The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Smallholding => Renewables => Topic started by: Bright Raven on October 07, 2013, 09:25:29 pm
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Hi Folks :tree:
Last year I worked out that walnut shells burn really hot and fast. Great free fuel for my wood burning stove. This year I am looking at hundreds of fallen acorns and conkers. Does anyone dry these to burn? I am a bit worried that they will cause the flue in my chimney to get coated in resin the same way it would if I burnt green wood. Do you think this will be a problem?
If not I will start collecting and storing.
Also have any of you ideas about any other smallholder friendly fuel sources that could be used when the lights go out and when I run out of coal and wood.
I have plenty of wool :excited: maybe I had best just get knitting a big jumper.
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I collect pine cones as they are great for starting the fires but I do now they create a lot of resin but we have open fires, would the conkers explode? I so wanted to coat my pine cones with different coloured chemicals to burn pretty colours, I think I put it on here once but have forgotten. I suppose you could make tallow or any animal fat candles :innocent:
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Not sure its particularly smallholder friendly, but used cooking oil burns well. If you're not doing anything else with it, soak half burnt -charcoal sticks in it, burns well.
I would have thought that conkers would take a lot of drying out? I collected and tried to burn beech mast once, but they smoldered as I hadn't dried them enough. - The shells of nuts burn well, but the nut themselves have a lot of moisture as well as energy, I'd guess you might need to split them all open to dry, but have never experimented.
Again, at a guess, I'd say if they were well dried and added to a decent fire that was already up and going, I wouldn't assume they'd cause too many problems to your lum.
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http://chemistry.about.com/od/funfireprojects/a/colored-fire-pinecones.htm
That was the idea I had to make a pretty fire with cones.....