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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.ย. 2014
- This uses the same concept as the japanese cone kiln for biochar production, but in a long format. The long dimension makes for a great savings in energy spent cutting wood if you are starting with long material. Even wood that is too long for the trench can usually be burned off instead of cut. Should be good for biochar production on ranches and homesteads with quantities of long material like poles, branches, bamboo, and and other long stuff, but could be adapted to smaller batches and smaller material by blocking part of it off. Pretty cheap and pretty versatile.
BIOCHAR PLAYLIST: • BIOCHAR= Permanent Soi...
For more on Cone Kilns and similar stuff: backyardbiochar.net/
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You mention the brushy loose stuff has losses to ash since its so open... a trick I do (I've been working with cone pit now for 20+ sessions, loving it!) is to add the loose, open brush and then put some heavier logs on top of it... the weight of the heavier logs pushes down the brush as it burns, kind of auto crushing, and the openness of the brush and vigor of fire dries out and pre-heats the larger chunks so they render better... you've got a great system you're experimenting with, I'm going to try the trench idea when our soils dry out next season!
Great minds think alike. I should have read this first.
I've made charcoal using every method I've seen or read about and you can't beat this for efficiency - very easy with high yield. Thanks for sharing.
How do you get the sand off your charcoal and how do you separate the fines from the lumps? That's what I need, lump charcoal.
@@jeffreydustin5303 How about using a wood bit, say 1/2 inch, to drill holes in a plastic bucket. Next, partially fill the bucket with charcoal and shake the small stuff through, including small charcoal, along with the sand. The small shakes can go in compost, on the lawn, etc and it's great stuff for soil. Charcoal for agriculture is a huge subject all on its own.
If you are careful when digging out the charcoal, you'll get some coal with no sand. However, wgasify
@@jeffreydustin5303 Darn, don't know what happened to the first reply
Sifting works ok.
For the next improvement in this flame cap method, get a piece of steel pipe, and size is up to you, depending on what you need and what you can get. This method scales up or down so pipe from about 12 inches diameter to however big you want to go with it, same for length. Stand the pipe up on the ground - you can put a bottom for it on the ground, bricks, steel plate, etc, if you wish but leave yourself a spot to open a hole under the pipe to allow primary air in. Primary air is great for starting the fire and getting it up to max heat with a good flame cap. Then, incrementally off the primary air with dirt. From then on, just tend the fire, slowly adding wood and maintaining flame cap. When pipe is full of coals, extinguish with water.
Good luck. This is easy.
@@jeffreydustin5303 The two pieces of pipe I'm currently using are 12 and 24 diameter, 18 inches and 24 tall. If you want to see a big piece of pipe in action and see the principles at work, search Moxham and biochar and you'll find it in Australia. They don't use primary air to start but with a pipe that size you won't need to.
th-cam.com/video/PEbHhr8Uwro/w-d-xo.html
Without a doubt the best way to do it. I dug my trench deeper and V bottomed. It produces a lot of charcoal and it only cost me about an hour of digging. Thanks for showing me this.
I can't wait to get started doing this! I think I am going to dig a pit right where I want my garden to be. Thanks for all the info on how to use this for better crops. I am excited to try it!
Thank you. You answered a question that I had for a long time
Nice job Steven. KISS principle at work!
Excellent tip !
I love your stuff dude, you just cover so many things. I study primitive skills and I'm looking at getting into managing my own woodland over here in the UK so everything is relevant
Sounds fun. The whole woodlot management tradition in that area is fascinating.
My biggest mistake when trying this was adding new logs too quickly… wait for the previous layer to burn down before adding more or you will be left with a lot of logs at the end! Thank you for your inspiration skillcult channel.
Also, not using pieces that are too large and using wood that is about the same size in any given layer helps.
cool. I like the simplicity
I’m digging it
Sorry one more question: What about a tall, deep cone with vertical sticks as it burns it self-feeds. Would that work? I've got a post digging auger and would like to do a vertiburn.
Heard about bio char a couple years ago, and have been saving leftovers from my fire pit, for the garden areas ever since. Seems to definitely help. I can't convince my neighbor of it though and he still adds chemical fertiliser to his garden. Biochar lasts much longer and can stay in place with no tilling in our soil which is very sandy. The chemical fertiliser washes out, in my opinion. Thanks!
It definitely works, but I'd recommend saving it and applying it at 5% or more by volume rather than spreading it out. I think you really only see a lot of results with a certain concentration in one area. All of my biochar beds are doing better than the other beds.
Great video on the pit method. I'm trying to amend 8 acres of pasture and the double barrel retort kiln I made doesn't make the volume I need. This will work and I'll use the tractor to make a giant pit. I have a mountain of slabs from my sawmill. I quit burning them when I saw your video months ago. Thank you!
Wow that's a lot. I would do it in stages, adding a certain amount to each area then moving on, rather than spreading it randomly.
good music choice!
Hi Steven, Thanks for the great idea. I made a cone shaped pit last year which worked well, but the trench is a much better shape...less cutting. I do however think sloped sided would help keep oxygen from getting to the lower coals while trapping heat which will burn off remaining gasses from the wood.
Jazz Gardner You may be right on the sloped sides. I haven't tested it yet. It is easier to dig sloped sides anyway. At first I thought it was mostly to get better coverage, as I think you're saying, but there may be more going on. There is a guy that burns similarly in a straight sided metal cylinder and it seems to do okay. Probably pretty forgiving. I don't get enough smoke to bother changing anything. Trench is way better for most of the material I have, but I'm sure the cone is fine for a lot of people. Thanks for commenting.
It would be cool if there were experiments from the biochar nerds who could tell what dimensions yield what kind of results...is there a sweet spot in terms of size and shape of the pit...would be interesting to know.
What is your thoughts on just using wood chips instead of burning the wood invest in a chipper and the wood chips break down and provide aeration to the soil which is also important for growth. I’ve been doing this with grow bags and been getting tremendous results with growing. Any thoughts?
Wanting to try this to fill in low spots on the property and enhance drainage. I have bigger wood i can use.
So I was very excited to try this out, as I've been looking for an easy, large load biochar production process. Everyone practically pushes these high tech methods of needing to weld a barrel contraption so I had an old burn barrel that had the bottom partly open. I was burying the thing, loading it up with cut buckthorn, then trying to bury the top with dirt. Anyway so it didn't work that well. haha.
So then - this method - I dug out the trench with pick-axe and shovel - and I was skeptical since I thought it's gonna turn to ash underneath - there will be too much air. The buckthorn - I tried to cut it down so there were fewer branches as brush - and I started out with some saw wood. Anyway I just dug out the finished product to put more water on it - and sure enough it was charcoal - from the top down at least a foot. So I'm pretty confident it will be charcoal the whole way down since obviously the bottom would not get oxygen.
Yeah this was awesome - the fire kept needing to be constantly fed for 4 hours - which is a lot of wood and I needed to clean out a lot of buckthorn. I really just didn't want to burn it so I am so happy I turned it into biochar without needing to weld anything, etc. haha.
I am amazed that people push these high tech solutions when this is an ancient practice of creating "living" soil - and so the ancestors most likely had also used this pit burning method or trench I mean.
It was an intense experience, such a hot big fire for so long and yet it just made biochar pretty much. There was just a bit of ash on the sides where there was more oxygen.
O.K. - so you can check out my "skills" from my alchemy training I did to finish my master's degree - haha. Not your typical skills but then I researched it for 20 years to translate it to science and the results were fascinating - lots of images - enjoy www.pdf-archive.com/2017/04/10/idiot-s-guide-to-taoist-alchemy/ It is based on all realms of science - music theory, some math, biology, quantum biology, thanks
Yes, exactly! I suppose it is possible that the people buildiing char soils were using clamps, which is a big pile of wood with dirt over it, but that is more labor intensive and seems totally unnecessary for soil use. It is used for industrial charcoal for smelting and blacksmithing and such. Take a look at the open burn method and consider that for brush that would need a lot of cutting up. I like the trench best for simple shaped wood (bare branches mostly) aobut 1 inch up to 3 inches. Preferably under 3 inches I guess. The open piles are much faster to burn, though you may lose a little more, but consider cost/benefit when looking at available materials, your time and yields. If you have access to a lot of material, and can save 2 hours while only losing another 10% that seems like a good trade off. I have a short video comparing possible methods and a long blog post on skillcult.com on the same. But that's it in a nutshell. It's really dependent on how much wood you have access to. I don't like to spend a lot of time processing small wood if I don't have to. I'm not sure how much I made this year, but over 500 gallons for sure using these two methods.
I watched your vid on the open pile burn. But then this morning I checked the biochar and most of it was gone! Oops! I didn't realize it was still burning deep - I guess my trench was deeper than the one you dug. Anyway I have more to burn and its to clean up to sell the house, so I wasn't looking forward to having to take the time to unload the biochar around trees, etc. But I still have some biochar - and check out Guy McPherson - he made biochar with a welded contraption but he is a conservation biology professor stating we have 10 years at most left for life on Earth due to abrupt global warming. But anyway you get so much biochar from this trench method - it's amazing. So I just have to dig the stuff out a bit next time - and get water down all the way - because the thing burns so hot. thanks again. weeklyhubris.com/faster-than-expected/ McPherson's latest. thanks.
I built one yesterday out of steel drums. It’s 2 welded together end to end and it’s vertical. Top drum has a hole in the middle big enough to load, top has a hole in the back to act as a chimney. Bottom edges have holes for ventilation to get things hot then I can bury them with dirt. Basically the idea is to make charcoal in the oxygen deficient bottom but have an oxygen rich upper to burn off smoke and contain heat within the unit. I filled it full of cardboard yesterday and lit it up and it burned as expected with no smoke besides the paint that was burning off the outside. I think it will work great for making carcoal, but if not it’ll definitely work amazing as an incinerator. I might have to try a trench style drum one as well. I do spray foam insulation so drums are plentiful and free.
Cool. check out the jolly rodger TLUD for a barrel system. It requires more uniform feedstock though. I thought of half metal drums welded end to end for a portable unit as well. Could be cool for remote sites or classes. Good luck. Report back!
Looks like the other long side with a bank of dirt makes some vortex. What if you evenly bank all sides with dirt to create the vortex they are talking about with those conical metal burners?
Honestly I've barely paid attention to that whole aspect.it doesn't burn super clean, but it's clean enough that I don't really have any motivation to think about it or try anything different. I imagine it could be improved, most things can. The more I use it, but more broken down the pit has become, but the smoke is very manageable for the most part past an initial bit when new fuel is first thrown in. If you try anything, let me know how it goes. I love this method and used it make a few hundred gallons last year. Hoping to do even more this year and even thinking of scaling it up to closer to 200 gallons per burn with a bigger trench. This trench can make around 100 gallons I think.
What are the dimensions of the pit? I've collected lot's of branches like that.
Have you tried wood chips in the pit as well? would you layer them the same way or pile them all in and light from the top?
My trenches are probably around 18 inches by 10 feet, though it doesn't matter too much I don't think as long as it''s not too shallow. I dont' usually have chips, so I haven't tried, but I would definitely be looking at adding in thin layers. I suppose you could try lighting from the top, but I think at that point, you might as well build a TLUD design like the jolly roger.
Did you come out to the burn school in Valley Ford? I demonstrated my patented biochar crushing devise. Well....I'm sure someone patented it :-) It's just a leaf blower, but using the leaf vacuum option, it sucks the char up through an impeller blade into a bag. Makes the perfect size to be mixed with compost, added to a worm bin or fed to livestock.
+Matthew Banchero No I didn't. I never go anywhere :) That sounds cool. I'll keep my eyes out for one of those. I'm definitely over crushing it under my boots on a piece of plywood.
Sorry to obsess...but I need a lot of charcoal for my blacksmithing. I tried a smallish 2 foot deep cone vertical burn. The sticks kept falling all over the place. Plus trying to top light was not feasible. I managed to get a yield, but it was mixed with sand and a hot mess. Will require screening out the large chunks from the sand and fines. I might just burn wood like a Whitlox forge and put my metal under the burning wood stack. I think I'll try that and not waste the fire heat. I bought one of those Simone fire pots and cut a hole in a Harbor Freight moving table and put in some firebricks and plan to install a ceramic blanket. From my forestry work, I will have wrist diameter sapling thinnings for fuel.
Making char this way produces pretty low fuel value, soft char, even if you did get a good yield. I would go with either a traditional slow burn of some kind, or a retort design for industrial uses like smithing and smelting.
Excellent Video. I have a lot Bamboo to work with and this should work well for me. My plan is to dry quench it by laying metal sheeting over the trench, and cover with a little dirt, have you tried dry quenching?
I've done that in another context, while making charcoal for blacksmithing. That's exactly what we did is use metal sheets to cover a pit. It will work if you seal the edges well, but it does take a while to go out, and watch out for that little spark left that can end up ruining your whole batch if you walk away and leave it. I don't see any reason not to use water unless you don't have it at the burn site, or can't afford to waste any. I do like the idea of having the option to put the stuff out dry without mixing in soil. Bamboo really sounds like perfect feedstock for a long trench!
I char bamboo in a de-headed hundred pound propane tank. Tank laid on its side, feed through open end, closed end has a hole for a short stack of six inch stovepipe. It does about 8 gallons of char when the coals fill half the chamber. I water quench.
+snookmeister55, Yeah, simple is nice. I think accessibility is a major deterrent for a lot of people that might otherwise experiment with charcoal as a soil amendment. I spent a lot of time wondering how I was going to practically reduce wood small enough to fit in some sort of device. It doesn't get too much more simple than a hole in the ground!
Skill Cult How would you improve your Long Pit ? Would making the sides taller work better ?
i think it could be a little deeper and cleaner sides. Just to keep air having to enter mostly from the top, rather than scooching around the edges. That might make it function a little more like oxygen free pyrolysis
When starting a new garden (bed) would there be any reason not to make your trench pit the garden bed? This so I don't have to move stuff around so much because it's already where I need it. I'd dig my bed at least a shovel deep anyway to mix in compost (and biochar) so I might as well burn it there. Does the fire bake the soil so you'll get too much water in there? I usually go one foot down and a foot up to make raised beds, so it may just drain at ground level if the baked soil would cause problems...
Some would say it's a problem, but I really don't know. I would think you'd want to break up the part that got baked anyway, so it wasn't a lining. burnt clay is actually often stated to be a good soil amendment, so I suspect it would be fine.
@@SkillCult Thanks! I'll just undersize the pit by a few inches what the bed will be and mix in the burnt clay/soil. They found a bunch of ceramics in the terra preta in the Amazon, so it can't be that bad 😉
Also thanks for replying to an eighth year old video BTW. Not many on TH-cam do that. 👍
Sean, that sounds like a good idea. We have a lot of stuff here that is really open in branch structure and it can definitely cause issues by allowing too much ingress of air. I did a pit burn that was maybe about 8 feet at the top and 5 feet at the bottom, cone shaped, and decided not to cut up any of the brush. A lot of it was oak branches and other hardwoods that poke out in all directions and take up a lot of space. I felt like I had significantly elevated losses to ash in that burn. I could see the ash forming in all the open spaces. Using Douglas fir limbs in a pit or trench works much better, since all the twigs are aligned in a flat plane so they stack in really well (better in a shallow trench as you can even just burn them in sections without cutting if they're too long). I'll give your suggestion a try. Otherwise, I thinkthe brush will just have to be cut up to some extent. Even in an open burn, the really tangly stuff causes issues since it doesn't stack very well. I'm figuring out what I can get away with, but minimizing the reduction of feedstock is high on my list of priorities since I have a lot of material to char and lots of other fun stuff to do! Thanks for the tip.
+SkillCult is this charcoal or biochar? whats the difference?
+PlantsAsMedicine that is a great question. there is no doubt that biochar is charcoal, but some would argue that it doesn't work the other way around. I'm not actually that familiar enough to argue either way. I just use whatever charcoal I can make easily.
Biochar is charcoal inoculated with nutrients, bacteria and fungi. Mixing charcoal with compost or compost tea is how you make it.
Thanks for sharing this method. I think one could get even more fertility from biochar by washing the char with a thin slurry of clay (bentonite/cat-litter seems to be the best). The idea behind this is to jump start the humus reaction. The necesary requirements for humus formation is clay&lignin (apart from microbes that make it, but most healthy soil should)...lignin is contained in most mulches.
Thanks for the idea. Sounds like to much work for me ;) I'm sure there are all kinds of things that could make the char more effective, quicker. At this point, I'm content to bury it and let it all happen in the soil.
@@SkillCult Washing might be an exaggeration. Just add clay to water and pour over char before you quench with water. The water carries the clay to the rest of the char as you quench. It does add another step, so I completely understand your reluctance. Your charing-methods have opened up some possibilies for me, so i decided to share mine with you or who ever might read this.
What size are the char pieces at the end of the process when you're charring logwood like in this video? Do you think this method is suitable if the primary goal is to make lump charcoal for sale? Or is much of the char crushed into smaller pieces?
The pieces tend to be small. The charcoal is soft and not very suitable for fuel charcoal. You'd definitely want to go with a more controlled enclosed and I guess lower oxygen burn for fuel charcoal. If making charcoal was this easy, I'm sure no one would have used more elaborate methods. I use it for blacksmithing a little bit, but just because it happens to be laying about. If I made a batch of charcoal specifically for smithing, I'd use a retort or the old dirt covered clamp or something like like that.
What do you think makes it soft? Temperature? Impact from the next layer being added? Quench water?
I don't know. I've never studied that at all. I think it is inherent in the style of burning though, because burn pile charcoal, whether quenched or not, is also soft generally speaking. Could be temperature or the order of termperatures, or access to oxygen maybe. The The hardest charcoal I know of is Bintochan, japanese white charcoal th-cam.com/video/9GpNJKOIX98/w-d-xo.html it is cooked very slow starved of oxygen, then opened up for a little while before removing and smothering.
steven idk what kind of music you like but the drums in this are like alot of viking music i listen to wardruna, danheim, and myrkur are the best
Its wardruna if I remember right. Love that first wardruna album. I'll check out the others. Mostly extreme metal, some punk and random other stuff.
In a somewhat similar situation. On land logged ~50 years ago and it's just regrown poorly. Anyway do you think a burn trench will work out fine with fresh cut wood?
I doubt it. If you get it good and hot, you can throw in a little green wood, but if it's mostly green, no. What I do is knock the brush off limbs about 1.5 to 4 inches and store it up until I have enough to do a few burns. It's not really a big fire hazard if the brush is off of it. The rest I dry most of it for a year, then to the top lit pile, which I have a couple of videos on. There is the disadvantage to both that you have to dry the brush for a year.
@@SkillCult curious if I can bury a pipe in the pit n hook up a blower to get it all hot enough. I just have got to get rid of the brush this year
@@codyhaynes0 If you have a bag of Cowboy Charcoal, and a tuyere or metal pipe with a hair dryer blowing into it, I think you could get the coals hot to cook the steam out of the small sticks and green saplings, but you'd really have to baby the pile. Watch the plastic of your hair dryer doesn't melt.
I have approximately 964 metric asstonnes of pine to deal with over the last...umpteen hurricanes that have directly hit my S. Florida home. Is there any issue that you're aware of with using pine to make charcoal, regarding specifically the sap content?
Also, pretty cool music over the sped up footage
I have not had any problems charring conifers this way. It all seems to burn out. Check out the other top down method too. th-cam.com/video/ixtxNfU9Rb8/w-d-xo.html. It's good for smaller brush that you don't want to spend a lot of time trimming. If you are is florida, you probably have sandy soil. I would think the char would be very good in that situation. Don't know till you try though.
SkillCult we will hopefully have some tests complete and some idea within a years time :)
You might consider doing one trial of varying percentage where you add the raw charcoal to the soil without any extra nutrients, then just treat it all the same to see what happens. Heavily innoculated soil is hard to judge, because all the fertilizer has an effect. If you can use exactly the same nutrients in a control bed, that still doesn't tell you much, since the char absorbs a lot of nutrients that are not apparently not immediately available to the plant. a long bed divided into something like 0% - 5% - 10% sections is a good test. Probably the first year the char sections will fail to thrive as the char sinks nutrients away, unless you plant a legume that fixes it's own nitrogen, but over time it will reach an equilibrium. It costs you a year of cropping, but it tells you for sure if the char is improving the soil over the next couple years if you keep treating all three sections the same. The nutrient additions to biochar are a big confounder for experiments. By fertilizing equally over the control and char sections after digging the char in, you eliminate that as a factor. It could also tell you a lot about how much char you should add. In the meantime, you can just keep piling it up. I think that a bed of at least 5 foot sections over similar soil, divided into 0%-5%-10%-15% would tell you some really valuable insight after about 2 years. Quite a time investment, but extremely valuable information as otherwise you could be missing your optimal quantity of char. Depth is also an issue of course, but that would have to be another test bed.
When I finally get moved into the property, we should begin a running thread of discussion on this. I could only hope that any results and data I can collect are of use to you in exchange for your insight. I have 20 acres of woods/improved pasture, a house, a small shop, and some cross-fencing for cattle and horses. It's where I grew up, and I'm trying to get my young family moved there, so my motivation to improve it for them is substantial. I appreciate your replies and the thought processes you've already started me on
I tried a barrel, but it was too much cutting of wood into small pieces. I got 10 galllons out of a burn, then my barrel started getting burn holes. I dug a pit much like yours and in 3 hours I got 35 gallons of char. Maybe it's not too efficient, but I have a near infinite amount of dry brush and large tree branches.
Yep, context is king. I have tons of brush too, it's more of a problem to get it all processed or even just burned by simple methods.
I was just researching how to amend sandy soil, of which I have at the new place. That brought me to using biochar, which brought me here. Love how that happens when surfing for info. Anyhow, we have a 'no burn' law here which I am afraid would prevent me from making charcoal, sadly. Unless I can figure a way around it. My question to you or anyone else is, do you have a problem with burn bans and is there a way to circumvent it. Thanks, and I found your video really interesting and informative.
We have burn bans once summer starts, but we can burn in the winter. There are systems that produce almost no smoke, but most produce at least some. You might look into more high tech solutions. That sounds pretty annoying. Do they allow for anything, like wood heating or open bbq type set ups? if so, you could use those as a loop hole. For instance, if you split a steel drum lengthwise and use that as a "BBQ" and just keep adding wood until it's full then throw on a kabob and put it out ;) Who says it doesn't take 6 cubic feet of wood to cook a kabob, it's just a matter of technique!
Giant BBQ grill, I love it! We can and a lot of people do heat with wood. I'll have to think about the bbq idea, it could work! I'm not sure but they may have outlawed those setups where you burn wood in a ummm, something..building? Forget what they are called. Anyhow the fire is outside and the heat travels via pipes I think, to heat your house. But fireplaces, and wood stoves can for sure be used. I like the BBQ pit or half a 55 gallon barrel idea though! :) Thanks for replying. Have an awesome day or night whichever it is. :)
Some people put wood in a can and cook it in the woodstove. You can make a small batch of char every time you have a fire. You can also just get it going really well and quench it with water. I'm sure someone is working on a biochar producing wood stove design too. Good luck!
Thanks! I have a friend who says they made a burn pit, for sitting around on nice evenings. They say they will use some char on their blueberries but also save me some. Yayy! Have a good one!
I use a metal pan-type barbecue burner to make about 5 to 10 gallons of char in an evening of "backyard campfire". Just pull out the wood after the yellow flames have disappeared and quench it. I let it dry for a day or two and run it through my Toro Leaf vacuum to grind it up.
I kind of doubt that a deeper pit would really gain you enough to bother. It seems to work pretty well right up to the top of the pit. I wouldn't be surprised if even an open pile managed the same way would work tolerably well. Of course you could burn more material in each batch with a deeper trench.
I love your channel! This stuff is great. I was going to try and add some innovation ideas to your methods of making charcoal to make them more efficient. So, charcoal is made out of taking out one of the 3 components of a fire, which are heat, oxygen, and fuel. The best way to do this is to take out the oxygen. What if you somehow made a hole in the ground , but had some way to cover it up with dirt or some flame retardant material (leaving a small hole for a tiny bit of oxygen) Wouldn’t that keep the fire from burning so fast and make the most charcoal without using so much of the wood for fuel? I’m just curious of your thoughts on the matter. Keep up the great work. I have really enjoyed your channel.
Yeah, that is about how it works. It takes much longer and in some cases maintenance to make low oxygen charcoal. It also produces a lot of smoke, unless you have a retort type of system to reburn the escaping gasses. My youtube friend david the good showed me a video of something similar in central america, but it is still certainly more involved and requires more attention. The good part is the yield is higher.
SkillCult very cool. I’ve seen some of his videos too. I wish there was a better way to make more charcoal with less babysitting :( it would be awesome to invent some sort of technique for this. Keep up the grafting videos. The info you’re sharing is priceless 👍🏼 Thank you. I never knew some of this stuff was possible. I can’t wait for the rest of the basket weaving segment. Also, it’s awesome when you bring more people on the channel. I really liked the chip grafting video 👌🏼
Good choice of music. I freakin love Wardruna. Hail King Ragnar! haha. I'm gonna try this kiln method in rural Brasil to make some Roman bricks.
Yeah, right!?! I haven't really listened to the new album yet, but that first one is a gem for sure. I don't know much about brick making except that it took a lot of wood and a long time. At least as it was done here where the kiln was basically the stacked bricks themselves.. This doesn't get that hot really. Let me know if it works.
Yeah for sure man. I'm gonna dig my trench at least 5 feet deep, and maybe put an arched vault roof over it. If it works though, I'll be uploading it to the tube. ;)
Levi Clays I guess my initial concerns would be that usually a kiln for firing of ceramics, or burning lime and stuff like that is supplied with plenty of draft or extra air somehow to boost temperatures. This system is pretty much designed to limit air flow and impede combustion in all but the top area of the fire, which is sort of the nature of an unventilated pit. I know when I burn lime, the issues are basically temperature and dwell time. For burning sea shells, dwell time is minimal since they are thin, but with larger rocks, or something like a brick, it takes longer to penetrate heat throughout the material. Ceramics of course also require to stay at heat for a while to vitrify adequately, presumably increasing required dwell time. If anything, I'd think you'd want to add airways into the bottom of the pit for extra air to insure that high enough temperatures are reached, and plan on burning everything to ash. I guess my only other thought is that the earth may act as a big heat sink, though I'm not sure how much worse that would be than other options. It does also have some insulative value after all. I would definitely rock some Wardruna while burning those bricks, it can't hurt ;) I think the gods will be pleased and smile upon your bricks! I'm a big fan of the Gaahl era Gorgoroth stuff, which is what led me into Wardruna. The only thing I can usually follow Gorgoroth with is the Burzum albums Belus or Filosofem. I don't know anything that really can follow Wardruna with a similar vibe.
I've given some thought on how to incorporate char production into burning lime. Not burning all the way to ash may be a problem in terms of reaching adequate heat penetration or dwell time in mixed fuel/lime systems. If the wood and lime stock are separate, then it might be more possible, but only with a continual feed of fuel to keep the temps up. It sure would be cool to figure out though as now I'm just producing ash. You should burn some lime for mortaring you bricks! I have several blog posts on burning lime and what I've learned on the turkeysong blog. It's super fun, especially slaking, and infinitely useful. I've always wanted to make roof tiles too, european style formed over the thigh. Have a blast down there. The new episode of Vikings comes out tomorrow!
Right on man! Hey thanks for all the information on kilns. I haven't met anyone yet who enjoys this kinda stuff like I do.
You made some good points about the trench kiln. Maybe I'll just do something above ground, like a bottle kiln. And I might attach a bellow to it as-well. And oh yes, I'll be listening to Wardruna while I burn those bricks. lol! Fehu!
I sure hope I have limestone on my land in the interior. I got these massive boulders absolutely everywhere. I wonder if they are limestones. I'll have to put some vinegar on em.
My life mission has always been to build a castle myself. The seer told me-
Seer : "I see a castle... hence the castle is your destiny."
Me : "Oh great! I always knew I was meant to build a castle."
Seer : "But I also see that you yourself, are the castle."
Me : "Okay wtf? You lost me there, ancient one. How can I be the castle? Literally or metaphorically it makes little sense."
lol!!
Yeah I'm excited as heck for season 3! The Vikings Facebook page posted the BEST video recently of all the battle cries and awesome kills. ATTAAAAAACK!!! haha
Levi Clays The basics to really think about are the temp and dwell time. Lime requires little, but I think that hard fired ceramic generally requires more of both. I'm sure there is some good info out there on brick making and firing. I've read about it a little, but never really dove into it.
Vinegar isn't always strong enough to show fizzing on limestone in my experience. If you have a stronger acid though, it should fizz at least briefly. Something like muriatic acid or probably battery acid. Or, you could also just burn some in an open barrel like I show in my blog posts, just to test it out, or even just in a very hot open fire. Then add water and see if it falls into powder or slakes. If it is Limestone, some old timer locals probably know about it, so ask around. It's very common, so good chance there is some not too far away. We don't have a lot in our area, so I get oyster shells from oyster farms not too far away.
I think I wanted to build a castle at some point, but now I think I'd be content to plaster some walls and mortar up a few bricks. I love playing with fire in general. I'd like to build a Japanese style white charcoal kiln someday. I really think merging char production with other fire/heat stuff is the place to head now. To the extent that it's possible and practical anyway. Burn baby burn!
Use some bricks to line the 4 sides, maybe the bottom too, should work well.
I think you should say charcoal before biochar love the the percussion
I think we are stuck with biochar. I often just say char now. Agri-char is be better than biochar I think, but whatever. I'm not going to fight it.
Does biochar beat buried wood hugelkultur for gardening? I figure it must because you still are making biochar videos, but I wanted to clarify that.
It's different. I don't use hugelkultur much, so it's hard to make a comparison. In many cases you might see overall better short term results, but it doesn't last forever like biochar does. What's more relevant is that you can easily mix the two. That way you capture and save some of that fertility long term and are already providing a great way to work the char into the soil if doing hugel mounds.
@@SkillCult Good idea! RE: the biochar trench, if you put heavy stuff on top of smaller lighter material, do you think the tamping effect of bigger logs would make a difference in smothering and less ash loss?
@@SkillCult I've been trying to turn clay subsoil into actual dirt for 40 years. We've put everything we can into it. We have 7 mulch piles going at once, 5 foot cube. I cleaned out an old cow barn 5 years ago, and it's all disappeared into the soil. I have a small wood chipper. I used to collect leaves on trash day in my cargo van, but those have disappeared, and I got tired of picking out rocks, bottles, and dead cats. My wife buys Miracle Gro and compost from the hardware store. Everything organic disappears in a few years. This fall I've been cooking char so let's see what next summer brings.
@@jamesvandamme7786 Please report back. I have loam, but it can still get clumpy. The char seems to make a great improvement in texture. Some add sand, but silt is what is more missing from heavy clays I think. I would take some effort to break the char up well. not all powder, but I'll bet the powder is what will create the better soil texture. I like to just smash or process til most of it is corn kernel sized and down. Organic matter can be a never ending cycle. People with sandy soils have it even worse, it just burns right up. I've also noticed that the less I dig, the better the soil texture is. It seems to be ruined very fast by digging and trying to make the soil friable. If you are growing good healthy, large plants, they are pumping organic matter into the soil. Adding more air and stirring makes it oxidize and disappear faster. Letting it alone for the most part seems to allow all the worms and stuff to build create the open structure.You can still apply organic matter to the top. I also think huglechar seems like a good approach for the initial application, I mean why not. When I do a char bed, I pretty much dig it all out and mix the char in pretty well, with amendments. It's a lot of work, but you only have to do it once. Preferably 20 to 24 inches. I would be cautious about using huge amounts, but it might be good. Just make it an experiment. If you use wide bed system, divide a long bed into at least 5 foot sections at 5%, 10% and 15%. Then fertilize exactly the same and grow the same crops along the whole bed. YOu can do somethhing like peas at the back, then a row of roots and row of green. If you don't add ferts when you set it up you'll really know you are seeing the difference over time. the first year, you will probably see very poor growth, correlated with char %. But if you keep fertilizing from the top, it will start evening out and you can get an idea of what the percentages are doing to both growth and soil texture. Basically, you are setting up a living analog graph. Then you can proceed from there regarding percentages and set up other experiments if necessary.
@@SkillCult "Wait til next year!" as the Patriots fans say. I've been putting a lot of rotten wood and pine cones in my garlic for a few years, and got 29 pounds this year. We have permanent paths covered with fabric and underneath it's still yellow, compacted to adobe.
The web adddress you list - backyardbiochar.com - seems to have expired.
Your kiln doesn't look like a cone. Any reason?
WEEEEEEEEE! Stick a Dutch Oven in that bitch! LOVE your music choice. *thumbs up*
I've tested this method three times this month, doubling the size/volume after each round, noticing that the output doubles accordingly, but time remains the same (6-7hours), as well as less labor-intensive when it comes to processing the feedstock. By the thirds round, could just keep throwing on bushy crowns so that the weight + fire made it collapse into the pit quickly, producing 6-7times in the same amount of time compared to pre-expansion.
However, quenching became harder the bigger, and deeper the pit got, and on the 3rd round a good chunk of the pile was burned off by the next day, despite well over 200 liters was poured in.
Specs: first 1.5m length x 40-60cm wide, and ~45cm deep. Second was almost twice as wide, ~60cm deep, and ~2m long (w/2 big boulders in). On the third (2 days ago), the output from the ~1.2m wide, 2.5-3m long, and 60-80cm deep (variable due to slope and asymmetry) was ~7 cartloads of coal in 6-7hours, +30-40 liters scraped off along with sand, and spread around production-site.
My pits are probably 8 to 10 feet long, but only about 18 inches deep
max with sloping sides. I haven't kept track of time, but much less
than 6-7 hours, probably more like 3 I would guess, maybe up to 4? That
seems about right since yours are quite a bit deeper. I have a little
down time during, but usually stay semi busy. I could see if the
materials were at hand maintaining longer or wider trench. I like the 8
foot minimum length as it will deal with almost any long stick I want
to put in there by burning one or more ends off. I rarely put in
anything over 3 inches. At that point I'd rather split it or use it for
something else. Quenching is seriously an undertaking with a pit that
deep. One little speck of coal left down there and you're screwed. I
use an oscilating fan type of sprinkler sometimes, set if for an hour or
two and let it run. Otherwise, you just gotta sit there forever and
then forever again to make sure. Or, maybe with that deep pit you
should just unload it right away spraying as you find hot spots. No
joke though. If I redo this video, I'll try to remember to emphasis
that.
Looks like you have a lot of small brush too, so definitely try the burn pile method too if you haven't. I tend to take a while to stack the pile with tall relatively straight sides, but once that's done, it's very fast. I tend to like the pit better for most wood for some reason, but the pile works well too.
It probably also takes longer also because the brush is wet, cold and/or has snow (not always, weird winter), generally wet and colder surroundings, with water seeping/steaming in from the pit-walls (sure shows in the surrounding ground). I think it's the main factor, because the time didn't alter with size-increase, possibly because width expanded somewhat proportionally with depth. Only more yield with less labor.
BUT, as you said quenching can be damn challenging. 2nd pit was covered with snow after 100+ liters were splashes with 10L buckets, and there was still big steaming holes, and a few small ash-spots the day after. It wasn't feasible to use snow on the 3rd round, but when a hole in the middle of the pile taking a good 30-40L of coal away, still retaining a 'roof' quenched coal, and eating on the water-line that covered ~1/4 of the pile from the bottom,,, well, needless to say some obvious limitations to size for in-situ production far away from plenty of running water, solely due to quenching. What disturbs me is not that I loose the yield, but that there are many places I plan to maintain that I cannot afterwards optimize via char-amendment even during winter (not all snow is doable. quickly insufficient event for a small-medium sized pit [aforementioned pits as reference].), and possibly prohibitive in warmer seasons.
Since dirt/sand-quenching can be insufficient (hard to make air-tight which may result in tar if left for a while, or smelly char), and often hard/impossible to execute in rocky areas, or with mixed soils, I am getting tempted to go for even larger pits that can handle everything in one round, and try to time the fire prior to rain.
The areas I plan to improve will have all wood converted for max yield,, because I don't really need firewood, but I like to burn a fire in the woods :/ (,,, well, and also like big trees, and hairy/feathery creatures) , so I am pretty sure I need a larger operational standard compared to what I/we've tried so far.... honestly think it looks harder for you. Seems like a much drier climate to handle.
TLUD-branch stack was a great idea, and will definitely be tried for smaller batches, but I've been keen on the pit since I had a draining-trench available (for the distiller), and liked the ease of indiscriminate use, and re-use for production
I realy think it's so good people like you trying to make biochar. It's a good sign. But man, i have been whatching your chanel and a lot of chanels about, and All of then are wasting to much wood in the piles, turning in ashes. If you realy like fast work ok. But if you want more biochar cover that piles whith something. Use water to make the process slowly. I garantee that you will make so much more biochar. I use leaves to stop the Flames. If the Flames start i cover again, put a little bit water. Take a Lot of more time but you can find a more eficient way. Please, think about it. So much people are inspired by your technics.
A lot of us also want to minimize smoke, which requires either special equipment or clean open burns. i have a whole video addressing the ash issue and efficiency in context. I have more wood than I can keep up with burning, and getting rid of it is also important, so I do what is easy, fast and clean. A lot of people come from a place of scarcity with wood, for me it's overabundant.
SkillCult yea, i know the smoke thing. It's realy importante minimize and i imagine your fully source but i have shure you don't want waste right? Let's keep going speriments to be more and more eficient. I realy don't want to piss of. Everyone who wants make that planet better is my friend. I Will keeping my speriments to and If i found another good way i'll Share. Can you imagine use a sistem to make charcoal and at the same time use the heat to source of Power? Cook, heat Water. That's a lot of potencial. Thanks man. Good Luck 😃
Hi, You are burning most of your wood. That is a waste. Fill the trench densely with wood. Leave a hole in the center to start the fire. Cover everything with green braches full öV leaves and then close up everything with damp dirt. Now start a fire in the center Once it is burning vigorously put some cover on top eg a piece of metal and cover it with dirt. At the same time make holes in every corner. The size and position of the holes controls the process. It takes a bit of experience to optimize the process. But even if you do not optimize at all, the difference in output compared to your methods will still be amazing.
And BTW YOU DO NOT NEED TO CUT DOWN THE WOOD AND BUSHES. JUST FILL THE VOIDS WITH CHARCOLE!
I could see possibly using the traditional burns like that for larger batches if I could figure out a way to cover with metal sheeting to make it easier. I've made charcoal by low and slow methods like that in barrels and pits. This is easy and fast and I haven't been able to keep up with production. It also produces very little smoke and you don't have to watch it at night. I can light it in the morning and be done in maybe 2 to 3 hours with about 100 gallons average production. I realize that conversion efficiency is somewhat lower, but I couldn't say how much at all and I doubt anyone has made a careful comparison. That would take some care to get right.
SkillCult I like the idea of covering the whole trench with metal sheets. I did not think about that. I have some old metal roofs lying around, which I use for covering my firewood to protect it from rain. I think I will sacrifice one for the sake of science and I‘ll keep you posted.
Working out how efficient your method is is quite easy. Burn a gallon of charcole and weigh the ashes. Then estimate the amount of ashes you get from your method and you know how efficient your method is. If you keep oxygen away from the reaction you get virtually no ashes.
I've thought of that just to put the trench fires out when there is no water. I think to get a good picture of conversion it would be best to basically have identical wood piles, that are weighed out and then measure the char after. I think much carbon is lost as gasses. But that doesn't mean that the same weight of char made two different ways is doing the same amount of good in the soil either. That would be another experiment. I think for me to make it worth doing a long slow burn like that, I'd have to scale up to a certain point that would do a lot more wood at once. But that means also digging a much larger hole. Be careful with burning galvanized metal. It is very toxic. I don't know what temp it takes, but zinc poisoning like that is no joke. I met a guy that almost died from it.
Let me ask with the most general possible simplifications I can make. Is the goal here to make the same thing as charcoal? I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that we're just trying to remove everything that isn't carbon here. Thus, we want to make a hot fire that quickly flashes off every other compound, and then we want the part that's already been flashed to somehow change to a reductive environment in order to starve it of oxygen, right? Would it then be more efficient to choke off the air more slowly, like by throwing a chunk of sheet metal over the pit? It seems like water is pretty indiscriminate about what parts of the combustion it ends.
There's tons of stuff to burn around here. Lots of brush and other crap has been left around this property from the botched loggings that took place around half a decade ago. So I've been spending days burning now, and that gives one plenty of time to consider what burning is. Allow me to make a further generalization about fire building; a controlled fire (one that has a somewhat rational human to fuel it) goes through a three-part cycle, where it first chokes and smokes in a struggle to establish, then it expresses itself violently, and finally it quietly hums away in a warm, comfortable, mostly smokeless glow. It seems that charcoal is the fuel for the third and best part, so our goal is to store that part away for later.
What I would really like to understand better (and what would make a great video subject), is why and how the same thing that makes an awesome fuel is also a great soil amendment. So here is my confusion: 12" seems awfully deep for most garden plants to benefit much from a charcoal deposit- at least, beyond now having better drainage. And from a chemical perspective, plants already get their carbon from the air. Is the charcoal 'filter' somehow retaining nutrients for the plants above to use? I am also unclear about the benefits of ash. What do I do with all of my ash?
I don't expect you to provide me with perfect shortcuts to figuring it all out for myself, but I do appreciate any help/direction. I'm feeling a bit lost and alone out here. And by the way, I took your advice about buying old hatchets and axes. I picked up a shitload of them from a flea-mart for what _one_ would cost on Amazon. It was a case of you telling me something I already knew, but I just didn't want to hear it. The tipping point was from looking at all of the designs more critically after watching your rant on the Husqvarna: some of them are getting downright silly. Instead of approaching a design optimum, axe geometry is approaching a marketing maximum. I guess it's like the way a fishing lure is mostly designed to snag fisherman at Wal-Mart. I think I may have just read that in a comment somewhere. So true. lol.
Apologies if any of that was covered in your Q&A video- I just found it. I'll watch that next time I sit down. Your content is most useful.
I've seen people say both that you should burn everything out and that it's good to have some of those destructive distillates, or whatever they are left in. I don't care that much as long as I can pull off making that stuff, and it seems to work :) I've also heard the quenching is good, but I can't even remember why. Maybe it was to help reduce the hydrophobic property char can have. The way I do it, the water goes on when I'm ready for all combustion to stop and I just dump it on. These open burn methods definitely make softer char than the usual hard charcoal that is used for fuel and industry but the process is super accessible and WAY cleaner.
The depth issue I see as largely about where we live and gardening style. Nothing happens between plants and soil once the water is gone. I just dug a new 3 foot deep pit for a tree and after a long dry summer, there was barely any discernable moisture in the soil that deep and the roots seemed to keep going deeper. And that is normal here. In the garden maybe not as true, but if there are nutrient holding and general soil improving capabilities from the char, then why not extent that deeper. Plenty of garden plants extend roots for many feet, especially if not irrigated very regularly. And it really doesn't take that much char to do a garden bed to 2 feet deep at say 10%. Not to say you need 10% and not more or less, but I know now in my garden that's my minimum benchmark for now. So, even a 20 foot bed at 4 feet wide is 160 cubic feet 10%, 16 cubic feet = about 120 gallons of char. My pit if I recall is around 100 gallons when full, I think at least 90 gallons in most burns. I think I've burned as many as 6 of those in a year, which would be something like 5 of those huge garden beds amended to 2 feet deep. And it has to be kept in mind that it's a long term investment. I haven't done A/B testing for depth yet to see the difference, but I'm inclined to think it will make a difference for my style and climate. For dry or infrequently irrigated trees, it really seems like it must be worth digging the stuff in deep around here. I'm always surprised the fruit trees even survive unirrigated through our dry summers.
I do cover more talking points in other biocar vids that might be helpful. I'm really not up on the science. To me, most of it is just rumors, because I dont' care to dig into it enough to judge. There are a lot of strong contradictory assertions floating around out there. Most of the studies I've run up on were very short term, or trials done in pots, which have questionable relevance to real life long term gardening. I really think the best thing we can do is put in small scale A/B or A/B/C trial beds and watch them for years.
Ash is full of trace minerals. It is especially high in potassium as far as macronutrients go, but it also has a lot of lime too, something like an average of 30% calcium. Most people think of it as a source of potassium, but I like to view it as the tree having spent a lifetime collecting these precious minerals that make it possible for plants to grow and we can just snag it all and use it wherever we want. Unless your soil is very sweet to start with, I can't imagine it won't be useful. I find the apparent effect to be fairly brief, but char might help retain some of the minerals so they don't wash through the soil in the winter, hopefully anyway.
Marketing maximum, ha ha, I like that. Thanks for the shoutout recently BTW, that was awesome. I was going to reply, but haven;t gotten around to it. I actually jotted down a list of talking points, but I have to cook and eat and stuff like that too lol. That;s the problem though, I end up putting off the communications that are often most relevant or in depth, because they take some much more time. It's easy to run around answering simpler stuff :)
Thanks for the reply. I watched the entire biochar series last night until I dozed off. You answered all of my questions. We are in agreement about the limitations of science. Don't get the wrong idea, because I'm extremely anti-pseudoscience. But taking any single study out of context will distort it beyond any useable application. I once wrote a lab report titled "The effects of Gibberellic Acid on root growth in 'Little Marvel' peas." The results were worth less than a choked off squirt of piss to my greenhouse beds. And that's how we train our kids to science (verb). As you've pointed out so well, complex systems are just not easily understood without the aid of _concept._ We have to generalize things and then force them into a pattern just to make use of them. Science is impotent in that regard; it will not speculate, nor generalize, and it has zero value without having to be continuously held against control groups. Science is our best tool yet, but it's also the most difficult to use. Axes are perhaps easier to understand- and even that topic has an infinite number of rabbit holes!
I'm drifting off again. One more thing: an idea. I'm going to stockpile some char in a few of the root holes left from fallen trees. It seems logical to let it season there for a bit before using it (I understand that it's thirsty for nitrogen), and I'm not digging a garden during PA winter. I was thinking about using a 50-gal drum to choke off the air. Once the coals are ready, they could be shoveled into a barrel still hot, and then sealed with a lid. Another benefit with this method would be that the main fire could continue. Well, as you've said, information is useful. If I were to participate with a goofy experiment like this, it adds in a small way to the collective. Dumb idea?
@@pocket83squared Well, it will screw your shovel up if the coals are hot lol. I think too you'll want a respirator. I'd just use water and dig a second trench. You can get a sacrificial shovel and toss some coals over to start it. Or, just scale up to the point where you are not going to want to burn a second trench. At ten foot long 2.5 foot wide 18 inch deep trench will take a while to fill. Just put a sprinkler on it and walk away and it will be ready to burn again the next day. Less handling is better, especially if hot and dry (carbon and ash dust). Yeah, science rants lol. A certain number of people will always interpret any criticism of science as anti-science, which is unfortunate. I'm not sure I'd say it's the best tool we have, but it can be very specific. It's probably best for some things and terrible at others.
In Arab villages in Israel, they dig up a rectangular pit, start the fire, let it all heat up then put in the bigger chunks of wood, wait until they ignite and cover it all with dirt they dug out and let it all cook for a couple of days or so.
This type of charcoal is quite soft and not much good for things like cooking and industrial uses. The slower method like you describe is more typical of charcoal making methods everywhere. For biochar use it may or may not be better or worse to have this type of soft charcoal. That seems to be a debate, though for me the accessibility of this method for easily producing a lot of charcoal in a short time from long material trumps all. The soft stuff does have it's supporters it seems, though I haven't spent a lot of time reading about the alleged pros and cons. By the way, check out bintochan charcoal. it is the extreme opposite of my soft pit charcoal and possibly the height of the art of charcoal making. I really want to learn to make it. th-cam.com/video/9GpNJKOIX98/w-d-xo.html
Holly shit! This white charcoal stuff is crazy!
I like how you start the coal bed but the resins in the pine produce harmful gasses, & toxins not good for garden soil. Shouldn't you lay down a layer of dirt to smother it, then start another coal bed on top. The bottom coal bed still pyrolyzes w/o oxygen, and the process continues. Maybe even stack the fuel close together for even burn? The process creates biochar as oppose to charcoal, & also you are sequestering harmful woodgasses, & methane with the layer of dirt & wood lasagna.
Its not Biochar, its a charcoal.
I've been also told that it's not charcoal lol. I don't really care what it's called. It's black char and it works, that's what's important.
@@SkillCult thanks for your reply. I guess biochar is made without allowing the oxygen to burn wood. Will try doing it.
I dont know what happened but I wasn't subscribed to your channel. Makes me a little mad because I KNOW I didn't do that
A lot have complained about being unsubbed from channels. They seem to do these purges. The notification bell is really where it's at. Subs don't mean much. if you are subbed, but I don't put out anything for a while, I will drop from your feeds. They put in front of you what you've been watching for the most part.
Agreed brother. I love your channel. I will always be watching SOMETHING by you. God bless you brother