[Stoves] Revisitng the pine needle issue

[Phil Hughes]

I have received some interesting suggestions from a few people and intend
to try two of them. But, I wanted to bring the topic back to the list in a
different way. The "cultural side" of finding the right solution.

I have lived in Central America for over 10 years, the last few in rural
Nicaragua. People here tend to be poor subsistence farmers. While the
electric grid is expanding, many are off grid. (I am off-grid myself but
that is by choice. It wasn't initially but once I was set up off-grid I saw
no reason for a change.)

My observation is that the hardest part of "a better way" is how to get it
accepted. I was originally thinking that making briquettes that could be
burned in current cook stoves instead of tree branches was the best
approach. That is, easiest to get adopted. Some discussions and thinking
have, however, made me re-consider.

One obvious consideration is that current stoves suck. They go from an open
fire to a box you shove wood into but have no draft control and the
"burners" are just holes in the box where you put pots. Inefficiency and
indoor pollution are the two big problems.

One suggestion which makes a lot of sense is rather than briquettes, make
TLUD stoves. It has a lot of appeal as the "work" becomes pretty much
one-time rather than ongoing briquette manufacturing. But, it requires
people to change how they cook. To me, getting 100 or 1000 people to cook
with a TLUD stove is a bigger win than having a few people making
briquettes to sell for people to use in their existing but primitive stove.
Assuming the TLUD works as described, I think it may also be an easier
sell. Why? Because once you get a few converts, their neighbors will see
the results: less fuel and less smoke.

Those are my observations. I may be wrong so I am looking for input from
anyone else who has real "field experience". Thanks.

-- 
Phil Hughes
nicafyl at gmail.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.bioenergylists.org/pipermail/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org/attachments/20120807/3e8cf4ba/attachment.html>