This is groundbreaking for me. I was raised in family business with chickens and geese, we have a greenhouse a 4x of this on video and more veggies growing open air. I work as heating system instalator / plumber. Your channel is what I needed
Ad some mushroom mycelium to those chips. Use a lignin disassembler like oyster mushroom or you can obtain actinomyces which is also called "fire fang" because as they are taking apart the cellulose and lignins they produce an enormous amounts of heat. This fungi Is the one that causes wet mops or compost piles to smolder and burst into flames. Also when the fungi is done with the chips an other cellulosic waste it is readily available for nutritive addition ot the soil . When it starts out wood chips and sawdust can be considered toxic waste. These fungi are your friends and they will be heating your place to the point where you will be opening the windows in th middle of winter. Remember, actinomyces and lignin disassembling mushrooms such as oyster, shiitake, Ps.cyanescens,ps.azurescens. These last two have interesting chemical components however they are super great for disassembling wood chips....
Interesting but the most important part of the video is missing. What is the room temp, the exhaust tube temp, and outside temp? What is evening temps in the greenhouse when its dark and before sun comes up? Whats the water temp? Maybe youve covered this in a video that i cannot find. Also, your process serms very labor intensive. I suppose if you had a tractor on your farm and can disassemble the pile every year, sure. But most of us dont have that.
This was the building video and a neighbors tractor. We have tons of data logging videos on here also. Labor intensive for free heat all winter when it would cost a small fortune to use gas conventionally.
have you considered putting in tee posts and attaching your pex to it to keep it separated? I found if you dump about one bucket of chips on your input and the output lines it insulates pretty well. I like redundancy when it comes to heating a diesel parking heater makes a great back up for cold snaps. They run for less than a gallon a day
Next year we are going to rework the set up completely and start with a 55gallon drum of water and begin wrapping on that, great idea with the pex. I plan to wrap the transfer lines then bury with chips should be good enough. Great ideas and thanks for watching !
the problem I'm having using the barrel in middle of the pile is it stays cold to long after running the pump it seems to kill the pile near the barrel. The pump is going at about 30-40 gallons per hour. Next year I'm going to try multiple barrels in parallel to try to reduce the cold spot.
@@farmer-kitt will you be wrapping the pex, copper, and drain tube around each barrel or around all of them as a group? Will all the barrels be filled with water? I'm curious about this system. @earthdwellers please feel free to chime in.
Hiya, Very good information as always. Didn’t think myself to water the wood-chip, I guess that’s one reason why my one small pile (didn’t help that it was small - about a tonne) didn’t break down as I had hoped. So I’m beginning a project to hear our home using a similar system (if not the same). I’m just wondering, do I need any particular type of plastic pipe that coils inside the heap? I’m worried that 140°F may interfere with the pipe leading to possible degradation of the pipe in the heap? My goal is to blow cold air with the hopeful idea that it’ll heat up the air in the pipes and then go back into the house. Not sure if your blue pipes are for water, or are they for air? So yeah, are your pipes inside the pile any particular compound or just regular ones? And did they maintain their structure from the previous year? I think your channel is great, once I can sort out the house problem (it’s a very cold house and out heating bills are stupidly high), I definitely want to go into poly tunnels. We are farmers anyway but often are at the mercy of the unpredictable weather!
He did a lot of experimenting also! Fresh chips have plenty of nitrogen to get going for a long time it all depends on size. We’ve experimented with a huge nitrogen dump last year on our pile and it worked great for many months. I’m always seeing what we can do and can’t to. Great question!
@@Earthdwellershomestead I should have asked where are you? We’re 58 north snow for 3/4 months -20f ish, does your pile stay hot and not freeze (don’t know how cold it gets there).
@BalticHomesteaders we’re in northern Illinois, your up there, we see pretty cold temps pretty close to what your describing. Can be colder or warmer. I just say we’re zone 5/a4/b cause we’re right on the line in our area
What books did you read fof your Jean Zpierre heating system? What do you do with the spent wood chips that are fully composted? What's the soil quality of thd decomposed wood chips like?
It changes the flow and transfer a bit overall, I did this in the manner I did this year to truly say I spent less than 100$ to achieve all these systems this year. 20$ on fittings and 50$ to have the guy move the pile 70ft with his tractor. Thanks for watching! Next year it will be out together and transferred differently yet.
Looking forward to seeing how the pex goes against constant heat. Was looking at doing a similar thing with pex but had read that the water starts giving off a plasticy smell after some time.
I didn’t notice anything from our pex transferring inside the greenhouse but I used copper originally to avoid having breakdown of plastic piping but it’s tougher that thought. I’m also interested to see if anything is different from heating through copper to heating through pex inside the pile. Good observations!
Not yet this year, I wants to try something different. I had about 4-5 tons of a few month old woodchips and the same tonnage of new stuff that was all smaller twigs and branches/leaves all green. I just wanted to see since it’s 9 tons of it’ll just go on its own with a good soaking of water and no insulation. Always experimenting, observing, and learning. We may do a nitrogen dump before a heavy rain/snow. The. Throw a poly over it to magnify the solar heating even on a cloudy day- helping to reactivate it!
The woodchips were so fresh I didn’t wanna do a nitrogen dump at the start up, just to avoid over heating or over cooking to early. Great ideas though as if these chips were aged at all I would have soaked them in nitrogen.
Im wondering how many yards of wood chips you used? In my location they sell by the yard, not by the tonne so was just curious on a ballpark guess for # of yards.
There are roughly 4 yards in a ton of woodchips, if fresh woodchips are not a available you could try a huge grass and straw bale organic matter pile for some heat but it has to be massive also to last the winter.. I realize how lucky I am not to have to use an app or anything to get chips. I have the guys phone number and he’s pretty darn cool. I bet over the last four to five years he’s brought 20-30 tons lol for free!
How long is the pex tubing and air tubing wrapped around the pole? Maybe I missed that information. Love the idea of this system and hope to use it next year with all my chicken manure/wood chips.
@@Earthdwellershomestead okay thank you so much. I actually had a hydrant installed after watching your previous videos on this method so I can keep the pile easily watered. Now I'm wondering if I should wait and see how you use the barrels instead of the pole. Love the experiments and data you share.
@shedigsdirtblog5879 awesome to hear! Yes we plan on using a metal drum next year and digging out the area more and lowering the pile, just a bigger better version every year, leaning a ton along the way lol
About a half an hour I give the guy 50$ every winter to do this. It covers his fuel costs and some for him, as everything else has been paid for long ago we’ve got next to nothing invested this year lol. Great question!
@@Earthdwellershomestead Wow, thats MUCH quicker than I expected! So, thats about a ton every 3 minutes. Must be a badass tracktor:D Doesnt look that big in the video. Very much looking forward to the input/output data coming out of your project. I believe this 'compost tech' has huge potential. Any DIY experiments are valuable investments.
We dumped it on top and made a slurry with water out of all our nitrogen materials in buckets and inoculated the entire thing making sure to soak it all throughly. This was a year or two ago we filmed this and I didn’t show every step to get it hot. This years videos will have more in depth breakdowns of each thing we do. Thanks for the question!
Not a pile this size. It doesn’t need to be turned as it will burn for many months without any interruptions. Great question I’m sure others are wondering
I go through those amazon expanding hoses like nothing, they last a season or 2 always get a hole or leak at the ends by year 3. I buy new and return old one in its place for refund🤷
If you look back last spring we began distributing materials from our compost all over the property and by the time fall arrives we’ve cleared it out wether by hand buckets or wheelbarrow, I need a skid or something for the homestead. The tractor who helped build the pile was a friend I pay 50$ to dump 30-35 scoops and the chips are free from tree services in the area. I’ll develop a good flow to the system this spring as all the material we used for heat will be reused for nutrition and hummus on our land. You certainly could use a heat exchanger system for the house, we’ve got more experiments yet to do with all of this information lol thanks for checking this out and great questions!
This is groundbreaking for me. I was raised in family business with chickens and geese, we have a greenhouse a 4x of this on video and more veggies growing open air. I work as heating system instalator / plumber. Your channel is what I needed
Hey! Thanks for checking out the channel! Glad you’re finding this content useful!
Thank you for the new lessons ! Amazing that you came up with this and the videos will be passing in the link to others of same mind
Thank you for checking this out!
Very impressive! I learned a lot.
Thank you
Yes, love sharing the ideas!
Nice video
Thank you
Ad some mushroom mycelium to those chips. Use a lignin disassembler like oyster mushroom or you can obtain actinomyces which is also called "fire fang" because as they are taking apart the cellulose and lignins they produce an enormous amounts of heat. This fungi Is the one that causes wet mops or compost piles to smolder and burst into flames. Also when the fungi is done with the chips an other cellulosic waste it is readily available for nutritive addition ot the soil . When it starts out wood chips and sawdust can be considered toxic waste. These fungi are your friends and they will be heating your place to the point where you will be opening the windows in th middle of winter. Remember, actinomyces and lignin disassembling mushrooms such as oyster, shiitake, Ps.cyanescens,ps.azurescens. These last two have interesting chemical components however they are super great for disassembling wood chips....
That’s a great idea as we have grown oysters before. I may look into a small pile for just trying that with thanks!
Thank you for the videos, my pile is doing well !!! Small greenhouse this year, will expand next year.
Interesting but the most important part of the video is missing. What is the room temp, the exhaust tube temp, and outside temp? What is evening temps in the greenhouse when its dark and before sun comes up? Whats the water temp? Maybe youve covered this in a video that i cannot find. Also, your process serms very labor intensive. I suppose if you had a tractor on your farm and can disassemble the pile every year, sure. But most of us dont have that.
This was the building video and a neighbors tractor. We have tons of data logging videos on here also. Labor intensive for free heat all winter when it would cost a small fortune to use gas conventionally.
@@Earthdwellershomestead thx
The pile decomposes
@kevinvezie3897 well that certainly answers all my questions
Awesome video
Thanks!
Electroculture/DIY/gardening/growing/?/ & DIY charcoal/activated charcoal/water filters/health benefits/?/ - duck duck go!
Nice!
have you considered putting in tee posts and attaching your pex to it to keep it separated? I found if you dump about one bucket of chips on your input and the output lines it insulates pretty well. I like redundancy when it comes to heating a diesel parking heater makes a great back up for cold snaps. They run for less than a gallon a day
Next year we are going to rework the set up completely and start with a 55gallon drum of water and begin wrapping on that, great idea with the pex. I plan to wrap the transfer lines then bury with chips should be good enough. Great ideas and thanks for watching !
the problem I'm having using the barrel in middle of the pile is it stays cold to long after running the pump it seems to kill the pile near the barrel. The pump is going at about 30-40 gallons per hour. Next year I'm going to try multiple barrels in parallel to try to reduce the cold spot.
@@farmer-kitt will you be wrapping the pex, copper, and drain tube around each barrel or around all of them as a group? Will all the barrels be filled with water? I'm curious about this system. @earthdwellers please feel free to chime in.
@@shedigsdirtblog5879 I will use the barrels instead of tubing. Each barrel has about the same surface area as about 75 ft of 1 inch tubing.
Biogas digesters definitely will help your heating cause. I love the biogas. Nice channel you have.
Thank you!! Looking forward to using the methane system this spring as we couldn’t hold 90-100 degrees inside the greenhouse in winter
@@Earthdwellershomestead definitely tough to keep the digesters warm here in the northeast during winter months.
@@Earthdwellershomestead Try building a IBC tote digester they make nice amounts of biogas throughout the summer.
Hiya,
Very good information as always. Didn’t think myself to water the wood-chip, I guess that’s one reason why my one small pile (didn’t help that it was small - about a tonne) didn’t break down as I had hoped.
So I’m beginning a project to hear our home using a similar system (if not the same). I’m just wondering, do I need any particular type of plastic pipe that coils inside the heap? I’m worried that 140°F may interfere with the pipe leading to possible degradation of the pipe in the heap?
My goal is to blow cold air with the hopeful idea that it’ll heat up the air in the pipes and then go back into the house. Not sure if your blue pipes are for water, or are they for air?
So yeah, are your pipes inside the pile any particular compound or just regular ones? And did they maintain their structure from the previous year?
I think your channel is great, once I can sort out the house problem (it’s a very cold house and out heating bills are stupidly high), I definitely want to go into poly tunnels. We are farmers anyway but often are at the mercy of the unpredictable weather!
Didn't Jean Pain put a load of manure in as well for nitrogen? I really fancy having a go at this as we have a woodchipper and a manure source.
He did a lot of experimenting also! Fresh chips have plenty of nitrogen to get going for a long time it all depends on size. We’ve experimented with a huge nitrogen dump last year on our pile and it worked great for many months. I’m always seeing what we can do and can’t to. Great question!
@@Earthdwellershomestead I should have asked where are you? We’re 58 north snow for 3/4 months -20f ish, does your pile stay hot and not freeze (don’t know how cold it gets there).
@BalticHomesteaders we’re in northern Illinois, your up there, we see pretty cold temps pretty close to what your describing. Can be colder or warmer. I just say we’re zone 5/a4/b cause we’re right on the line in our area
What books did you read fof your Jean Zpierre heating system? What do you do with the spent wood chips that are fully composted? What's the soil quality of thd decomposed wood chips like?
Thanks for the video and info. Really curious as to the heat transfer of the PEX vs. Copper. Especially with different diameter tubing.
It changes the flow and transfer a bit overall, I did this in the manner I did this year to truly say I spent less than 100$ to achieve all these systems this year. 20$ on fittings and 50$ to have the guy move the pile 70ft with his tractor. Thanks for watching! Next year it will be out together and transferred differently yet.
@@Earthdwellershomestead Groovy. I am building a similar system to heat my pineapple greenhouse.
How big did your ring end up being.
Looking forward to seeing how the pex goes against constant heat. Was looking at doing a similar thing with pex but had read that the water starts giving off a plasticy smell after some time.
I didn’t notice anything from our pex transferring inside the greenhouse but I used copper originally to avoid having breakdown of plastic piping but it’s tougher that thought. I’m also interested to see if anything is different from heating through copper to heating through pex inside the pile. Good observations!
Pure wood chips, no manure?
Not yet this year, I wants to try something different. I had about 4-5 tons of a few month old woodchips and the same tonnage of new stuff that was all smaller twigs and branches/leaves all green. I just wanted to see since it’s 9 tons of it’ll just go on its own with a good soaking of water and no insulation. Always experimenting, observing, and learning. We may do a nitrogen dump before a heavy rain/snow. The. Throw a poly over it to magnify the solar heating even on a cloudy day- helping to reactivate it!
Really awesome. Inspired to try something similar. Thanks for documenting and sharing your work.
You should have layered some manure or coffee grounds in there Bro. New Subscriber here.
The woodchips were so fresh I didn’t wanna do a nitrogen dump at the start up, just to avoid over heating or over cooking to early. Great ideas though as if these chips were aged at all I would have soaked them in nitrogen.
Im wondering how many yards of wood chips you used? In my location they sell by the yard, not by the tonne so was just curious on a ballpark guess for # of yards.
There are roughly 4 yards in a ton of woodchips, if fresh woodchips are not a available you could try a huge grass and straw bale organic matter pile for some heat but it has to be massive also to last the winter.. I realize how lucky I am not to have to use an app or anything to get chips. I have the guys phone number and he’s pretty darn cool. I bet over the last four to five years he’s brought 20-30 tons lol for free!
Thanks for the info, its fun watching it all come together!
@@Earthdwellershomestead
How long is the pex tubing and air tubing wrapped around the pole? Maybe I missed that information. Love the idea of this system and hope to use it next year with all my chicken manure/wood chips.
100’ pex water - 100’ copper wrapped on the pole for water also - 90’ -100’ drain tile. Great question
@@Earthdwellershomestead okay thank you so much. I actually had a hydrant installed after watching your previous videos on this method so I can keep the pile easily watered. Now I'm wondering if I should wait and see how you use the barrels instead of the pole. Love the experiments and data you share.
@shedigsdirtblog5879 awesome to hear! Yes we plan on using a metal drum next year and digging out the area more and lowering the pile, just a bigger better version every year, leaning a ton along the way lol
How long did it take for the tractor to move 9 t?
About a half an hour I give the guy 50$ every winter to do this. It covers his fuel costs and some for him, as everything else has been paid for long ago we’ve got next to nothing invested this year lol. Great question!
@@Earthdwellershomestead Wow, thats MUCH quicker than I expected! So, thats about a ton every 3 minutes. Must be a badass tracktor:D Doesnt look that big in the video.
Very much looking forward to the input/output data coming out of your project. I believe this 'compost tech' has huge potential. Any DIY experiments are valuable investments.
Wheres the manure to activate it?
We dumped it on top and made a slurry with water out of all our nitrogen materials in buckets and inoculated the entire thing making sure to soak it all throughly. This was a year or two ago we filmed this and I didn’t show every step to get it hot. This years videos will have more in depth breakdowns of each thing we do. Thanks for the question!
Do you add water throughout the winter and more wood chips? do the chips break down over the winter where you have to add more?
Possibly water or nitrogen. In the past due to smaller piles, this one should go all winter with no help. Great question!
Are you turning the pipe at any point, if so how often.
Not a pile this size. It doesn’t need to be turned as it will burn for many months without any interruptions. Great question I’m sure others are wondering
I go through those amazon expanding hoses like nothing, they last a season or 2 always get a hole or leak at the ends by year 3. I buy new and return old one in its place for refund🤷
Some one invent and indestructible one please… we got this at a garage sale lol
How difficult is it to breakdown and start over? Also, could one make a radiator system and run it inside the house for heat?
If you look back last spring we began distributing materials from our compost all over the property and by the time fall arrives we’ve cleared it out wether by hand buckets or wheelbarrow, I need a skid or something for the homestead. The tractor who helped build the pile was a friend I pay 50$ to dump 30-35 scoops and the chips are free from tree services in the area. I’ll develop a good flow to the system this spring as all the material we used for heat will be reused for nutrition and hummus on our land. You certainly could use a heat exchanger system for the house, we’ve got more experiments yet to do with all of this information lol thanks for checking this out and great questions!
10-4 good stuff! @@Earthdwellershomestead
Pile***