| Energy is on every ones mind in some way. We have never thought much about energy before but we are forced to now. Most of us have switched to a wood stove, where possible, driven mostly by the high cost of fuels. A surprising phenomenon is the outdoor woodstove. I say that because, as with my family, we switched to a woodstove because of the high cost of fuel but also because of the uncertain nature of the power grid. The surprising part of the outdoor stove is that it requires electricity to get the heat from your woodstove into the house. This drops or cancels one of the main reasons we switched to a woodstove, having heat when the power goes out. The ones I have talked to say matter-of-factly, “I had to buy a power generator” Ouch! The real draw for them, then, must be to get the mess out of the house.
Our goal is still to get a better grip or control of the amount of our hard earned resources going to the energy needed in our modern home. There has to be a better way! There is a better way and it is connected to our national history. Think back to high school and remember back about one hundred years. In the thousands of years of human history, it’s been only in the last one hundred years that we have become dependent on big corporations to provide our necessities. Back then, you provided for yourself what was needed. I am still able to talk to someone who can remember farming with no electricity. Neighbor helped neighbor. They grew most everything they needed. They do not farm now. Most of us now don’t know our neighbor. That era is long gone but keep that thought in mind as we show you a better way now. In our modern lifestyle now, we have many labor saving devices. Appliances to help in the kitchen, our workshop, lawn care, cleaning and many more and they all require electricity or energy source of some sort. We were convinced the best way to provide the electricity needed was to plug in to the power grid they (big corporate America) were developing. We bought it. We believed everything “they” told us. Most of us now were not involved in this decision but here it is now and we feel powerless to change it. Now, let us add to our list of energy needs our communication and information dependencies. Most would think that now we are uncontrollably hooked and unable to do anything about it. There is a better way and some are doing it right now. The answer is still our woodstove. The modern woodstove is a very efficient heat producer. The energy we get from the woodstove is directly converted to useable energy. There is no need to refine the fuel or transport it great distances in ships or trucks. Our fuel is available easily and locally. Therein lies the problem corporate America has with our woodstove. Our woodstove is out of corporate Americas reach as far as pricing or taxing the fuel. In populated areas, our woodstove does come under burn bans but it is nonpolluting because it does not reach the very high temperatures required to make the nasty pollutants that internal combustion engines and industry produce. Years ago, the wood stove was all we had to produce energy. Steam was used as the main source of power to move our machinery and drive industry. There were problems with steam and most of them can be blamed on weak materials and antique designs. Go to your local library and look up steam engines. Articles are only on the very old designs of steam engines and usually one cylinder. The steam locomotive is the main example used in most books and they were heavy, cumbersome and prone to explode when older. Very little attention is given to the modern day advances of the steam engine. To most people the steam engine is stuck in the past as an antique. The steam engine is a modern marvel that needs to get some deserved attention. At the beginning of World War II, a multiple cylinder rotary steam engine was used in torpedoes and then later replaced with a turbine engine. There is one in a submarine museum in the Bremerton area of Washington State. Another trip to the library will still not turn up any information on this efficient steam engine nor will a search on the Internet. There are many advances to modern day steam engines that are not easily available through a casual search. Producer Gas Our woodstove should be able to provide most all of the power we need in our homes. This is not new information. In World War II, wood burning stoves were used to power some vehicles. A wood burner was mounted on the back of the vehicle and adjusted to make producer gas, unburnt fumes or smoke, and fed to the carburetor of a gas engine. Producer gas is a dirty fuel and the engine had to be torn down and rebuilt more often, but it worked. One was able to power their vehicle on locally available wood fuel. Once the war was over, this information was abandoned for a more convenient fuel. Fuel was always cheap. There never was a need for us to be concerned or even to conserve. Times certainly have changed! Stirling Our research team has designed the only multi-cylinder Stirling engine I know of. It was designed to fit on top of the chimney of outdoor wood stoves as a source of electrical energy to power the heat moving mechanism of the woodstove. It was never built as the requesting people changed their minds. The operation is quite simple as it sits on top of the chimney outside so it takes advantage of the extreme temperature change between chimney and winter weather. The cylinders are the only part that is inside the chimney. The operation is very simple as there are very few moving parts. Three cylinders make it self-starting and it should run smooth and powerful. The plans may be purchased on our woodstove page. Check it out! For only $9.95 Steam of Yester-Year Most people believe steam is dangerous. The lack of education is what is dangerous. By learning what made steam boilers of the olden days explode, we can avoid the dangers. Remember reading about the steam locomotives? The locomotive needed to be heavy for traction to pull all the train cars. Most train locomotives had one cylinder on each side, so they had to be big, which, among other things, made them very inefficient. Being inefficient, they needed to heat a lot of water to make steam. Steam has a unique property of changing from liquid to vapor with enough heat. The ratio is 1 to 2000; one cubic foot volume of water would equal 2000 cubic feet volume of steam. When the water was under pressure in the boiler, it remained liquid. When something would go wrong, the pressure is released and every cubic foot of heated water is turned into 2000 cubic feet of steam. The explosion from that is strong enough to level buildings. The demand of several steam engines used in industry would necessitate that many boilers were connected together. If one of the boilers lost pressure and blew up, each one would blow one at a time. There was no stopping them because all the pressure was lost. That was then. Go Back to see what we have done now! |
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