Horse dung, which by rights ought to be being dug into my garden right now, is burning away merrily in the multifuel burner.
One note to the wise: you need it on the coal setting. It needs air coming up from under a grate to deal with all the chaff and sawdust in it and the dung bits themselves burn rather like coal. it's lighter and it doesn't burn as long, but it is a very good fuel.
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edited to save further confusion - talking about dung burning not brands of fireplace.
I Have a Soil sterilizer i built to roast Manure and compost and soil to kill the weed seeds and pathogens with a fire built under the barrel. I Posted to another website showing this and explaining it and recieved an reply from a researcher at Cornel University warning me not to be around the smoke and fumes when the animal manure is burning because of extreme Toxins that are supposedly released when the manure heats up. I burn Cow patties and Peat Bricks I cut from a Bog close to my house also to supplement my Firewood pile. I Don't know if it's toxic or not, the smoke is outside and I'm inside with the Good heat. Thats what counts to me. lol.
Heres my multifuel furnace: http://www.survivalistboards.com/picture.php?albumid=2584&pictureid=25764
Homesteaders to the prairies burned buffalo chips as a matter of routine, there was little else available. I think cow pies were used in some places where there was no wood after the buffalo were gone.
Burning dung? And here I thought this was going to be a discussion of the after effect of eating hot peppers! :
I don't know that I'd want to waste such a critical garden resource. I'd rather burn wood, peat, even surplus corn if I was growing more than I could use. It just seems that no matter how many animals a person has, they still don't generate enough waste to cover the fertilization needs, even when combined with composting. Of course we have pretty poor soil here, so that might be biasing my opinion a bit.
I agree with you. But if the dung came off someone else's land and you were in a wood poor environment like Alexandra, you might be willing to give it a shot.
If you live in a farm and don't it for fertilization, why not? Note that this will set you apart from the crowd. If you go to NYC, I would advise not to tell anyone there, you have a "dung-heater", or people would look at you strangely.
My neighbors on either side have horses and They scrape their yard all the time . I get loads of manure so I can revitleize the soil .
Thanks for the reminder as a direct fuel.
I was also going to do some expirimenting with making methane gas , hopefuly to run the water heater and or stove.
To be honest I'm okay for wood - ish. My house is not well insulated but I can get cheap firewood from the orchard. The down side is having to cut and stack it by myself, and my shoulder joints really start to hurt. Last time I did it I couldn't use either arm for the rest of the weekend. By which I mean I couldn't lift a thing and couldn't cook dinner.
so I don't really want to do that any more. The other wood I bought cost something evil like $400 for 5 m3, which I consider appalling. It was wet, cut up huge and I have had to split a lot to get it in the firebox.
No, the dung idea simply came about because I am researching yurt living, and was hunting down yurt stoves. They have authentic mongolian stoves on Alibaba but of course with minimum numbers - and the prices ended up far too high.
but the burners advertised on alibaba were great for burning 'corn husk, animal dung, waste wood offcuts, straw, grass and coal' - and I remembered the horse pooh I haven't dug in, so I went and had a go.
As I say, structurally like coal, less heat than wood. Good enough if that's all you've got.
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