[Greenbuilding] For Sacie's House

[Frank Tettemer]

Thanks, Sacie, for that link. I went to all their pages.
A wood gasifier that burns the wood gas, makes hot water, and runs a 
generator.

These folks have got it down.

I have a friend who built a wood gasifier in the early seventies. It 
took him years to perfect it. Actually, it never really became 
'perfected'. The biggest problem to solve was "scrubbing" the wood gas, 
of all the heavy metals and other organic compounds, to eliminate the 
wear-and-tear on the motor that it fueled.  And he built it to use solid 
wood as a fuel source, not chips or pellets.

With the wood gas that he produced, he would run a motor for cycles of 
four to eight hours of wood gas production. He ran a Volvo engine, taken 
from an early seventies car, which circulated the engine coolant through 
a cast iron radiator installed in the kitchen. It circulated enough heat 
to save on household firewood for all but the mid Winter months, here in 
the Ottawa Valley, Ontario.  It also ran a six kilowatt generator, which 
directly powered the house in the evenings, and charging up the house 
battery bank while it ran. It would sometimes create a fire that 
produced wood gas for the evening and the night.
Mornings, they would turn it off, and run the household on battery 
power, namely 12 VDC, since this was before the times of available 
inverters or solar panels.

He had to have a set of DC appliances and lights, to use during the time 
that the wood gasifier & Volvo was not running, as well as a set of AC 
appliances and lights for when the Volvo was running.
Very complex system, but powered by a simple fuel source: wood.
Just a small bit of 2 cycle gasoline, a chain saw and a strong back 
needed to harvest the fuel.
No oil wars needed to sustain it, and no nukes either.

Frank

-- 
Frank Tettemer
Living Sol ~ Building and Design
www.livingsol.com
613 756 3884