HG3a

[Bobwieser]

Does any one have experience with these? It composes grass or other organic material to make hot water. It can put out up to 90,000 BTU per hour.

[matt walker]

I searched the term, but didn't come up with anything relevant. Care to share a link? I think you are referring to compost powered hot water? Cool systems, although I'm not diligent enough to get one going personally. I can see it being really useful in some applications.

[pa_friendly_guy]

I had never heard of the term but like you looked it up on line. It is indeed a compost based unit and you replace the compost fairly regularly to keep the heat levels up in your home. The unit I saw was about 5 feet around and 2 feet wide, it could produce 90,000 btu per hour. The web site claimed that an average house in a northern climate [ Think Chicago ] looses about 45,00 btu per hour, so you were adding 45,000 btu to your house every hour. It was a very lengthy article and frankly I did not read the whole thing , I am a functional illiterate after all, The advantage they were claiming was no fire, no chimney, no heat loss out the chimney, no fossil fuel. I did not read what they did with the gas that is produced by the compost , but it seemed that the system worked. Here is a link.


http://mb-soft.com/public3/globalzl.html


Maybe someone who can read better than I can will take the time to read the whole article and tell me about it.

[Bobwieser]

Sorry for no link but you got it. I only have cell phone internet so I have to choose between difficult text entry and spotty connection. You can use the discharged co2 for plants in a green house. It looks interesting to me.

[pa_friendly_guy]

Using compost for heat is not a new idea, and it does work. Here is a video about heating hot water for a shower with compost. They got about 500 showers from one mulch pile that took them about an hour to construct. This was an out door shower used by people taking a permaculture class as well as summer interns at their farm.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Jm-c9B2_ew

[Bobwieser]

I saw a references to Build it solar somewhere on this site. The sister site is Simplysolar run by Scott in Md. Both are a great place for DIY solar energy. I made a 4x8 solar air heater from info I got from them. It was easy to build and has worked great. Don't used fiberglass screen use alluminum because the fiberglass gives off an oder when hot. The down and spout is easier than using cans and sepperates the heated air from the collector air. I hope I'm awake not posting this in the wwrong place

[Bobwieser]

I'm sure awake. It's frustrating using this phone for entries. I hope you understand what I'm trying to convay.

[mannytheseacow]

Here's a story about compost heating that I just came across:

This looks promising for people with livestock or anyone who can collect a lot of compost on a regular basis.