I have been a rather busy bee recently, however I have had time to start on one of my mini frugal projects.
My plan is to have a multi-fuel burner and therefore there will be a requirement for fuel to feed said burner. A couple of Christmas' ago I was asked what I would like for a present, I asked for a briquette maker, which was duly provided. Anyway, we tried it out then and failed miserably at making fire briquettes as we didn't have the space to dry them properly.
So after a little research about how best to dry them and now having a suitable amount of space to make these fire briquettes and dry them en-mass. I've started the process again.
I've filled a red tub with shredded paper, which is a mix of newspaper, old bills, junk mail, envelops, old road maps and then poured some water out of the water butt over the top.
I've then left it for 4 days to soak and come back to soggy paper mess which I've loaded into my briquette maker and squeezed the water out (as much as possible back into the red tub to be used again.
The resulting briquettes are turned out onto the greenhouse worktops where they will be left to dry, as they become most stable I will begin to stack them and leave them to dry until winter, when hopefully
I will have my multi-fuel burner and lots of lovely briquettes to burn and keep us warm. Each briquette is supposed to take about 2 hours to burn through if dried properly.
Bring on the junk mail I now have a use for you!
I have a multi-fuel burner, a Hunter Hawk 4. I burn wood and coke mainly, it provides sufficient heat to keep the living room cosy on all but the coldest of days when the central heating gets switched on.
ReplyDeleteWhilst the Hunter stoves are okay I would suggest you look at Franco Belge stoves - Better at burning, easier to keep clean, very controllable - and they look pretty too!
I'm going to get one that is a bit larger than the existing Hunter before long as it isn't really big enough to heat the living room properly. I'll put the Hunter into our smaller front room.
I found that briquettes generate a lot of ash and burn fairly quickly - but if it's fuel for free, what the hell!
An added benefit of such stoves is that they'll help your damp problem. Oh, and the programmes are MUCH better than on the telly!
Cheers,
JJ