As I mentioned before, this is a solar kiln in a great location, I'm just trying to help it along on a part time basis, plus all my wood is FREE, so any cost is still far better then buying a cord of wood. SAWDOG, I like your thinking and have had those same issues cross my mind, but how would I make your system work for me? I was thinkin, using my torpedo heater, I would offset the heater about 10 ft away via a 10 ft x 8 inch aluminum pipe, then hopefully once it hits the stack, it will disperse into the bottom center and flow down the stack via a 18x18 inch tunnel and hopefully disperse enough by the time the heat hits the outside poly wrap. This is another reason why I going to go with the smallest torpedo available, ohhh, and I'm also have two 8 inch duct fans inside pushing in different directions to circulate the air. Still very interested in your heater.
If you still thinks its financially viable, I'd just place the heater inside your domed structure and let ER rip. But, I can't see a 20lb bottle lasting longer than a 3-4 hours even on low. I had another thought about this also...There are members here with MUCH more experience with solar kilns than I have, but here's what I have been under the assumption of... I'd be concerned about saturating the inside of your kiln with moisture. Friend of mine runs a lumber mill and firewood service. This year he built a kiln to dry firewood. Its a wood fired stove that pushes hot air into an insulated sea container. A timer is set every 2 hours to remove the moisture from inside the container via exhaust fans. At some point and with wet wood, the air inside your enclosure will be saturated with moisture. Until that saturation is removed, I'm not sure how much drying will take place. When he puts in a load of wet wood inside his kiln and it gets up to temp, water literally runs out of the doors. When the exhaust fan kicks on, the water vapor being expelled out of the exhaust fans is something to see. Tremendous amounts of water vapor being froze almost in mid air. Lastly, at 160 degrees inside his kiln, it takes about 4 days to dry wood sufficiently. That's hot and its a long time to keep a propane heater running. Long story short, I'd do some more research first - look at heater burn times, the cost to run your heater per hour, estimate how many hours it will take to dry the wood, if you have to expel moisture, etc, etc.
Points well taken and thanks, at least we are on the same page, and our minds are thinking alike,......... (now that's scary) I guess the main thing I want to stress here is, this is a kiln that I will run on a part time basis ( Saturdays & Sundays, 8 hrs a day) in hopes of just helping out the solar part of the kiln. I believe if this gets up and running right, it just has to cut my drying time considerably. Keep the comments comes, we'll make this work.
It sounds like a great experiment to make something useful faster Did I read somewhere you could borrow a torpedo heater from work? Why not try that first and see how it turns out?
Yup you did and that's what I'm gonna do first, just afraid the one at work may be too big, but we'll see.
Yes there is ash, maple and pine in this area, almost all firewood sellers area here just mix up their storage pile, it's all good wood, with some places better then others, but basically you get what you get. Now I get all my wood delivered either cut to length or in 10 ft pieces for FREE, so I can't be pick and choosy Your 100 % right, wood is the way to go, but not sure how to go about doing that? But again, I get 100 my wood for FREE, and when I'm finished with my wood stack I should have about 11 to 12 cords ....... 10ft x 30ft x 5ft high. If I was to purchase that at the cheapest price for this area, it would cost me $2,400 big ones, ...... @ $200 per cord. Even if it costs me lets say a big number here of $400 dollars to help dry my wood, I've still saved myself 2 grand $$. Now 11 to 12 cords should last me three years, two at least, and if I stay on top of things, I may never have to do this again, who knows, we'll see. We got some yucky weather up here in Connecticut the past two days and it's driving me crazy I want to get out to my wood pile, it's the only relaxation I get in life.
Around the corner from me there is a green house heated by an old stove in which they burn pine.. Around here there is lots of white pine that nobody wants so that is free for them.. They also have blower on one side and louvers on the opposite side.. Not sure how they operate the blower, could be by t-stat or timer but I am guessing t-stat to prevent over heating.. Since you get free wood this might be a good option for you..
