Permie in NW Missouri here, now have 10-55 gallon drums at home along with 10-30/35 gallon drums. Looking to make a retort or multiples. How well does this style work?
For the smaller drums, check Craigslist. The ones I got had chicken fat in them from a plant… more expensive than the 55s. Were $5ea for 55s, and I think $10ea for the smaller ones, both prices were for buying 10+ at once. Glad to have 31 acres to spread out in now…lol
So far so good. It's kinda a pain to get everything cut up and loaded. Once the fire is going it burns for about 2hrs.
I haven't had many pieces that need to be thrown in for a 2nd burn.
I've also been using it to bbq with and it works great. I'm never buying charcoal again.
Been wondering about it, as several Amish lumber mills in the area and I can buy bundles of about 1/3 cord for $5/$10 for soft/hard wood trimmings. Burned them in the rocket mass heater in our new house, and I think we spent $15 on wood this past winter. Wasn’t well seasoned though
Not to cut in, but I’ll cut in. Do the Amish sawmills up there have dimensional lumber at a good price? Used to be, you could get uncertified lumber really cheap.
Hey, no problems! Not sure as I mainly wanted it for our RMH… never thought about buying dimensional, since we’re fairly broke after just building a house. 😱😂
We got a lot of the lumber for our house, forms, etc from an Amish lumber mill in Southern MO, last year. I think we figured even with the labor for cutting and planing some of it we still saved about $5,000 on the wood for the house, compared to buying at the big box stores.
