Marc Dube

So far its been great it does need stoking every 3 or 4 hours but that is probably more to do with burning nothing but pallet wood. I installed a thermostat that actually came out of the air conditioner so the fan automatically shuts off after the fire burns down.

If there are any birch trees in the forests you could look for chaga fungus. Winter is my favorite time of year to look for and harvest chaga.

I mentioned building an outdoor wood furnace here is a link to its post.
https://permies.com/t/150655/firing-DIY-outdoor-wood-furnace

I've been wanting a source of wood heat for years but for insurance purposes and the lack of a good place to place a wood stove in the house i decided an outdoor stove would be best. Outdoor boilers are by far the most common but I could not figure out a way to build one that I could do on the cheap, like extremely cheap. So I came up with an outdoor wood furnace.

The furnace i came up with is an old electric hot water tank for the fire box which I placed inside of an old oval steel water tank (same shape as fuel oil tanks). I welded them together, welded the chimney and door on, made a deflector that I believe is creating a secondary burn.

The chimney is 6 feet of 6 inch steel pipe welded to both of the tanks with triple wall sections slipped over it that were removed from the house since we switched to a high efficiency furnace that does not require a chimney through the roof.

For the fan I took a radiator fan out of an old 90s car (it had 2 so I have 1 spare) this way I can run it on a 12v system so I can still have heat during a power outage. I ducted both the cold air return and hot air delivery through 10 feet of coroplast that I scrounged up.

I routed it through an old air conditioner unit that was basically build into a window that I could not remove without destroying the window, so I gutted out the unit and ran the coroplast ducts through it.

The only cost that went into this so far is welding rods and the door gasket, everything else was scrounged from one source or another, heck even the tape on the coroplast was a dumpster find.

I live in a very rural area with farms scattered all over the place a mile to a couple miles apart. It is almost an unspoken rule that every farm yard needs 2 to 4 'yard lights'. These are generally 800 watt halogen bulbs that light up a large area. Looking across the Prairie landscape at night you can pick out every yard within 20 miles.

I myself refuse to pay for that electricity that I derive little benefit from, my yard had 3 yard lights that came on at dark and shut off at sun up. Now I have 1 thats on a motion sensor and that is plenty for me.

I fill my raised beds which are actually wicking beds (as it holds water until 3/4 full) with 1/2 way with logs and sticks, then 1/4 way with what ever manure infested bedding i have on hand ( ive done horse, pig, and chicken and no not composted or aged) then the top 1/4 is just the native soil from beneath the bed.

I have some 2 years old now and I will not change a thing when I make more.

Its most likely an Outdoor Wood Boiler that heats water that is then pumped into the house for heat. While there are newer gasification models that don't smoke as much, the vast majority of boilers are of the water jacket design which is notorious for being smoke dragons. So no there probably isn't anything wrong with your neighbors boiler just thats the nature of an inefficient beast.

Truthfully i don't know much about beans but I do know there are different varieties of Fava beans and I have seen some as big as a quarter.

Another option for a cheap fan is a radiator cooling fan out of an old vehicle, they are easily removed from any non working vehicle and cheap from the scrap yard, just this weekend I tested how long one can run off of a normal deep cycle battery and found out it ran for 10 hours for me before it started to noticeably drain the battery.

Look into forced air wood furnaces too, they can be placed outside and ducted to the trailer either through a window or existing ducting. I've done quite a bit of research into this type of heating and have seen everything from indoor wood furnaces placed outside, wood stoves in a brick shelter with a fan ducted indoors.

I'm currently building one that is basically a tank inside a tank and the hot air will be ducted through a window.