Wind to Heat

[jenkinswt]

That sounds like a pretty good idea on the firewood. I just remembered when I was there I saw a guy hauling tree branches off making several trips past our house. There is some kind of mill that lets people haul stuff there, not sure if the mill uses it for heat or what. I am planning on doing the foam board around the outside when I side it. The inside needs fixed up worse so I will start there and then I think the foam board around the outside would make a big improvement especially if I tape all the seams up. The house is around spink county if you know where that is. Its in the northeast part of SD. I don't live there now. We were going to move there last spring but things didn't work out and we are trying this spring. At least last spring I was able to get some stuff done to it and figure out the utility's, etc. so that will make moving right in a lot easier.

[fabricator]

I built my own wood boiler, I made it more efficient than the run of the mill commercially built unit, I have a pretty leaky 110 year old farm house in Michigan, with pretty much ANY outdoor wood boiler you will burn in the neighborhood above ten full cords of wood in a winter, and that is a real cord 4' x 4' x 8', 128 cubic feet of wood, that is a minimum wood pile four feet wide, four feet tall and eighty feet long.
A normal wood stove will use around half that amount of wood, especially if it is built into a large thermal mass of concrete or some kind of masonry, the new wood gasification boilers are a lot more efficient but also very spendy.
Currently I make biodiesel and heat he place on bio with a good old fashioned oil burning furnace, I collect used fryer oil from area restaurants, you could grow enough soy or canola and press your own oil to make bio to heat the place, currently the finished price of bio using used fryer oil is below $0.70 cents a gallon, just an idea, as I sit here and type where it's 11 degrees outside and 80 degrees inside thanks to bio.

[jenkinswt]

So did you abandon the wood boiler for the bio? I have a couple hundred gallons of wvo right now, was burning it in the truck this year. Also I have been burning motor oil in the wood burner also. I went back to wood though because I needed a draft blower to make the motor oil burn cleaner. I kinda switch back and forth every once and awhile but its hard to beat the btus in hedge (osage orange) 30 mbtus in a cord.

[fabricator]

Yep, no more wood for me, it's a lot easier to make and burn bio than to handle 15 cords of wood, you can modify a Becket oil burner gun to burn wvo, but it has to be well filtered and pre heated to work right.

[jenkinswt]

My 7.3 IDI loves the stuff.

[fabricator]

That is what I burn my bio in 03 7.3 PowerStroke, apart form a Cummins they are one of the nest bio burning indirect injection common rail engines there are. The Cummins is hands down the best Diesel truck engine on the planet, the only problem is at this time they are still wrapped in a dodge

[TomW]

The Cummins is hands down the best Diesel truck engine on the planet, the only problem is at this time they are still wrapped in a dodge

Well, then strip it out of the Dodge and stuff it in a Ford. 

Tom

[cdog]

A ford,lmao

[fabricator]

Well as an example of Ford Verses Dodge in the body category, I have an 03 F250 with 126k on it, the body is still mint, not a trace of rust anywhere, I have one friend with an 04 dodge with the Cummins and one with an 06 with a Cummins, the 04 has the complete rust through on the rear fender wells the 06 is starting to show bubbling paint in the same areas, the 04 has had two transfer cases and one transmission and one front differential. the 06 one transfer case and one transmission, the only parts I've put in my 03 Ford are brake pads and tires.
As you are laughing your ass off at Ford consider that it is the only one of the big three that did not take one cent of taxpayer money for a bail out.

[jenkinswt]

I have been wanting to do a cummins swap for a few years now. My 7.3 idi is so reliable and I just went through it completely and sealed it up, new clutch, and a lot of other stuff. I will probably get several more years out of it before I do anything else. All cummins are direct injection not indirect. They are good engines. Now as far as the whole my brand is better than the other one, their all great when they start up and move. The worst vehicle in the world is better than walking or carrying a few thousand pounds of materials around.

Anyways back on topic, anyone that is familiar with motor conversions what kind of motor would a person be looking at for approx. 20 kw wind generator? This would be too big for axial flux right? I have read a few things on them but will admit I don't know much about this part of it. I guess I will have to learn, hopefully without too much trial and error.

[XXLRay]

Here is the link to a DIY heat pump: http://ecorenovator.org/diy-ground-source-heat-pump/