilda, the big, pig yet - was waiting till fencer has sorted out new paddocks so they will all go into a 'neutral' space, however this morning while getting their feed sorted out Spotty, who normally is on her back legs at the fence squealing her head off decided that she was a mountain goat and climbed over the fence into Matildas paddock and straight into her feed bucket. Well there was me in a mad panic thinking Matilda would kill her, but actually she wasn't bothered. Spotty then decided that a drink would be in order and off under Matilda and latched on. Matilda when into mother mode and just stood looking half asleep. Matilda got a bit fed up after a while and spotty got a couple of head buts, so she jumped back into her own paddock. I did think of just letting them all in together and keeping an eye on them but had to go out this morning so they are still apart and the fence heightened.
Oh life is never dull with pigs around :roflanim: :roflanim: :roflanim: :roflanim:
Hope you are well x
and sorry long answer and totally off topic :innocent:
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Good answer though. :pig: :pig:
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Hi all. Just spotted this post. My girlfriend gave me an article on horse poo as a fuel last year. I bought two different briquette makers... Firstly the two handled paper one and then a hydraulic type off eBay. I went for the hydraulic one (£50) as the compression was much better (2 tonne) so it pressed out more 'liquid' so dried quicker and the black was far more stable.
Stable... Get it?!? :-)
Anyway, put a shelf up in the greenhouse and they dried out in a month. Can report in my Firefox multi fuel stove they burned great.
I stopped making them however... Too slow to make and too messy.... Squirted in the eye several times!!!
I'd be interested if anyone has found a quicker cleaner alternative press?!?
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http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=G_LW38THm2s (http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=G_LW38THm2s)
Above is a link to a YouTube video from Eastern Europe. It's a DIY welded job and exactly why I've been trying to find but no luck. Let me know of anyone finds something similar for sale in the uk
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Hi there everyone .My 1st post .I thought i'd give this thread a bit of a nudge and wondered if anyone had ran with this idea and has anything new to report......Cheers Verdi :farmer: :farmer:
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This has fired the imagination, how about converting a hydraulic log splitter to press an old engine piston in a cylinder sleeve, this would push most of the moisture out and give you a log shape, or even an old cheese press,cider press or grape press,
Nuggets collected all summer would (assuming a dry summer) have less moisture content anyway, and local riding stables are usually glad to get rid of them. :idea:
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Dry summer, Tiz. What's that?