Alternative GREEN Furnace - Non-Fossil-Fueled - Construction

11/24/2016 Alternative
GREEN Furnace NonFossilFueled Construction
Alternative GREEN Furnace NonFossilFueled
Construction
HighPerformance HeatGreen Home Heating System Version 3a Construction
March 2007
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Benefits of this HG 3a system include: SansSerif
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Never pay heating bills again!
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Great for the Environment! Verdana
No burning, no fire, no flame at all! ComicSans
No chimney to waste heat out to the atmosphere; in fact, extremely high .
overall energy efficiency results! Text Size
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Never use fossil fuels again!
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Build this device yourself for around $200! Smaller
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Step-by-step Instructions included here. Background
A medium-sized house in a northern climate may lose 45,000 Btu/hr on a really Color
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cold January night. Since 2007, this HeatGreen 3a device has shown that it
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can supply 90,000 Btu/hr! Providing 45,000 Btu/hr for a warm and cozy house
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on that cold night is fairly easy! .
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(for printing)
First Presented in March 2007
This presentation was first placed on the Internet in February 2007. At least 63,000 visitors have read about the HG concept since then (to early 2010). Since we don't
charge for this information, we have no way of knowing when people actually build HG units, but we believe that at least several hundred have been built so far, in at least
ten different countries.
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This is a Normalsized Rotating
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Fivefoot diameter HG 3a showing two digital thermometers (internal air and water), two air ducts
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and two water pipes, axle shaft, feed door opening, and pink heat insulation. Maximum heat
production about 90,000 Btu/hr for about two days at a load. In milder weather, it can provide a
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constant 30,000 Btu/hr for about a week per loading. (built in May 2007 of $200 new materials).
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11/24/2016 Alternative GREEN Furnace NonFossilFueled Construction
Rather small Rotating Threefoot diameter HG 3a
(someone built in 2009). This small unit can only contain about 15% as much organic material as the standardsized HG 3a
shown above, and it's maximum heat production is only about 1/4 of that of the standardsized HG 3a, or about 25,000
Btu/hr, for a little more than a full day per load, so it can only realistically heat one or two rooms.
BETTER than Biogas!
This "active" version of the HeatGreen system has great flexibility and sufficient capability for nearly any residential heating
application. It is absolutely "green" and eliminates the need for the buying or using of any fossil fuels.
The relatively small device described here (a little larger than the size of an upright piano and weighing empty around
140 pounds) (and with all construction instructions included below) is around 5 feet in diameter and 2 feet thick. It can easily
create the continuous 45,000 Btus per hour of constant heating that a mediumsized home in a cold climate like Chicago
needs in January or February, and has shown that it can easily produce twice that amount of heat, or over 90,000 Btus of
hour. It uses SCRAP cut lawn grass and autumn leaves, which decompose and release amazing amounts of heat in the
process. We capture that heat and use it! (It needs to be refilled with any of a wide range of organic materials, every few
days or every week or two, depending on the outdoor temperatures.)
This presentation is primarily centered on describing how to build this HG 3a unit with around $200 of locally available
materials. Since there are a wide range of climates in the world, and sizes and types of homes, and an immense number of
different ways this device can be used, we will include an assortment of simple calculations and explanations, such that each
locality or each person could modify the standard HG 3a unit for specific needs. If you want to learn more about how and why
the HG heating systems work so well, the presentation at General Description may be useful. That presentation also has a
link to a more comprehensive presentation which includes the Biochemistry and Thermodynamics aspects, which we think
most people do not want to have to confront!
As noted above, the standard HG 3a unit is relatively modest in size, for several reasons. It is designed to be light enough
when empty (140 pounds or so) to easily be carried (or rolled!). It is designed to be of dimensions where standardsized
pieces of plywood are very efficiently used with very little waste, and also so that it can fit through standard doorways. It also
is designed so that when completely filled, it does not weigh much more than a filled food freezer, and therefore will not
stress building floor structures. The dimensions provide an inside capacity of around 40 cubic feet, so depending on the
density of the organic material used, around 400 pounds (at 10 pounds per cubic foot dry density) to 800 pounds (at 20 lb/cu
ft) of material usually can be put into it at a time. (Certain materials like sawdust or feed corn are of higher density and
greater amounts can be loaded at a time.)
If we consider the most conservative value of 400 pounds of material being placed in it, here are two common possibilities
that can happen.
(1) Around 400 pounds of organic material is dumped into it. At least one handful of black dirt should be also tossed in,
as a source for the needed common bacteria, which therefore starts the decomposition of the material. Depending on
what kind of material is tossed in, the decomposition can start fairly promptly. If at least some cut lawn grass or hay is
included, within twelve hours, the mesophilic bacteria will be in full activity, and within another day, the far more efficient
thermophilic bacterial activity will be nearing maximum activity, where it gets the entire contents up to the design
temperature range of 130°F to 150°F.
Here is an early experiment's temperature graph (from early 2007) , where the rapid startup of activity develops in a
matter of hours. This graph actually only shows the performance of the less impressive mesophilic bacteria, which start
to taper off when nearing 125°F, where the far better performing
to taper off when nearing 125°F, where the far better performing
thermophilic bacteria take over, which only occurred after that brief graph
ends after a day and a half.
From that point onward, it is pretty easy to arrange for decomposition of
around 5 pounds of the organic material per hour to occur. Since each
pound of nearly any type of organic material contains around 9,000 Btus,
this then is generating around 45,000 Btus/hr of resulting heat,
sufficient to completely heat most entire homes on cold winter days
and nights. ; after several days, as the available supply of organic
material disappears the temperature gradually drops due to lack of
material to decompose. At 5 pounds per hour, all 400 pounds will
decompose in around 80 hours, or three and a half days. (This process
can be amazingly efficient, resulting in virtually NOTHING being left except
for water and carbon dioxide and a few pounds of assorted blackish
materials).
Once you get familiar with how to use it, you will learn how to load it with
specific materials for really cold weather where it would need to
decompose up to 10 pounds of material per hour to provide as much as
90,000 Btu/hr, far more than nearly any house would likely every need
(and where you can then DUMP any excess heat production into a
basement or attached garage, in order to provide the desired CONSTANT
house temperatures.) You will also learn several ways to cause it to
produce less generated heat, for milder periods. You can always let it go
full bore, but it seems senseless to be having to waste a lot of heat, and therefore consume more organic material than
is actually needed.
If the selected material is straw instead of hay or grass, the process occurs much more slowly. This might be desirable
on milder days when less heat is needed, and to make the organic material last many days longer before having to
reload the chamber. Many types of organic materials are available, and each can affect how quickly this all occurs, so if
you use corncobs or sawdust or feed corn, the performance will vary. If you used feed corn or sawdust, those more
compact, higher density materials should allow up to 1200 pounds of material, three times as much, to be placed in the
chamber. This sort of emphasizes why I designed the device to be rather sturdy and durable, and where the
supporting axle needs to be strong.
(2) (about the highest performance that seems practically possible for this size device, and which I have confirmed
experimentally and which is in performance agreement with [expensive and complex] InVessel Composting systems
where wellestablished approaches and devices cause all their material to be decomposed in 24 to 48 hours) This still
requires the day or two initial period to get up to operating temperature; but then the decomposition is done at what
appears to be its maximum rate, of around 10 pounds per hour in this arrangement. That level of decomposition
creates around 90,000 Btus/hr, far more than the 40,000 to 50,000 that most houses in cold climates need for
complete heating, even on the coldest night of a winter, but it decomposes the entire 400 pounds of material in
only around 40 hours, meaning the chamber would be empty again only around two days later!
Both of these scenarios are describing the performance of the STANDARD version of the device, the HG 3a, described
below. They tend to require a good deal of time and effort regarding loading material. Long ago, people used to load coal in a
furnace to heat their homes, and it turns out that roughly the same total amount of weight of organic material needs to be
loaded here as was done then. Actually, somewhat less because coal furnaces were around 60% efficient, meaning that 40%
of the heat energy in the coal either went up the chimney as waste heat or was left as clinkers. This system has no chimney,
and when operated best, can decompose nearly everything you put into it that is organic in chemical composition. I have
experimentally measured around 94% overall efficiency at several times.
There are millions of people who are willing to chop trees up into firewood and carry ten or more tons (five cords) of that
wood to piles where they need to then split it (which I personally really hate doing!); then let the wood dry for eight months or
more; and then they carry those tons of wood again, now into the house to load it into a woodsstove every few hours. The
HG 3a device has many advantages over burning wood, although there are still some tons of organic material that needs to
be carried at some point. No chopping or carrying of firewood, NO SPLITTING OF WOOD (yay!), no stacking it to dry for
many months, only loading once every few days instead of every few hours, MUCH higher overall efficiency, a cost to you of
around $200 to make an HG 3a rather than more than $3000 to buy a modern airtight woodstove plus a few thousand more
for the chimney that it needs, and NO FLAME for far safer operation (and therefore, no actual chimney)!
We note that there were companies and individuals who were available (for payment) to deliver and even load the coal in
those furnaces so the homeowner did not have any inconvenience, and that seems possible again with this HG 3a device.
We think that tens of thousands of lawncare businesses might be ideal for this function! In the Summer, they mow and
collect and then have to dispose of many tons of cut grass and of leaves in the Autumn. If instead of disposing of them, they
were spread out and dried like farmers do for hay, they might have a simple and easy way to make bales, in other words, a
supply of very large amounts of the needed materials. Some types of materials could be baled up as hay or straw is. Then, in
the Winter, when they currently have nothing to do (except play cards), the lawncare people could contract to visit homes
with HG 3a devices every few days to load and maintain them. Seems to me that MILLIONS of people might have a
possible source of income, a paying job! Consider the possibility that such a local lawncare company would contract to
do this maintenance for a winter for say $500. The homeowner would love that, only paying $500 rather than maybe
$2,000 to heat his/her house. The lawncare company would now have something for employees to do in winter, and it
would also be nicely profitable! One employee should be able to service four houses per hour or around 32 per day. On
average (due to the climate and weather) servicing the HG 3a about every five days seems to work fine. That means ONE
employee should be able to service around 150 houses, each for $500 or $75,000 income that the lawncare company
otherwise never would have! The company could be fairly generous in paying the worker(s) and still keep a lot of that
$75,000 of cash inflow from each 150 customers! This is using materials that are available to the company FOR FREE, and it
even eliminates them having to find somewhere to dispose of it! And the employees would have continuous jobs and not just
seasonal! Everyone can win!
It is certainly possible to make larger scale versions of this (which will then no longer fit through a standard doorway).
One that is twice the dimensions could hold eight times as much material, or around 3200 pounds. Still at a decomposition
rate of 5 pounds per hour (during January or February in a northern climate), that is full home heating for about 640 hours or
about 27 days of whole house heating before a new load of organic material needs to be loaded in it. Keep in mind that the
building floor structure would then have to be able to support roughly the weight of a car, and the ceiling would need to be
over 12 feet high for that particular size and shape! But the same diameter as a standard HG 3a could be made but twice as
thick, etc, to increase the capacity. There are some structural considerations when such changes are made, such as
stiffeners, which may be needed. However, for really large scale heat loads, it is probable that simply making two or more HG
3as or of building the rather different HG 2a may be a better choice.
During early 2011, an interesting modification was developed for the HG 3a device. Where the entire HG 3a device slowly
rotates in order to ensure that every piece of organic material gets air and water for ideal decomposition and also to minimize
the clumping that seems to quickly occur if the device is not rotated for some hours, this variation is built the same as the HG
3a except for a couple minor differences. Where the HG 3a axle is mounted rigidly to the sidewalls of the chamber, and the
entire chamber therefore rotates, the HG 3b axle passes THROUGH the entire unit. That (iron pipe) axle therefore rotates in
a NONROTATING CHAMBER. The axle shaft has two PIPE CROSSES inside the chamber, which each have two stub pipes,
four in total, which are each 2 feet long. The four pipes act like the flailing arms inside of a farmer's flailtype manure
spreader. They rotate much faster than the very slow rotation of the HG 3a chamber. The motor and mechanism needed for
the rotation is simpler and cheaper than that needed for the HG 3a device.
In my own experiments in developing this system, I had results that certainly impressed me! For a fairly large fourbedroom
home near Chicago, which is VERY old (originally built as a oneroom schoolhouse in 1856!) and only partially insulated now,
the first winter of using an HG 3a unit (20072008) resulted in only using around $198 worth of natural gas for the entire year.
Much of that was used by the gas water heater during the summer months when I was not experimenting! But some also was
used during times when I had taken the HG 3a apart to change something or test something! The next winter of use of the
HG 3a unit (20082009) resulted in around $192 worth of natural gas (bills) being consumed during the entire year. Again,
most of that was used by the gas water heater during the summer months when I was not using the HG 3a unit, and it was
also partly due to increases in the cost of natural gas. All in all, not bad! A house that used to require $1500 to $2000
consumption of natural gas each year has only used around 1/8 that much while I have been using the HG 3a (during the
winter). It seems very likely that the consumption might drop to near zero if I would start to use the HG 3a all year!
I later learned that even when I used ZERO natural gas in a month, the gas company still charges me around $16 for an
assortment of charges, which therefore totals around $190 per year. The question has become whether I want to keep the
gas turned on as a POSSIBLE BACKUP to the HG 3a, or whether I want to tell the gas company to shut it off completely, to
save that $190 charges per year! For now, I am leaving the gas turned on, as I may feel lazy or ill and possibly not interested
or capable of bringing in a bale of stuff. I know this from entirely heating a very large farm house with the JUCA woodstove I
invented in 1973. I actually dismantled the conventional furnace then for parts for some experiments I wanted to do. But I
found that I could not vacation in Florida as I had done for many previous years, as the house could not load its own
woodstove for heat!
This HG 3a design also has the builtin capability of providing large amounts of domestic hot water. The arrangement
described below can contain either 8 gallons or 14 gallons (of around 150°F water), which can fully heat up from a standard
municipal cold water supply in roughly 15 minutes, which can therefore provide a virtually endless supply of hot water for
bathtubs or clothes washing. (A full bathtub of wonderfully hot water at fifteen minute intervals for all the kids you have!) (Or
all the hot water needed for full loads of a clothes washing machine every fifteen minutes.) The water heating performance of
the configuration described below is around 24,000 Btu/hr to 27,000 Btu/hr, reasonably comparable with conventional hot
water heaters (which are often rated somewhat higher at the INPUT amount of natural gas consumed). It can easily be
increased or decreased depending on the size of your family.
Cooking inside it seems to be an interesting ability, although there seems to be a slight complication due to the very
slow tumbling of the device! The cooking action resembles a Crockpot or SlowCooker regarding the wonderful taste
of the results, but also the time required. This capability requires a modification of the device's door structure, but it nicely
cooks hamburgers and many other foods, although the 150°F available temperature requires longer cooking times than on a
stovetop. For example, hardboiled eggs needs about nine hours to be fully done, but they seem to me to be even tastier
than normal HB eggs, more delicate, possibly due to not needing the boiling water. In my opinion, cooked sweet corn (45 to
60 minutes) is more tender and delicious than when cooked in other ways. When the corn is cooked while still in the husk, it
probably maintains all the natural vitamins as well, which get lost in standard cooking methods. The same seems to be true
of other vegetables, possibly because I do not use water for any of those functions (except for things like the hardboiled
eggs and spaghetti). It also does seem to virtually not matter how long the eggs, corn, vegetables or hamburgers are left in
the cooker, as even after 12 hours my experiments have all been delicious! This method of cooking is absolutely safe,
possibly even more so than conventional cooking, as ALL dangerous pathogens are easily killed at these
temperatures, as long as the food rises to above 125°F. With conventional cooking, sometimes the center of a thick piece of
meat does not get up above that necessary 125°F, where people can then still have E. coli and other pathogens still present
in the meat. That is not possible here. However, "Rare" may not be a possibility, as the low heat for a long time penetrates
completely through even thick items of food.
I have discovered that it also can brew amazingly tasty coffee and tea, similar to how "sun tea" is made that is so tasty! But
where sun tea is generally rather weak, this system brews tea or coffee that is of conventional strength of taste. There is no
harshness in the taste, really amazing.
(Sorry about these tangential comments from the heating system, but new and different uses seem to keep appearing for it!)
(As a side note, many house furnaces are rated at 125,000 Btu/hr or so. That is actually INPUT energy rating, the amount of
natural gas burned, for example, where some of the created heat goes up the chimney, leaving a maximum of around
100,000 Btu/hr of actual heat which could be available for the house. Conventional furnaces are designed so that their burner
should be on 2/3 of the time when the outdoor temperature is the Design Temperature for that climate [ which is 10°F or
23°C for the Chicago area ]. This means that that 125,000 Btu/hour (input) conventional furnace really is intended to provide
a MAXIMUM of around 67,000 Btu/hr of CONSTANT heat supply on the coldest night of the year. Generally, calculations for a
wellinsulated house near Chicago shows that the design heat loss is around 40,000 to 50,000 Btu/hr AVERAGE on that
coldest day. This is why we are discussing heat productions of 45,000 Btu/hr as being sufficient and 90,000 Btu/hr as being
too much heat!)
I also learned a lot about this with my 19731983 years with my JUCA woodstove. I had designed the stove (actually a central
wood furnace with three glass walls to watch the fire), to have a CONTINUOUS heat output of 226,000 Btus per hour. Being
in an 1896, uninsulated, threestory, eleven room farmhouse, encouraged me to design big! But since it created CONSTANT
heat, it easily acted like a conventional furnace of double that rating, and it always heated the entire house very easily.
This 3a Version appears to have some major advantages over earlier HG units. Several are due to the fact that the entire
drum "tumbles" every hour or so. It move so slowly that it is hard to even notice that it is moving at all! The decomposing
material inside does not "clump up" too badly, as some types of materials can tend to do over the time of the decomposition.
This tumbling also allows more free access of the oxygen to all the material, which is why it is capable of such fast
performance. Even the supply (puddle) of several gallons of excess water that we keep in the bottom tends to get stirred
together with all the material, ensuring that all material has sufficient moisture available for good decomposition, again
enhancing performance. Plenty of oxygen and plenty of water available and nice warm environment, for each sub
microscopic thermophilic bacterium! They love it! As a result, they decompose virtually anything that is organic rather quickly.
The quickness of the decomposition is related to how THICK the individual pieces are, and cut lawn grass therefore
decomposes especially fast and effectively. (Some types of material take longer, such as used car tires or used motor oil or
most types of plastic or thick pieces of wood.) Another advantage is that the drum rotation could be slowed to once per day
instead of once per hour, which degrades the performance somewhat for INTENTIONALLY lower heat production, by nicely
slowing down the rate of consumption of the material, when less heat is needed for the house. (Slower decomposing
material, such as straw, can also be used to cause less heat production.) (I personally do not like a onceaday rotation rate
because some types of material then seem to have time enough to clump all together like coat hangers in a closet do. Once
anhour rotation seems to eliminate this complication for nearly all materials.)
This (small) Version of the HeatGreen home heating system is capable of producing all the heat you could want, but it also
can consume the organic materials you put into it very rapidly, but only because its capacity is fairly small! That means that
this small system CAN provide all the heat necessary to entirely heat a moderatesized house in the worst of the winter, BUT
for only two or three days before it would need to again be filled with another 400 pounds of material! This is somewhat
laborintensive, and so we also mention a largerscale Version of this rotating HeatGreen system.
It is generally convenient to load in a partial bale of material each day, which lets the previous bacteria to keep merrily
chewing up the organic materials, while also allowing some hours for the new material to warm up enough to take over.
When done well, that both provides a nice consistent amount of heat for the house and also avoids you having to start it all
up from scratch very often.
You will build a device that resembles a large exercise wheel for a hamster. Or a Galapagos Tortoise, as it is bigger and
very slow moving. We will describe one that is about five feet in diameter and two feet thick, such that it can be carried
through standard doorways. As noted above, that size has an internal volume of around 40 cubic feet. At a density of the
organic material put into it of 10 pounds per cubic foot, that means around 400 pounds of organic material can be loaded to
decompose, which will give off a total of around 3,500,000 Btus of heat energy during that decomposition process. (A pound
of many organic materials contains around 9,000 Btus of chemical energy which was first obtained from sunlight by
chlorophyll during photosynthesis. 400 lb * 9,000 Btu/lb is that three and a half million available Btus, once the bacteria
convert the chemical energy into heat energy during decomposition.) (Some organic materials are more compact than that,
such as feed corn, where more weight of material can be put in it at a time.) These are DRY weights and not when sopping
wet, where the density and weight are much higher. HARDWOOD is around 35 pounds per cubic foot and SOFTWOOD is
around 28 pounds per cubic foot. Grass and hay and straw and wood chips have a lot of air spaces in them, which reduces
the average density as indicated above.)
(These are simple and inexpensive enough to build, requiring only around $200 of materials from a local store, that it could
make sense to build two of them for your house. IF you have difficulty in keeping them going, you could schedule loading
material in them at different times, so that the initial heatup time while the process is beginning would not be a problem, as
the other one would be fully heating the house then. Of course, once you learn how to operate an HG 3a where you do not
regularly kill the bacteria off, just adding partial bales or loads can keep a single device operating for an entire winter! But
there is a severe learning curve in first learning to keep the [thermophilic] bacteria alive. You WILL tend to kill them off a few
times before you learn! Also, if your water supply or air supply to one of them was interrupted, or any other problem occurred
that caused the bacteria to stop doing their thing, the other one could still be comfortably heating your house.)
A wonderful idea toward enhancing the HG 3a device
Some people had built an unusual variant of my HG 2 system, and their ideas caused me to be inspired regarding a REALLY
good idea for any or all of the HG devices! This might be worth considering! Especially if you should discover that you tend to
kill off all your bacteria as you are trying to learn how to use the unit! Whether it is a giant HG 2 device or a much smaller HG
3a or HG 3b device, this modification is pretty close to earthshaking! Since most everyone seems to decide to build either
HG 3a or HG 3b units, I will discuss those here regarding what needs to be done.
For the past five years, I have often joked about how incredibly sensitive the Thermophilic bacteria are, where I sometimes
have claimed that if you cross your eyes, all your bacteria might immediately die! Everyone else who has experimented with
these devices has certainly felt great frustration at having to start the process over after you have done what seemed to be
very minor harassments of your bacteria.
This is simple! During a TRAINING PERIOD while the owners are getting to learn how to properly supply the Thermophilic
bacteria with the oxygen, the carbon dioxide and the heat they need to thrive, this idea is just so simple and obvious that I am
very disappointed in myself for having taken five years to get here! You get an OLD (but safe) gasfired clothes dryer. You
connect the 4" vent duct to it and feed it into the chamber of the HG device. It is wonderful if you can buy a high temperature
thermostat to put inside the HG 3a. Specifically, there is a very cheap type (around $5) which is called a disk thermostat. The
rating that I like best is the one at 135°F. Any local heatingplumbing store should have that for $5.
So here is what happens. You toss ANY collection of organic materials into the HG 3a chamber. Just the tossing of cold
material into the unit have been able to cause the bacteria to all die! They are AMAZINGLY sensitive!
Where it had always been critically necessary that you be extremely attentive to temperature, oxygen and water, or else you
would off your bacteria, now it is entirely different! When you first close the door, the material is still cold, about the 70°F
material that you had just tossed in. But since the thermostat recognizes that it is NOT warm enough in there, the gas burner
of the clothes dryer turns on and also the motor which blows the hot air through the vent pipe also turns on. In other words, in
just a few seconds, you have started to ARTIFICIALLY heat the entire interior of the HG unit up to around 140°F. It turns out
that You have actually also provided OXYGEN for them at the same time!
Your Thermophilic bacteria are as happy as they could be! You won't be able to see their tiny little smiling faces, but trust me
on this one! Of course, the actual point of this whole thing is that the bacteria start decomposing organic materials and
creating a lot of heat. As soon as they have begun generating enough heat to keep everybody happy (which is surprisingly
fast), the thermostat sees that there is no longer any need for the clothes dryer to run any more. Actually. just three to five
minutes seems to be all it could ever need!
AND the reasoning is that YOU will LEARN how it is all to work, and you will likely never again need to use the clothes dryer
for the artificial heating. Or maybe, only very rarely! Basically, the only time that it would then ever need to turn on again
would be if you have forgotten to load the unit or something similar!
I think that as the owner learns how to make fewer mistakes, it might be less necessary to be providing this additional artificial
heating, as the Thermophilic bacteria are perfectly capable of producing amazing amounts of heat on their own! You might
note that I might be sounding somewhat insulting regarding ARTIFICIAL heat! It's true! I am sort of a purist on this, and the
fact that Nature has created the amazing Thermophilic bacteria, it seems to me that we have some sort of responsibility to
learn how to provide for them. Think of it as not having just one pet dog, but many billions of pet thermophilic bacteria. Take
care of them and they will take care of you!
Personally, I like the safety aspects of the fact that the natural HG devices do not involve any flame or fire, and that the
sopping wet contents ensure that no dangerous fire could possibly ever happen. But as a Training Aid to Rookie owners of
an HG device, I guess I can tolerate a tiny amount of fossil fuel consumption, BUT ONLY UNTIL YOU LEARN YOUR CHOPS!
Either gasfired or electric clothes dryer should be able to keep your bacteria cozy and happy. In any case, the 4" dryer vent
is fed into the HG chamber. (No, I think it would be a terrible idea to also try to dry clothes in it, as you would then be ignoring
the wellbeing of your bacteria!) But then a temperature sensor (or 135°F thermostat switch) inside the chamber could
automatically turn on the clothes dryer to send some really hot air into the chamber, which also would provide extra oxygen
for the bacteria's enjoyment! Once the owner learns how to operate the HG properly, the thermophilic bacteria inside will
generate plenty of heat so that the thermostat switch would never again need to turn on the clothes dryer!
Given my personal experiences with killing off a lot of bacteria over the past five years, this modification seems excellent. Of
course, the usual safety precautions need to be attended to. IF you have very dry bales of grass or hay, stacked somewhere
near your HG device, you CANNOT ever leave any such material very near a firecontaining clothes dryer which might turn
itself on! Got it?
Parts Materials
(Prices shown are retail prices from 2007 from a local home supply store)
Function Quantity Item Retail Cost

Main Structure sheets of 3/4" thick GOOD QUALITY CDX plywood,
2 $21.44 * 2 = $42.88
Sidewalls of 5 or 7plies.
Main Structure
1 sheet of 1/4" thick plywood. $13.88
Perimeter
4 2" thick sheets of 4x8' foam building insulation, 2" or 1" either $6.49 each for interior 1" or
Side Insulation or 8 1" thick, either interior (white) or exterior $12.29 for exterior 1" each. I spent
thick (underground). $47.92
Perimeter sheets of 4x8' foam building insulation, 1" thick,
4 $6.49 each or $25.96
Insulation interior (white)
several
Attach foam foam adhesive (like PL300). $3.99 each or $11.97
tubes
several
Screws #10 by 1.5" woodscrews. $2.24 each per 25 or $6.72
boxes
Waterproof a reinforced plastic tarp, around 16 by 20 feet or
1 $14.98
barrier larger
Interior structure 100foot roll of 1.25" or 1.5" (black) polyethylene
1 1.25" is $32.48
and water holder water line (BLUE label is for potable water)
Fittings for that
misc adaptors, clamps, tees .
pipe
Axle mounts 2 1" pipe flanges $3.18 each
Air path misc 4" PVC elbows and pipe .
Axles 2 1" iron pipe sections at least 6" to 10" long. .
Water pipe
2 .
connections
Air path 2 standard flexible dryer vent hoses. .
Water
2 standard washing machine supply hoses. .
connections
misc misc miscellaneous pipe adaptors and hardware. .
This should total around $200 of materials.
Note: These instructions are for a unit that is made of very commonly available materials, which are of rather low cost. We
have also designed this to be buildable by anyone who has moderate skills as a handyman. There are ways to build many
variants of this unit. One example is to line the entire inside with fiberglass instead of the cheap and simple tarp we suggest
here. Since most modern tarpaulins are actually made of petroleumbased materials, it might be that over a period of years,
the bacteria might slowly decompose the tarp. Since a layer of fiberglass is actually primarily made of silicon / glass materials,
that should last for many, many years, but the cost and effort would be much higher initially.
There have also been people who have welded up HG 3a units out of aluminum plates, which seems like a good idea but it
requires specialized welding abilities and may be more expensive to build. People have tried to make really little ones out of a
55gallon drum, but in my opinion, they can only contain so little material that reloading every hour seems likely, which I
personally do not like the idea of! People have also made variants which I have thought were goofy, like cubical ones,
triangular ones, and ones that included rather flimsy wall materials or axle shaft materials. I ENCOURAGE having creative
thoughts, because these things are rather cheap and quick to build, and someone occasionally comes up with a variant
which is very beneficial! In my opinion, the sort of large farm water tanks made of fiberglass or PVC are too expensive, but
otherwise fine. It DOES seem attractive to build them out of PVC, for strength, durability, simplicity, and quickness of
construction, but again the cost becomes an issue.
If weight is not considered an issue, it would even be possible to weld this up out of Corten steel, which is resistant to nearly
all types of degradation.
I give permission for any person or company to build as many as 20 of these units without further permission. Beyond that
number, I do NOT give authorization without a written (paper) authorization. Specifically, I do NOT give permission to any
company to mass produce my invention, made out of any material, such as out of a material such as PVC, without my
approval.
Construction
On a sheet of the thick plywood, make a mark 30.25"
from one end and 17.75" from a long side (or 30.25"
from the opposite long side). This will become the
location of the axle centerline, so you can now drill a
small hole there. Using that location and a 30.25" long
stick or string, draw a circle around that point. The circle
should just touch the opposite edge of the plywood as
well as the end of the sheet. Using a sabre saw,
carefully cut out that piece.
It represents most of one side of the structure, and
should be 60.5" in total diameter with a Dshaped piece
missing.
Place this piece on top of the remaining piece of the
plywood sheet, and trace out the edge, where the curve
passes through a point that is 12.5" from the (opposite)
end of the sheet. When this Dshaped piece is cut out, it
is the remaining part of the full circle. These dimensions
were chosen such that the full circle of the full side can
be made from a single sheet of plywood.
Do the same for the other sheet to get the opposite side
of the structure.
Provisions for the axle now need to be installed. I have
been installing "1inch pipe flanges" at the center of both
side circles, and using bolts and nuts to secure them
rather than the usual woodscrews. Put the CARRIAGE
BOLT heads INSIDE the chamber so that there are no
sharp projections to rub against the plastic tarp.
Countersunk FLATHEAD machine bolts could also be
used here. The later pipe nipples of 1" pipe are strong
enough to be the axle shaft and do not bend with the
weight of all the material in the chamber.
(After a year of use, this last statement seems to be
uncertain. When the chamber is regularly filled with 400
pounds or more of material, plus water, I have found
that the [stretching] loading on the small bolts can
actually make them longer! Also, the heads of the
Carriage bolts tend to be able to crush the plywood a
little. These effects tend to make the axle shafts we will
later screw into the flanges be able to tilt a little, where
the two axle halfshafts may no longer be coaxial. A
simple solution to this exists. Buy two pieces of 1/4" thick
steel plate, around one foot square. Attach those plates
to the plywood sidewalls and then use highstrength
bolts to attach the flange to the steel plate. There should
then never be any axleshaft angle changes.)
Next, the sheets of side foam insulation can be marked
out and cut very much like the plywood sheets were,
except that now the desired radius is 34.25" instead of
30.25". Foam adhesive works great in mounting them.
The foam is added as two separate 2" layers, or four
separate 1" layers, to have an insulation rating of R20.
These side insulation slabs extend 4" beyond the
circular body, so that sheets of the 1" layers of (white)
foam for the circumference can be cut down the middle
to get strips of 24" by 96". THAT foam MUST be the 1"
thick size, and the interior type, so it can be bent
enough to follow the curvature of the perimeter. If you
work in a warm area, the white circumference foam
should be able to bend to follow the curvature. (Exterior
foam is higher density and therefore more rigid and
brittle, and would break). Again, four layers of the foam
around the edges provides the desired R20 insulation.
At this point, only the foam for the one side can be
mounted, with the rest of the insulation being attached
later. But even it can be left for later to avoid it being
damaged during construction. All the foam can be
added once the device is supported on its pedestal
stand, where it can be rotated to ease addition of the
foam pieces.
None of this foam is ever likely to be exposed to
moisture, so white is fine, where the outdoor or
underground type is required for wet locations. You
could always get another poly tarp and surround the
whole device, for example if it could ever be rained on.
Cut the thin plywood sheet (crossways, so that it can be
bent easiest) into four pieces which are now each 24" by
48". They will be the "rim" which surrounds the two side
circles to form the main body of the device.
The thin plywood can be bent enough to follow that
gentle curvature of the circle edges. The strips of the
thin plywood are therefore screwed to the outer edge of
the plywood circle, with two of the four pieces straddling
the joint with the Dshaped piece for greatest strength
and durability. For reasons that will be clear shortly, it is
actually easiest if you ONLY screw the thin plywood
pieces to ONE of the two circles at this time. This results
in the thin plywood trying to flare out. A simple way to
deal with this is with a 20foot long piece of rope, which
is temporarily tied around the loose edges of those thin
plywood pieces to resemble the circle that they will
eventually be. A towrope or a loadbinder could also be
used.
You might notice the (white) indication of the
construction adhesive used to join the sidewalls to the
circular pieces. Also note that the joints between those
four pieces are carefully arranged to not be at the same
location where the joints between the two parts of the
circle are, for greater structural strength.
You now have a 60.5" diameter disk with a twofoothigh
circular barrier around it.
Place the tarp inside that pit, relatively centered. It
actually is slightly off center, such that all the edges of it
can reach the opening you will later make in the second
circular unit to feed material into the device. That makes
sure that the tarp has no edges or seams or overlaps
inside the chamber which might someday become less
than watertight.
(IF you are going to add the water heating capability)
Get the coil of poly pipe. We show the pipe as it is
bought, along with some of the hose clamps which will
be used with it.
We note here an unusual aspect of this usage of black
polyethylene pipe. That material is generally heated to
at least 270°F in heatforming it into various shapes.
Because of this, the maximum recommended
temperature for black poly objects is therefore usually
set at 180°F. However, a Safety Factor of around five is
applied in the official guidelines when black poly pipe
carries pressurized water, and that maximum
recommended temperature is often set at 120°F. The
Safety Factor is applied so that there is no chance that
an exposed heated pipe might burst and spurt scalding
hot water out that might hurt people. In this particular
application, the entire 100foot length of the poly pipe is
enclosed inside the decomposition chamber, so that
danger could not occur. In addition, such black poly pipe
is commonly used as agricultural irrigation piping, where
on a hot summer afternoon in a hot climate, the ambient
temperature can near 150°F (just like football fields and
auto racetracks are sometimes at such temperatures.)
We have found no problems whatever in using the black
poly pipe inside our chambers, although the clamps can
need to be screwed a little tighter after the poly
conforms more to the shape of the barbfitting elbows.
What you are going to do is follow the natural curved
shape of that poly pipe (because it is bought in a coil).
You are going to use two standard hose clamps, but not
in the traditional way. You will use a short piece of metal
barstock, between the first two turns of coil of the pipe,
to clamp each of the two clamps to which makes a poly
pipe circle of a very specific and very sturdy diameter.
You will slightly increase the diameter of this first loop,
up to where the OUTSIDE diameter is slightly over
60.5". The two clamps are on the two turns of the coil,
with the end one about a foot or two from the very end
of the poly pipe, but the two clamps are linked together
to establish this sturdy diameter. When they are
tightened, they will fix that outside diameter of that ring
of poly pipe to slightly greater than the diameter
dimension you choose. That diameter is chosen so that
the coil will be a very tight fit, virtually a pressfit, inside
the chamber. When it is pressed down into the corner of
the chamber, it will securely hold the tarp in the corner
there. Roughly one foot of the pipe extends beyond
where the clamp is, so that an (elbow) water connection
can be made, which will then extend so both ends of
that 100foot long pipe will extend to outside the
chamber.
It is very important to make sure that no sharp corners
of any metal could ever rub against and tear the tarp.
Wrapping a layer of nonbiodegradable ductlike tape is
a reasonable way of protecting the tarp surface from all
the clamps, especially the extended ends.
That coil of filled poly water pipe can be for a number of
different functions. In the Applications Sections below,
there are systems that use a SEPARATE (enclosed)
supply of low pressure water to CIRCULATE heat to
rooms of the house using standard Hydronic pumps and
radiators. Similar SEPARATE water systems could heat
a swimming pool or hot tub. If the coil is to be used to
provide Domestic hot water for the house faucets, it will
be filled with water at the prevailing water pressure of
the Municipal or well water supply. Since it is not
possible for the water to ever get warmer than 150°F, it
can never have any threat of boiling.
There are also around eight to a dozen extra clamps
needed on that first turn of pipe. (the photo shows only
the first loop in place, with the rest of the poly pipe still
waiting to be spread out to press against the circular
walls.) The extra hose clamps will be roughly equally
spaced around the circumference of the ring, to be able
to clamp upward metal spacer bars securely to the pipe
and later also to the identical poly coil which will be
made for the opposite corner of the chamber. The
spacer bars can be either 1/8 by 3/8 flatbar strips or
5/16 or 3/8 diameter round rod. For the standard size of
chamber described here, 24 inch long pieces of that rod
or bar are fine. Around 2.5 inches from each end, a right
angle bend is made, with the result being a sturdy
spacer bar which will keep the two outermost coils of
poly pipe at 19.25 inches apart. (The curved plywood
perimeter is 24 inches, minus two pieces of side
plywood and the two diameters of poly pipe, leaving
very close to 19.25 inch separation needed).
Notice that the detail of the narrow photo here shows
that I put a twist in the flatbar stock, which allows the
barstock to fit more closely along the sidewalls, which
allows the poly pipe to fit better.
(These strips of metal are NOT bolted anywhere, as that
would require punctures of the plastic tarp, and leaks!
They will only be held in place by being SQUEEZED
between the two sidewalls! Which also helps hold the
tarp where it needs to be, also without any actual
adhesive or clamps.
The radius of the first and last loop keeps the pipe
pressed against the outer (circular) wall and the spacer
bars keep the pipe circles pressed firmly against the
sidewalls. The rest of the pipe, around five turns, is
reasonably snugly pressed against the outer wall. A few
additional standard stainless steel hose clamps are
used to clamp the intermediate loops to a FEW of the
spacer bars, to keep them spaced apart across the
width of the chamber, roughly with 3" spacing between
each loop.
I am also experimenting with other methods of affixing
the poly pipe to the spacer bars. The cheapest and
simplest is to use electrical Cable Ties, (shown as the
attachment type in the next photo here, to attach to the
middle spacer bar shown, but nearly invisible because
they are black) but I have doubts whether they will be
able to stay tight over the years due to the heat and the
motion. I suspect that when I check them in a few years,
they may be loose! I am also experimenting with using
16 inch long pieces of scrap SOLID house wiring,
wrapped DOUBLE around the pipe and spacer bar
(shown in the rightmost portion of the next photo, again
with black insulation on the wires so they are hard to
see). They figure to be durable, but again the motion
over several years may loosen them. But they are much
less expensive than the hose clamps which are clearly
the best. So I am just using the standard stainless hose
clamps on just the two opposite spacer bars, one being
shown near the left side in that next photo) which should
ensure that the poly pipe will never be able to go very
far anywhere. The Cable Ties and pieces of wire are
therefore not critical in the operation, and I consider
them somewhat optional. If it turns out that Cable Ties
will still be fairly tight after several years, that may be the
future way to go.
This photo has all the turns of poly pipe securely
attached. Notice that the actual spacing of the poly pipe
is not critical, and I have some variation in the demo
setup.
One of the main functions of this poly pipe is therefore
to press the tarp against the circular corner, without
needing any kind of adhesive. A second function CAN
BE to contain water which will get heated. If 1.25" poly is
used, the full hundred feet of it will hold and heat up
around 8 gallons of water at a time. If 1.5" poly is used,
14 gallons. If 2" poly is used, around 24 gallons. If 3"
poly can be found at a tolerable price, it would hold
around 50 gallons of water at a time. Fourinch poly
exists, but it is sold in straight sections rather than in a
coil, which makes its use a little more difficult, although
that would contain even more water at a time. For really
big water capacities, rigid PVC 4 inch pipe is probably
best and easiest. We find the 8 or 14 gallon to be
sufficient, since new water coming in gets heated quite
quickly due to all the tube surface area exposed to the
150°F environment inside the chamber. Even 8 gallons
of 150°F water mixes with about 14 gallons of 55°F tap
water to easily fill a bathtub with 22 gallons of wonderful
90°F bath water! Showers use less hot water and are
even more reliable. Washing many consecutive loads of
clothes in the hottest of water might be a reason to
consider the larger diameter poly, or multiple coils of it
inside the structure.
Below, we will calculate that if all the hot water is
removed, it generally only takes about 15 minutes for
new cold water to become heated fully to the 150°F, so
those hot baths could be repeated all day long, as long
as they were at about 15 minute intervals!
The two outer rings of pipe therefore press the tarp into
the corners of the chamber, without any adhesive and
without any fasteners which might have to penetrate the
tarp.
At the very ends of the coil of pipe, standard barbed
elbows are attached. (the gray barbed fitting is seen
near the very middle of this inner photo, elbowed up
which will be extended against the sidewall). One end
will be connected to an input water supply (of cold
water) and the other will be connected to an output pipe
of hot water. This arrangement ensures that ONLY hot
water could possibly be provided, that any new cold
water has to pass through the entire 100foot length of
the coil of pipe, and be fully heated up, before it could
ever get to the output connector.
There are alternate ways of installing and spacing this
poly pipe. Keep in mind that its primary function is to
press the tarp tightly into the corners of the chamber.
Having water inside it is simply a bonus regarding
making hot water! By using an entire 100foot long roll
of the poly pipe, there are minimal pipe fittings that
could ever later leak. It turns out that the tumbling action
of hundreds of pounds of the organic material tends to
knock loose any poorly attached spacers or clamps!
The second plywood circle can now be installed, again
using construction adhesive and screws. Obviously, all
the tarp edges are first pushed into the chamber, as
shown in the first photo here. Realize that the tarp has
covered up the TOPMOST circle of poly pipe, which will
therefore press the tarp nicely into the circular corner
there. The tarp edges will later be pulled snug along the
inside surface (not visible) so that all the edges of the
tarp will extend through the material feeder opening,
which is indicated by the lines marked out in the second
photo here. This particular unit was made to have a 16"
square feed door.
I generally climbed on top of this second plywood piece,
to squeeze the poly pipes and spacers inside so that
everything was snug inside the chamber, and so that
the top edge of this plywood piece matches up with the
upper edges of the curved perimeter plywood pieces.
This makes sure that nothing can move around inside
the chamber. Good quality construction adhesive and
screws are again used to construct this.
You can also see in the second photo here where the
remaining Dshaped piece of plywood will go. Please
ignore the two PVC closet (toilet) floor flanges in the
photo because a better way has been found to install
the air tubes.
You obviously realize that the tarp edges will be pulled
through the opening and secured on the OUTSIDE of
the side plywood. This will ensure that there are NO
openings anywhere in the tarp surface inside the
chamber, where water or water vapor could ever
escape and cause unplanned decomposition of the
structure itself! As long as you did not puncture the tarp
anywhere, it should now essentially be able to hold
water, except where the feed door assembly will be
attached.
This photo shows the device with the remaining D
shaped piece of plywood added and then a trapezoidal
shaped hole was cut. This hole accomplishes many
functions. We made this hole 16" in height,
approximately centered between the axle shaft and the
perimeter (about 7" from each). We made the top 16"
wide to allow the 16" square access opening, and we
made the bottom 26" wide to permit space for the large
PVC pipes. First, the hole allows all the edges of the
poly tarp inside to stick through, so there are NO holes
or punctures anywhere in the inner tarp surface, which
should make it absolutely watertight and vaportight.
There will be a piece of discarded industrial conveyor
belting cut to be mounted over this opening, which will
have five different holes cut in it. (1) a large 16inch
square hole will have a removable door over it, to allow
loading in the organic materials and possibly reach
inside to remove anything that has not decomposed.
The hole is trapezoidshaped to allow space for (2,3)
two 4" PVC schedule40 pipes (one through each of the
wider corners). Above the PVC pipes are (4,5) two
smaller holes for the poly water pipes which are inside.
This hole and the covering piece of conveyor belting is
large enough that if it should ever become necessary to
do any work inside the chamber, it should be possible to
have suitable access in there.
The second photo simply shows all the edges of the
poly tarp being brought out through that hole, to show
how they will all be extended a little way along the
outside and then tacked or stapled to the outside,
several inches back from the edges of the hole. All
those edges will actually simply get pinched between the
plywood sidewall and the thick piece of conveyor belting,
which will securely hold it in place.
These next two photos show the device standing up in
its correct upright position, with 10" long (galvanized)
pipes threaded in the pipe flanges, and those pipe
sections supported on sturdy triangular support pillars.
The support stand has stiffeners to make sure that it
could not move or collapse when a lot of weight of
organic material and water is inside. We also added 6" x
24" stiffeners of the 3/4" plywood scraps over each of
the seams of the perimeter 1/4" plywood, which
otherwise tends to bulge out a little there.
Even with no actual bearings at all, and just the pipe
sections resting on the top of the support pillars, the
device rotates extremely easily. Just the couple pounds
difference due to the missing wood from the hole tends
to make it want to rotate so that the hole is generally
upward, which indicates that only a very small motor is
needed to rotate it. That is NOT actually true once the
material inside has clumped up! When the heavy piece
of conveyor belting is added and the fill door, the weight
changes enough that it then wants to turn the other way.
A counterweight can be added opposite the fill opening,
to either balance it or to get it to want to keep the fill
hole naturally upward.
These two pictures obviously do not yet show the white
foam insulation layers, or the conveyor belting material
piece or the pipe connections or the entry door. You can
note that the two pictures show the device in positions
about 60 degrees apart, which commonly takes about
15 minutes to move that far. Once the foam is added,
not much else is then visible except for the hole and
piece of conveyor material, pipe ends and feed door.
The stiffeners we added to the chamber mean that the
first layer of the 1" white foam insulation needs to be cut
shorter to fit between those stiffeners, but that then
allows the other three layers to fit excellently. (seen
below)
We intentionally included a conventional room door in
the photos to confirm that the size of this device is
between 5 and 6 feet in diameter, and a little over two
feet in total thickness.
The first photo here shows the first layer of the oneinch
white foam skipping the area where we added the
stiffeners.
The second photo here shows the four layers of that
foam in place.
The first photo here shows the entire device with the
perimeter foam in place (although a small section of the
outer layer is not yet in place in this photo).
The front will soon be covered by the side foam, and the
piece of scrap conveyor belting will cover over the
trapezoid hole, where only the final 16inch square hole
will remain and the two pairs of pipes adjacent to it.
The second photo here shows the perimeter of the unit.
This shows the foam left exposed. We do not see any
major reason that cannot be left, with a few related
thoughts. The white foam is very susceptible to being
damaged, so if the device is where it might be bothered
by kids or pets, it might make sense to go to the extra
trouble of covering it with thin (masonite) paneling or
wall paneling or even an external tarp. The one which
was assembled for the photos here will have a covering
of (artificial) naugahyde, to resemble a piece of
furniture. The white foam also disintegrates pretty
quickly if it gets wet, so if that is a possibility, then the
same should be done. It can also be painted, decorated,
to become an active artistic object. If it is in a location in
the house, kids' school projects or awards could be
attached to it, where they would forever be moving
around. It could also become the world's slowest moving
Mobile sculpture!
The blue or pink foam is far more resistant to moisture
and abrasion, BUT it tends to shatter rather than bend
around the curvature, so if you try to use that material,
be very careful about that.
The next two photos show the piece of surplus conveyor
belting I like to use for around the door and pipes.
Companies that use such industrial conveyors need to
occasionally replace the belting. They do NOT like to
have to pay to have it hauled away, so many such
companies tend to have some piles of discarded
conveyor belting lying somewhere out in a field. They
seem to enjoy the chance to get rid of some of it (for
free!). But I have never asked for just two feet of it! I
generally have taken whatever piece of scrap belting
they had easiest access to. They seem to commonly
chop it apart into 50 to 100 foot long pieces, just so they
could more easily haul it out to the field! The belting that
I have used has all been of a thickness of 0.400 inch,
but the thickness for our purposes is irrelevant. The one
shown here was from a 36 inch wide conveyor (width is
also irrelevant) and the piece used here was squared
out to 26 inches long (high in our case). The upper
corners were trimmed to better fit against the plywood
backing. You may be able to see around a dozen small
holes we drilled for the mounting bolts to pass through
it.
The first picture shows the surplus conveyor piece with
the 16 inch square hole that will be for the access door,
and the two smaller round holes for the poly water pipes
and the two larger round holes for the two 4 inch PVC
sewer lines.
The second photo here is because these details are not
easily seen when the items are mounted on the unit. It
shows that a 90 degree street elbow immediately goes
through each of the larger holes, one pointed up and
the other down. The reason for this may turn out not to
actually be that important, but we think it might be. You
will be feeding in air, consisting primarily of oxygen and
nitrogen into one of these large pipes (on the far side),
and "used air" containing a substantial amount of
carbon dioxide will therefore be pushed out the other
(nearer pipe). It turns out that carbon dioxide is more
than 1.5 times as dense as normal air. We believe that
there is very little air motion inside the chamber, so
maybe a good deal of the carbon dioxide might settle
toward the bottom (rather than the normal action of
simply mixing with the air). So we provide the longer
(26") PVC pipe going downward to be able to remove
the gases down near the bottom, which we expect to
contain an excess of carbon dioxide. This, while the
air/oxygen that we are sending in might tend to initially
stay nearer the top, so we provide the upward (11") pipe
to cause the air sent in to stay farther from the used
gases that we want to exhaust.
It will require thorough chemical analysis to determine
this, but for now we are assuming it to happen. In the
event that the carbon dioxide and air mix more than we
are expecting, the only real difference is that a larger
blower (relatively speaking, still rather tiny in reality) is
needed to expel more of the air inside the chamber to
replace it with fresh air for the bacteria to use.
IF the "exhaust" gases are to be used to (later) provide
increased carbon dioxide for a highperformance
greenhouse, we think this simple feature might allow a
greater percentage of carbon dioxide in that exhausted
air, while also then requiring less power in the air blower
to cause that circulation.
Once this assembly is in place, none of it is easily
visible, so it is shown here separate from the device.
Finally, not yet shown here are the standard "closet
(toilet) flanges" to mount those pipes really securely
without having to make any holes in the tarp lining inside
the chamber. These will be considered in the next
section.
These two photos look nearly identical!
The (black) conveyor belting piece just discussed is
actually mounted here, but then it is entirely covered by
the four pieces of wood. The wood pieces function as
many things, including squeezing the overlapped poly
tarp edges under the conveyor piece for good
airtightness and watertightness. They also provide a
strong frame for the door which will later be mounted, as
well as a solid structure for the hinge supports and latch
for that door.
They also provide a strong structure to support the four
pipes which must pass through the sidewall of the unit.
These photos might be confusing as the tarp surface
which is seen through the door opening is actually the
OPPOSIDE sidewall of the chamber!
The street elbows have some radius, so we found it
necessary to mount the closet flanges slightly raised up,
on the 2x10 lumber scraps, to get the PVC pipes inside
the chamber nearer to the side wall, to less interfere
with the movement of all the material that you will put
inside it to tumble around. The first photo here shows
the closet flanges which are permanently attached to
the short interior PVC pipes and mounted to the wood
frame structure.
The second photo here shows a SECOND pair of closet
flanges which are BOLTED, flange to flange, to the
permanent ones. The result is that there is a short stub
pipe which will stick out through the thickness of the
foam insulation. It allows easy connection to the
necessary SMALL blower for the one and to a possible
outlet duct to a nearby greenhouse or elsewhere for the
other. As will be seen in the next photo, ALL this is
covered over by the outer two inches thick of the foam,
where the only things visible there are the two pipe
stubs sticking slightly through the foam.
As just noted, only the very outermost ends of the 4"
PVC pipe connections are now visible, regarding the
airpath.
The barb elbows of the water connections are also
visible just outward of (above in the photo) the larger
connections.
The overall final appearance is therefore quite clean
looking, with only the access door (not yet shown here)
and the four pipe connections visible at all.
Two digital thermometers are also seen here, which are
somewhat optional. They cost around $13 each, from
any of many sources. Some such thermometers have a
design limit of 140°F, which would be a problem. Most
can operate to 160°F, which is excellent. These shown
happen to operate up to 110°C or 230°F, which is not
really necessary. One of these monitors the temperature
inside the chamber and the other monitors the
temperature of the water in the poly tubing. The two
readings are nearly always virtually the same, except
when massive hot water usage has occurred, and the
recovery rate of the water heating can be then
monitored. I find the greatest value of monitoring the
chamber temperature to be when any variation occurs.
It helps me know what I might want to do, regarding
adding more water or turning on the air blower or
speeding up or slowing down the tumbling. As long as
the device can rotate regularly, and there is plenty of
free water in a puddle inside it, and there is plenty of
air/oxygen being blown into the chamber, the
decomposition process seems to be very reliable. If
TOO MUCH airflow is provided, it can operate at a lower
temperature. As long as that temp is at least 125°F, that
is no problem regarding thermophilic bacteria activity
and it can even ensure excellent decomposition
efficiency. If thicker pieces of material are used, or there
is too much airflow provided, then the chamber operates
cooler and therefore due to the different (mesophilic)
bacteria, and the chamber temp stays below 125°F, with
slower decomposition, which seems desirable during
milder weather. However, if the chamber has already
been operating at the higher temperatures, and then it
drops to the lower temperatures, then the thermophilic
bacteria can die, and a restart might be needed in
order to again get it up to the higher temperature
operation, with some new mesophilic bacteria from a
couple handfuls of black dirt. If the temp ever gets
ABOVE 150°F, I generally turn the blower on, to
make sure the thermophilic bacteria do not die from
excessive heat. It is currently still unknown just how
high a temperature they can survive, so this might
eventually be increased to 155°F or 160°F or higher.
This particular HG 3a unit has an additional
thermometer inside it as an experiment. There are
REMOTE SENSING thermometers which cost around
$25 or so at many big box stores. They are generally
sold as thermometers to monitor OUTDOOR
temperature. They do not require wires between the
temp sensor and the readout, so the wires seen in the
photos may not be required. However, the
manufacturers do not give any information regarding
how well the remote sensor unit can withstand long
periods at fairly high temperatures and very high
humidity.
INSIDE the door opening, the crinkly appearance is that
of the plastic tarp along the opposite wall. You can also
see the top of the pile of partial hay bales and straw
bales inside, which then filled a little over half of it up.
On the opposite side of the unit, NONE of these are
visible, and it is a simple smooth flat circle of surface!
The blower (see comments below) gets attached (to our
right larger connection) and the other connection could
either be left unconnected (which then exhausts high
humidity and carbon dioxide and some occasional
musty smells into the room area) or a flexible dryer vent
hose could send those exhaust materials outdoors or to
some other area. The fact that there is a lot of available
warmth, a lot of humidity and a lot of carbon dioxide,
makes it an ideal source for feeding into a nearby
greenhouse, which can greatly increase the growth of
fruits and vegetables.
Hinge mounts for the feed door can be securely
mounted to the (now invisible) 2x10 pieces of lumber
which framed the sides of the door opening. A (here
horizontal) rod then becomes the hinge axle for the door
being then able to open upward. I find it efficient to use
one hand to raise the feed door and the other hand to
toss in whatever new material is to go into the chamber.
This then does not cause the door to the 150°F
chamber to be open for more than a few seconds at a
time. If the door is left open for a few minutes, the
chamber cools down to below the 125°F that the
thermophilic bacteria best thrive in, so it is best to not
leave the feed door open for any longer than necessary.
The poly pipe barb fittings can be connected to adaptors
to standard hose or iron pipe, conveniently using
standard washing machine supply hoses. One attaches
to a water supply source (with a checkvalve to ensure
that hot water is not fed backwards into a cold water
supply line) and the other connected to hot water taps
or other usage of hot water.
The entire (ugly pink) foam insulation surface can be
covered by an assortment of decorations or materials.
Fake naugahyde is of moderate expense and easy to
work with, and capable of making many attractive
appearances. If this device is to be installed outdoors or
in a rough environment, it may be appropriate to cover it
all in weatherproof and/or damage resistant material.
After three and a half years of learning about these HG devices, I have found that nearly everyone kills off the thermophilic
bacteria MANY TIMES, before they eventually figure out what they are doing wrong. In general, they all (including me!) did
the same thing wrong. Once the device has warmed to over 125°F, the original Mesophilic bacteria seem to all die and they
get replaced by Thermophilic bacteria. That is a GOOD thing, as Thermophilic bacteria attack many more types of organic
materials, and decompose them DOZENS OF TIMES FASTER! The Mesophilic bacteria seem to be rather sturdy and even
hard to kill, where the Thermophilic bacteria seem to die if you cross your eyes at them! As long as you then forever keep the
interior above 125°F, everything proceeds excellently! But when you turn on a BIG blower to send in a burst of COLD air, the
Thermophilic bacteria are badly affected and they tend to all suddenly die! SO DON'T DO THAT!
Up above, I mentioned the idea someone came up with of attaching a warm air furnace and hot water pipes as a Training Aid
for you as you are learning how not to kill off your thermophilic bacteria. In the event that you have great difficulties in this
regard, it may be worth doing. By installing a thermocouple switch inside the chamber, that switch could detect any time the
temperature dropped below, say, 135°F, then that switch could turn on a small furnace and its small blower that would then
send some extra 145°F air into the chamber! This can actually ensure TWO of the bacteria's main needs, the supply of
warmth and of air/oxygen. A separate digital hygrometer inside the chamber (humidity measurer) could alert for any need for
extra (hot) water to be squirted into the chamber! In this way, it may be fairly difficult to foul anything up enough to kill off your
bacteria!
I need to provide you some numbers here toward your learning curve! I will provide THREE important examples to learn
from:
A Successful first load of All Fresh Cut Lawn Grass
In your FIRST RUN, the bacteria will likely not be truly happy yet, and so they may have difficulty in keeping the temp above
125°F. So you may only have the much slower Mesophilic bacteria working. At THAT RATE OF DECOMPOSITION, maybe
half a pound of material being decomposed per hour, by standard thermodynamic biochemistry, we know that they need to
use up about 0.6 pound of oxygen per hour. Since air is only about 1/5 oxygen, that means that the bacteria will need to use
up around 3 pounds of air per hour. A pound of air takes up around 13 cubic feet, so this is saying that DURING AN HOUR,
around 40 cubic feet of air needs to get replaced, AT THAT RATE OF OPERATION.
For the record, decomposing 0.5 pound of material per hour creates around 4,500 Btu/hr (since one pound of many organic
materials contains around 9,000 Btu/lb.) This is comparable to a 1500 Watt or 5,000 Btu electric space heater.
We had mentioned above that the chamber we designed and described here has an internal volume of around 40 cubic feet.
Some of that is taken up with organic materials, but 30 cubic feet of air inside the chamber is realistic. So at the rate of
operation described here, as a SUCCESSFUL first load, the air inside the chamber will be completely used up in maybe 45
minutes. But it will NOT start out at that rate! While the interior temperature is an earlier 80°F or 90°F, VERY little oxygen gets
consumed (see the next example). So you probably do NOT have to send in fresh air 45 minutes after starting. Watch the
inside temperature. AFTER IT HAS CROSSED 110°F, you can start counting your 45 minutes! So replacement air will then be
necessary, to not kill the bacteria from suffocation and lack of oxygen.
HOWEVER!
Say you get an electric blower which YOU consider to be SMALL, maybe 300 cfm. You have TWO issues here! IF you intend
to replace ALL the 30 cubic feet of air inside the chamber, let's calculate how long your blower should be run! Thirty cubic
feet PER FORTY FIVE MINUTES is the same as about 2/3 cubic foot of air per minute needed. But you have a blower that
moves 300 cfm, right? You would need to turn that blower on for, WHAT?, 1/450 of a minute or ONE SEVENTH OF A
SECOND in order to replace that 2/3 CUBIC foot, and then immediately shut it off until doing it again a minute later! (It would
be a nightmare to be turning a switch on and then off again 1/7 second later, every minute!) So you might wait 15 minutes, to
replace 1/3 of all the air inside the chamber, 10 cubic feet. This then would need that blower to be on for around 1/30 minute,
or two seconds. Notice this is still a VERY short period for the blower to be on!
But you actually cause ANOTHER problem even with that 2 second air blast. You got rid of 1/3 the 130°F air inside the
chamber and it suddenly replaced it all with COLD air (65°F room air or 40°F garage air)! So the AVERAGE air temperature
inside your chamber now drops to around 110°F (2/3 of the air is still at the 130°F and one third is at 65°F). So without
realizing it, you again may have just killed off all your thermophilic bacteria due to being too cold for their survival!
OK. Now you see the two issues that you WILL cause as you start learning to use an HG 3a!
EVERYONE seems to turn their electric blowers on for several minutes, making sure that they are not SUFFOCATING their
bacteria, sure that they have gotten good oxygen into the thermophilic bacteria. But they are already mass murderers, in
having killed off all the bacteria by making them too cold to survive, within the first couple seconds!
I suppose you could knit billions of really tiny jackets for your bacteria???
See the value of having a REALLY, REALLY SMALL FAN OR BLOWER?
You read these words but you will not actually believe this stuff until you have killed off a lot of bacteria! I know because that
was true of me!
So you need a LOT LESS fresh air than you realize. But even the little blower fan from a computer moves a lot of air. But you
will soon see why a BIG blower is needed, AFTER you figure out what you are doing! Stay tuned!
So I have a recommendation for EVERYONE! Still build the HG 3a as described above, with the 4" PVC air path connections
in and out. But while you are LEARNING to operate it, buy two "PVC Reducer Bushings" to block off MOST of that open area
(for now). Like all the way down to 1" or even 3/4" open area (on BOTH). THEN, if you use a blower that is too large and
strong, the skinny airpath restricts the amount of actual (cold) air that you could be sending in. Say you get it restricted
enough so that the airflow is just TEN cubic feet per minute. Remember that you have about THIRTY cubic feet of (very hot)
air inside the chamber, which gets used up in around 45 minutes. So say you turn on your SUPER RESTRICTED electric
blower now FOR EXACTLY ONE MINUTE. You would then replace TEN cubic feet of the thirty cubic feet inside there, which
LEAVES 20 cubic feet of hot air inside next to the hot decomposing organic material. In other words, under these conditions,
if you have a timer turn this RESTRICTED blower on for a minute, once every 15 minutes, you may not even kill many
bacteria! Hooray! There are even better ways you can even out the temperature inside the chamber with an even SMALLER
blower, fan and airflow. Imagine if you could provide 0.7 cfm. THEN your microblower could stay on permanently! So there
are ways you could cycle a small blower or fan on and off regularly, or get a micro blower to stay on continuously. Size?
Maybe about the size of a fan needed to give a parakeet a gust of air. REALLY small!
You will have supplied them with the oxygen they desperately need, without freezing them to death (literally)! And the
chamber interior can then remain above the necessary 125°F, they will have plenty of oxygen and water and water vapor
inside where you might hear microscopic chomping sounds from the thermophilic bacteria decomposing the organic
materials you had dumped into the HG 3a chamber.
Got the picture?
It is REALLY important to be constantly monitoring the temperature inside the chamber for the first few times you are
practicing. Later, that will not be necessary, for entirely different reasons!
The bacteria DO desperately need fresh air to both survive and to do what we want, but they cannot handle TOO MUCH cold
air!
SO, one result during the past three and a half years is that nearly everyone has used electric blowers or fans that have been
FAR too big! Someone recently told me of trying an electric hair dryer. Interesting idea, of providing HOT air, but that seems
rather expensive and wasteful to me. And those things move hundreds of cfm of air, so again, just a second or two, until you
get farther along in your learning.
A less successful first load of straw, leaves, etc
In this FIRST RUN, the bacteria will likely NOT be happy. In fact, only the Mesophilic bacteria will likely be doing anything
because you never got the interior up to the necessary 125°F for the Thermophilic bacteria to take over. IF they are
struggling to keep the internal temp at 90°F, the rate of decomposition is very slow. At THAT RATE OF DECOMPOSITION,
maybe half a pound of material being decomposed per DAY, by standard thermodynamic biochemistry, they need to use up
about 0.6 pound of oxygen PER DAY. Since air is only about 1/5 oxygen, that means that the bacteria will need to use up
around 3 pounds of air per DAY or 1/8 pound per hour. A pound of air takes up around 13 cubic feet, so this is saying that
DURING AN HOUR, around 1.5 cubic feet of air needs to get replaced, AT THAT RATE OF OPERATION.
For the record, decomposing 0.5 pound of material per DAY creates around 200 Btu/hr (since one pound of many organic
materials contains around 9,000 Btu/lb.) Not much!
Above, we thought we had problems in too big a blower when the need was 24 times as great, so imagine now! In fact, THIS
example suggests a DIFFERENT approach on your part! Notice that in TWENTY HOURS of operation, around 30 cubic feet
of air would be needed, in other words, ONE CHAMBER FULL OF AIR. So the suggestion, if your first load is anything other
than freshly cut lawn grass, is to just CLOSE BOTH AIR PATHS COMPLETELY! That will allow the operation to proceed for
essentially an entire day, before the bacteria start coughing for lack of air. YOU would get a chance to see how the whole
thing works, although there is a good chance that you may be sacrificing some innocent bacteria in the process! If you
followed the restrictors reasoning above, and your internal temperature is staying down in the 90°F or 100°F range, maybe a
ONE SECOND burst after six or eight hours. They are VERY little! There are a LOT of them (billions) in there, but they still
have very small nostrils.
Between these two examples described, you can then LEARN to let surprisingly small amounts of air in, keeping good notes
while you do. You WILL learn and soon have really happy bacteria munching away and producing heat for you.
Full Bore Operation
This is at the maximum performance which I have yet seen, around 10 pounds of material being decomposed each hour.
This is around TWENTY TIMES the rate of decomposition that the SUCCESSFUL FIRST RUN was. Meaning that twenty
times the rate of air supply is needed.
For the record, decomposing 10 pound of material per hour creates around 90,000 Btu/hr (since one pound of many organic
materials contains around 9,000 Btu/lb.) That is plenty heat for nearly any house on the coldest day of the winter, anywhere
on Earth.
THIS is actually why I designed this thing with 4" diameter air paths! The bacteria then NEED TO USE UP around 800 cubic
feet of air per hour, or around 14 cfm, an actual significant rate of airflow which NEEDS a larger diameter pair of airpaths!
The fact that I DESIGNED it with 4" diameter airpaths was sort of because I had done the calculations to KNOW what would
be necessary when it was really operating excellently. I had not then realized that nearly everyone would have lots of early
problems in providing TOO MUCH COLD air and killing off their bacteria. The solution of still building it normally and sliding in
(TEMPORARY) PVC Reducer Bushings seems to solve the beginners' problems while still being able to operate impressively
after learning has progressed!
You are not actually done yet!
Once you have really figured it out!
There is another calculation that arises but only AFTER you really have figured out what you are doing!
Take this last example, of the maximum performance which I have seen in an HG 3a, around 90,000 Btu/hr. It turns out that
with the MINIMUM NEEDED AIRFLOWS we calculated above, the air inside the chamber would get FAR TOO HOT, and you
would kill the bacteria in yet another way. Nothing to really worry about, because few people seem to get to that point yet!
And installing a thermostat inside the chamber to turn on the blower switch at 150°F, will keep you from frying your bacteria!
It turns out that Thermodynamics enables us to calculate just how hot the gases would get! There is a number known as the
Heat Capacity (or Specific Heat) of any material, which indicates how much heat is needed to raise one pound of the material
by one degree Fahrenheit. For water, (at a certain temperature and pressure), it is DEFINED as being 1.000 Btu/lb/°F. For air
(at reasonable temperature and pressure) it is 0.241 Btu/lb/°F. We just calculated that we will be creating hot gas at around
800 cfh, which is roughly SIXTY POUNDS of air per hour. If we obtain fresh air at 70°F and exhaust it at 150 °F, then we will
be raising that air by about 80°F. So we can do a simple calculation here. This will determine how much heat will be carried
away by that 150°F air leaving the chamber. Our 60 lb of air per hour times 80°F increase in its temperature times our factor
of 0.241 tells us that the exiting air at 150°F would carry away around 1200 Btu/hr. See the problem?
We will ACTUALLY be having 90,000 Btus of heat that we are creating and we need to get rid of somehow. What we just
calculated indicates we could not just rely on the NEEDED airflow to be able to carry away enough heat. If we did, we would
have to be sending out exiting air at well over 1,000°F to carry away that much heat! Do you see the solution?
Once the unit was starting to really roll, the temperature of the air and material inside the chamber will rise to 150°F, and
would continue to rise, which would kill off your bacteria! So HERE is where you need to turn on your blower for a
different purpose, actually the purpose the whole thing was designed for! Since you NEED to get rid of 90,000 Btus,
you can do the calculation we just did backwards! You know the amount of heat, and the temp differential, and now we need
to know HOW MUCH AIR HAS TO BE EXPELLED at 150°F, to keep it going evenly. Still here? Well, that number TO CARRY
AWAY THE HEAT, is about 75 times as much air flow as is NEEDED regarding the oxygen supply. So where while learning,
we were totally concerned about having proper airflow and avoiding it getting to COLD, NOW we have the opposite
situations! Instead of having 14 cfm leaving the device, in order to carry away all the heat the little critters produce, we will
need to be sending around 1,000 cfm of 150°F air being sent out of the unit!
This is SIGNIFICANT airflow and heat flow! Your conventional furnace has a blower which moves at least 1,000 cfm, but it
probably cannot achieve 150°F, it probably can only produce around 125°F. Still, you have always found that plenty to keep
your house cozy! Here, these tiny bacteria are willing to supply you with that much and actually nearly double what you have
ever been used to having! (Actually, I rarely operate mine above 45,000 Btu/hr, as that matches the performance of the
conventional [gas] furnace that I used to use.)
Now you see even better WHY I picked the (giant) 4" PVC airpaths for in and out. All the struggles that rookies have in getting
an HG 3a to operate correctly SEEMS to be because of TOO LARGE an airpath. But actually, a single 4" airpath is actually
NOT LARGE ENOUGH for that 90,000 Btu/hr level of operation. I only maxxed my HG 3a unit out to 90,000 Btu/hr once, just
to confirm to myself that it could do it, and when I could not get rid of all that heat, I killed my bacteria that day (by frying
them)! I generally keep the operation of MY HG 3a down to below 45,000 Btu/hr, and a truly powerful (second) blower forces
enough air through the HG 3a unit so that I do not cook my bacteria.
The RANGE of operation of this heating system is extremely broad. At the one end, where rookies play, the necessary
amount of airflow (for oxygen reasons) is VERY low. At the other end, when it is really pumping out heat, airflow has to
resemble a tornado! Other heating systems only operate at one amount of heat output, so only one blower speed is ever
necessary. It is a complication that you need to deal with!
We can revisit the Less Successful mode, and see the reason the unit has so much thermal insulation around it! We
calculated above that the unit then creates only 200 Btu/hr from action of the (mesophilic) bacteria. There are around 75
square feet of the R20 insulation. If we say that the bacteria were able to get it up to around 100°F inside the chamber, and
the garage that it is in is at 50°F, we can calculate the total heat loss through the insulation. It is 75 square feet times 50°F
temperature differential divided by the 20 or around 180 Btu/hr total heat loss. Since we are only creating 200 Btu/hr, there is
very little heat remaining that needs to exist from the exiting pipe.
This is because of the excellent R20 insulation. At only R15 insulation the total heat loss would be greater than the amount
of heat the bacteria are creating, and the interior could not maintain that 100°F temperature. With all operation where greater
amounts of heat are created, the heat loss effect of the external walls becomes less important, and it is nearly irrelevant at
high outputs. At our full bore situation, where the chamber interior is at 150°F, the heat loss is then (150 50) * 75 / 20 or 375
Btu/hr, out of the 90,000 Btu/hr that the unit was then producing. Nearly ALL the heat created can then be sent to other
rooms through ducts, over 89,500 Btu/hr.
So the importance of the insulation is greatest at lowest performance!
This all confirms that ONCE you get your unit operating even moderately well, it gets easier and easier to do it! Like riding a
bike, I guess, really hard at first but then really easy to do! And sort of for a similar reason. At 1 mph, it is hard to keep a bike
balanced, but once you can accomplish 5 mph or 10 mph, it is really easy!
ANOTHER enhancement regarding these matters regarding consistent performance of the HG 3a has recently arisen (late in
2010)! TOO MUCH oxygen is NOT the problem! Too much COLD AIR is! So a logical enhancement seems to be in providing
a "incoming air preheater"! Having any COLD incoming air have to pass THROUGH a 15foot or 20foot long tube INSIDE
the chamber will warm that incoming air up! And so, within reason, if you happen to send in too much fresh air, you will not be
killing your bacteria from cold. In fact, you may not even be chilling them at all, and that seems like an ideal situation, where
all your bacteria will then have lots of oxygen, lots of water and water vapor, and still be cozy warm, their ideal environment.
No need for heavy bacteria overcoats! This enhancement might definitely make the HG 3a far less susceptible to suddenly
having the bacteria all die and having the unit go cold and therefore having to start it all over again. THIS may enable the HG
3a to be REALLY "userfriendly"!
Notice that I just described how you WILL kill your bacteria from making them too cold, and also by making them too hot. We
have also discussed suffocating them with too little oxygen, and drowning them under water. TRY to behave better and to
treat your bacteria properly, OK?
If you and your bacteria can come to get along, they WILL keep your entire house as cozy as you could ever dream of! But
they DO have quirky needs, which it will take you a while to learn!
Here are two factoids for your interest:
From Biochemistry, when ONE POUND of (glucose) decomposes, it chemically requires around 1.1 POUND of oxygen for the
reaction to occur. Since air is only 1/5 oxygen, that means that 5.5 pounds of air is consumed. This reaction then creates 1.5
pound of carbon dioxide and 0.6 pound of water. (More precise numbers are 180 grams of glucose uses 192 grams of
oxygen, or 900 grams of air, to create 264 grams of carbon dioxide and 108 grams of water.) The air is around 72 cubic feet.
Any other amount of organic material has proportionate numbers. For example, when ONETENTH POUND of (glucose)
decomposes, it chemically requires around 0.11 POUND of oxygen for the reaction to occur. Since air is only 1/5 oxygen, that
means that 0.55 pounds of air is consumed. This reaction then creates 0.15 pound of carbon dioxide and 0.06 pound of
water. The air is about 7 cubic feet.
Since photosynthesis initially creates glucose, all other organic materials are later made from glucose, and we are making a
reasonable assumption that other organic materials are very close to glucose in their Biochemistry reactions.
The plumbing (and potentially air) connections would be an additional problem if the device was allowed to always rotate
in one direction. There ARE special rotary fittings available but they tend to be expensive. Instead, we have designed it
where the entire assembly rocks back and forth, ONLY ROTATING ABOUT 3/4 turn and then reversing. All of the
material inside still gets to be gravitytumbled inside, but the plumbing and air path connections become far simpler. The
air hoses for air/oxygen in and carbon dioxide out can then be simple standard clothes dryer vent flexible hoses. The
water connections can be standard hoses used to connect a washing machine to house piping. They should all last a
number of years. Keep in mind that this rotates so slowly that it is hard to even notice, the FASTEST being around once
per hour. (An electric motor can then be used with a LOT of gear reduction, to rotate the drum. This motor might then be
DIRECT CURRENT, where simply using a relay to reverse the wires makes the motor turn the other way, so it could
oscillate back and forth its 270° of rotation. This limited rotation aspect also permits adding a "cooking chamber" which
would never have to cross under the mass of material inside the chamber.
You have scraps of pieces of the thicker plywood. An optional feature you might consider is to cut out a number of arc
shaped pieces, which have an inner radius of maybe 28" and an outer radius of slightly over 34.5". They would be mounted
to either of the side wood circles (by screws and construction adhesive) such that a larger radius of the plywood (of just over
34.5") is present there. The only purpose for this is so the wood could extend beyond the 4" thick of foam insulation which
surrounds the entire structure. An electric motor with a small pulley on it could then rub against that (circular) edge to very
slowly rotate the whole thing. The rotation (actually rocking) rate only needs to be once per hour, so the motor would use that
30:1 torque multiplication to turn the entire unit. (It CAN be rotated faster if you wish but there is no known advantage in
doing so.)
A "trap door" then must be made in one of the sides. It should not be closer than 6" from the circular rim, but can otherwise
be of somewhat optional shape and size. It will provide a way for you to reach inside to mount the few last small items, and it
will also be the opening through which you will later add organic materials. It obviously should be large enough so both of
these tasks are as easy as possible.
The door needs to fit decently tightly, and it needs to have a SEPARABLE provision for its two or four layers of foam insulation
attached to it. The outdoor foam can be an advantage for the outermost layer, just to be more abrasion resistant.
The "remaining items" are the water pipe connections and the airflow connections.
We know that we desire a standard decomposition rate of around 5 pounds of material per hour, with a maximum of 10
pounds per hour. From our previous discussions in related webpages regarding the biochemistry of what is going on, we
know that this will create around 45,000 Btu/hr (90,000 Btu/hr) of heat. We also can calculate the amount of air needed and
exhaust removed for those decomposition rates. You can confirm this with the equations given in those other pages. We
learned that about 12.6 grammoles of chemical reaction occurs per hour. Our five pounds of glucose combines with about
5.3 pounds of oxygen in the intake air, to form about 7.3 pounds of carbon dioxide and about 3 pounds of water (or water
vapor). Air is only around 1/5 oxygen, so we will need to supply around 26 pounds of air per hour, each of which takes up
around 13 cubic feet. This means that we need an INFLOW of around 338 cubic feet per hour, or 6 cubic feet per minute (6
CFM). This is a VERY small air flow rate! Because of the Law of Partial Pressures, the outgoing exhaust air cannot be more
than around 4.4% carbon dioxide. We know that we need to exhaust about 7.3 pounds of carbon dioxide every hour, so this
means that we need to exhaust around 140 pounds of exhaust AIR each hour, which each take up around 14 cubic feet (due
to the higher temperature of that exhaust gas). This tells us that we should expect to need to exhaust around 1960 cubic feet
per hour of air or 33 CFM. Note that we could supply 6 cfm of air to provide the needed oxygen, but that airflow might not
exhaust enough carbon dioxide!
We should use this larger number regarding the exhaust in designing the airflow through the system. It is still a rather small
air flow rate. When we might reduce the actual airflow, the main effect is that there is still a lot of carbon dioxide near the
bacteria, so they can less easily get to oxygen, which can slow down the process. In other words, we can have a moderate
level of control as to how efficiently the bacteria are decomposing the material in the chamber by how regularly we have the
small blower pushing new air/oxygen into the chamber. We may also want to double that capability, in case we should ever
want it to decompose the maximum 10 pounds per hour, which means we should provide airpath sizes where 66 CFM of air
can pass. We choose to use a 4" dryer duct size of connection for the airflows, along with a very small blower (in the INLET
side) which can easily move around that level of airflow. This is actually a convenient size, as it means that commonly
available flexible dryer vent hose can be used.
The (two) 4" diameter holes are made with their centerlines 4" in from the outer edge (in other words, 27" from the axle. We
chose to use (toilet) closet floor flanges, to be able to ensure that we can mount them with no moisture or air leaks through
the sidewall (due to the fact that we have to penetrate the tarp there). Caulking is used UNDER the flange (and against the
tarp) for this reason. Flatheaded bolts are used to mount these closet flanges rather than the usual wood screws, for better
strength and durability.
A variant of this is shown in these photos, where the cutout for the door opening (in the plywood sidewall) is made a
trapezoidal shape which allows the entire area for the door AND tubes and pipes to NOT have to penetrate the tarp itself (but
rather the piece of black conveyor belting shown).
One is mounted near one side of the circle, and the other is mounted on the opposite side of the (same side) circle. One will
generally stay near the top (due to the oscillatory motion) and it will provide air/oxygen IN for the device, but ONLY when it is
near the top as it rotates. The other will then be near the bottom, where the more dense (heavier) carbon dioxide tends to
accumulate. Due to the air/oxygen being pushed into the chamber by the blower, the carbon dioxide will be forced out
through that lower hole. Standard 4" PVC elbows and pipe sections (just beyond the 4" thickness of the insulation) gets this
connection to be near the axle shaft where the flexible dryer vent hose attaches to it there, to finally connect to 4" PVC pipes
which are mounted to the fixed support stand of the system.
If the capability of providing domestic hot water is to be also used, those connections can be handled in similar ways, where
the connection uses standard (flexible) clothes washing machine supply hoses for the water connections, also near the axle
of the system so that there is minimal actual motion of the flexible hoses. Such hoses usually come with a builtin filter which
should be removed for greater water flow rates.
Standard (micro) switches could be installed to stop the device from rotating beyond the desired 270° of rotation and to
cause the motor to reverse, so it would then constantly oscillate back and forth. This actually results in one portion of the
inside of the chamber never having to pass through the puddle of water that is always kept in the bottom. This is essentially
why it can have an openable door in the location shown in the photos, as that door area can never be at the very bottom
where there MIGHT be several inches of water in a puddle!
An attractive possibility which I am currently (12/07) experimenting with is where a (sturdy) 6" or 8" diameter thick aluminum
pipe is installed across the entire 24" width of the chamber, but which has an end cap and is well grouted to be watertight. I
see this as an attractive "cooking chamber" where even hard boiled eggs (without any water!) and hamburgers can be
cooked. The cooking is at a slower rate than on a stovetop burner, but the 150°F temperature of the chamber is quickly
conducted through the aluminum walls to provide close to a 150°F ovenlike cooking temperature. That is plenty to kill any
dangerous germs (only around 125°F is needed for that), and food seems to cook very evenly, without ever burning the
surfaces, in around two to three times as long as on a stovetop! I am looking forward to seeing if spaghetti can be cooked in
it!
This (standardsized) unit has a total diameter of around 5'9" so it can easily be carried (or rolled) through normal doorways.
However, the width dimension of what we have described here is essentially 32", so if it has to pass through a standard 32"
wide interior doorway, you may need either hold off installing one layer of the side foam or remove the casing trim of the
doorway!
This unit has a total surface area of about 72.5 square feet. The insulation that we have described is all R20. The
temperature difference if this unit is placed in the heated portion of a house is around (145°F 70°F) 75°F. This indicates that
the heat loss outward through the insulation is 72.5 * 75 / 20 or 272 Btu/hr. This very minimal loss allows the contents of the
chamber to rapidly get up to its operating temperature. (This very low value might indicate that future units might not need
quite as much insulation, to still perform well.)
When the chamber contains 400 pounds of organic material and also 200 pounds of water, the thermal capacity is around
350 Btu/degree. That means that it first requires 350 times 75°F or 26,000 Btus of heat to be internally developed to first get
up to 150°F. It also means that the interior material can release 350 * 25°F or around 9,000 Btus of energy in dropping the
interior temperature the 25°F from 150°F down to 125°F, the general range of operation of the thermophilic bacteria of this
device. If the entire amount of 150°F hot water is removed (as for clothes washing or a really hot bath), when the pipe all fills
with cold (55°F) water, it briefly uses much of the capability of the system to heat up all that new water up to the 150°F, a
process that generally should only take around 15 minutes of the heat to accomplish. The warm air heating capability
therefore drops somewhat when large amounts of hot water are withdrawn, but recovery is generally within 15 minutes max.
A variant Regarding the Support and Mounting
This is essentially exactly the same device but with two differences. (1) there are NO axles and mounting pillars at all; and (2)
additional plywood is attached to the sidewalls, to create a rigid and very strong plywood ring on both sides of the unit. (This
variant is VERY easy to roll around to get it into the desired room in a house, as the plywood rings extend slightly beyond the
insulation and are therefore like giant wooden wheels! Which is actually the point. They have an ACCURATE consistent outer
diameter, where they can each ride on top of two rollers which are mounted to a base assembly. There is NOTHING actually
holding the HG unit in place (except gravity) and it could be lifted off of the rollers if needed. This results in a smoother,
cleaner appearance, and there are no obstructions to get tangled with the hoses or vents. With this variant, there is no
obvious way to keep the unit from rotating beyond the 270 degrees that is possible with the HG 3a unit assembled above.
Care would be needed to not allow the hoses and vent connections to get all twisted up. This variant may eventually be
called the HG 3ab unit.
A groove can be made in the edges of a fulldiameter 3/4" plywood circle, to essentially act as a giant PULLEY of 69" in
diameter! An electric motor (like from an old washer or drier) could have a very small pulley on the shaft (maybe 1.75" pitch
diameter). This would provide a torque multiplier of around 40:1, and would also slow down the rate of rotation to 1/40 of that
of the motor itself. Additional pulleys or gearing might be appropriate to cause the whole thing to rotate fairly slowly.
Getting Heat Out For the House
There are multiple ways to get the usable heat out of this device for a house. They each have different overall efficiencies,
complexities, costs, and potential advantages and disadvantages. These different methods use the exact same device
described in the construction above. These are presented in no particular order:
Used essentially like a room space heater, such as ventless gas logs in a fireplace or a natural gas or propane or
kerosene space heater. Neither the air/oxygen intake nor the exhaust pipe is connected to anything, except for the
required blower to send air into the chamber as appropriate. This device is so extremely efficient and complete at
decomposing all organic materials which are made of hydrocarbons and carbohydrates that it can safely be used in
that manner. In that case, it is nearly 100% efficient, but there are two considerations which are important. First, an
ODSsensor (Oxygen Depletion Sensor) could be important if used in a limited space as it WILL use up the oxygen in
that enclosed space and might therefore represent a safety concern. A separately purchased ODS sensor could either
shut down the operation of the device or it might operate a second blower to bring in an external supply of air to the
room or to the unit's intake.
A variant of this is therefore to have the INTAKE tube (and its blower) connected to an intake duct so that it always
accesses air from outdoors or a basement, such that it would therefore not use the oxygen up in the living space.
This approach would allow the "exhaust gases" to simply exit into the room, identical to the way that natural gas or
kerosene or propane space heaters do, or that kitchen cooking ranges often do. This is Officially considered safe
because the result of the process of COMPLETE COMBUSTION (burning) in such products are ONLY water vapor and
carbon dioxide. That is also true of this HeatGreen 3a device, where the decomposition of the organic hydrocarbons
and carbohydrates also results in those same water and carbon dioxide products. HOWEVER, there are a couple
differences. IF you would somehow not provide sufficient oxygen/air for the device, the decomposition process could
become anaerobic rather than aerobic, which then could cause the decomposition process to result in creating
hydrogen sulfide, methane, ammonia and other gases as product gases. Methane itself has no odor but if substantial
amounts of it were produced it could represent a hazard. And IF you dump materials such as random food scraps into
the chamber which are NOT entirely hydrocarbons or carbohydrates, then some smells could be produced which
would directly enter the living space. The fact that it COULD happen means that ammonia gas or hydrogen sulfide gas
or other such gases could represent nasty smells. It means that a careful selection of the materials dumped in the
chamber would be important, if this DIRECT, spaceheater usage, is to be used. (An exhaust hose connection could
always later be added if any of these issues were later discovered to be a problem).
Second, as with room space heaters and unvented gas fireplace logs, the indoor relative humidity can greatly rise due
to adding so much additional water vapor to the room air, so condensation could occur on cold windows, etc.
Note also that this usage would therefore require that all the needed organic materials would have to be carried
through the living area of the house. This has long sometimes been a complaint of heating with a woodstove, where
the path from the door to the stove has often been littered with things which have fallen off the firewood as it was
carried. That issue is even more present when the material is in the form of cut lawn grass or hay or straw!
This configuration is excellently suited for (directly, internally) heating a greenhouse as the resulting carbon dioxide and
water vapor are both beneficial to the plant growth, along with the heating.
The "exhaust" pipe from this device could be extended to a living area separate from where the device actually is. This
would still have the odor possibilities described above, but would allow greater flexibility in providing heat to other
locations. In other words, the device could be installed in a location outside the living area, such as a basement or
garage, such that the organic materials would then not have to be carried through the living area of the house. The
overall efficiency is slightly less as the radiant and convective losses of the device itself would not represent productive
heat for the house.
The "exhaust" pipe could be greatly extended THROUGH ROOMS OF THE HOUSE and/or run through a heat
exchanger. In the 1970s, people sometimes tried to have a woodstove's smokepipe go long distances horizontally to a
distant chimney so more heat from it radiated out to the room. For a woodstove, especially an airtight woodstove, that
was a very bad idea, as it caused large amounts of dangerous creosote to condense in those horizontal runs of
smokepipe and also greatly reduced the NATURAL draft of the fire. This device is very different, in not being able to
create creosote in the first place and also in having a small blower which always provides the necessary "DRAFT" for
the decomposition.
The blower used to drive air into the chamber would ensure that sufficient flow rates are present. The exhaust pipe
would here eventually extend to outdoors, much like the PVC exhaust of a modern highefficiency condensing furnace.
This approach eliminates any chance of odors entering the living space, but it reduces the overall efficiency due to the
fact that some heat will remain in the exhaust gases which will therefore be lost outdoors. If the heat exchange system
is extensive, this approach can have extremely high overall efficiency.
Any of the intake and any of the exhaust provisions described here could be combined, with the unit either inside the
living space or in a basement or garage.
The extensive water heating capability of this system can be used to provide heat for a hydronic house heating system.
A (required) hydronic circulating pump would transfer the produced heat to radiators in the desired house living
spaces. The amount of poly tubing described in the instructions above would only be able to capture and therefore
provide around 27,000 Btu/hr of the 45,000 or 90,000 Btu/hr that the device can generate. Some of that generated
heat would also be lost in the exhaust gases (unless one of the exhaust heat capture methods mentioned above are
added). Installation of additional poly pipe could be useful to be able to capture more heat energy into the water inside
the chamber.
Conventional hydronic heating room radiators can be used. Even (ugly) car radiator(s) could be used for the heat
exchangers for this approach. A hydronic circulating pump is required.
The air/oxygen intake and exhaust pipes could be extended to outdoors or basement spaces while the device itself
could be within the living space of the house. (This was the first concept used with this device.) Some portions of the
surrounding insulation can be selectively removed (specifically in a Version 1 setup) and a large blower or fan used to
cause house or room air to blow against those exposed hot surfaces, so that heat is convectively transferred to the
house air. This could be either used to provide heat for the room that it is in or the entire device could be surrounded
with an air chamber (as in Version 2 and 4 configurations) to be able to use ducting to send the heat throughout an
entire standard house ducting system to provide warm air heat to many different rooms simultaneously.
Several different of these methods can be used simultaneously. A portion of the generated heat could be captured by
the poly tubes inside to be transferred to a distant room where hydronic heating radiators are used, while heat directly
off the the device could warm a garage, while heat is also provided to house warm air ducts, and the exhaust vent is
sent through a room or a heat exchanger to provide heat for yet other room(s).
Using it, Selection of Organic Materials to Use
The DIMENSIONS of the organic materials are extremely important regarding how QUICKLY the process occurs.
THICKNESS is the most important of the dimensions.
If good quality lawn grass is cut, the blades of grass tend to be in the 0.05" inch thick range, and they begin to decompose
amazingly quickly, in just a few hours.
If FIELD grasses are collected, the blades may be twice as thick and so the process is slower, often around half as fast.
If farm hay is used, performance is generally comparable to field grasses.
Most autumn tree leaves seem to be about as thick as cut lawn grass, so they are able to decompose rather quickly.
If sturdier weeds, and especially larger and thicker weeds are used, the process is slower, generally in proportion to the
THICKNESS of the pieces.
If farm straw is used, performance is generally comparable to common weeds.
If even small twigs are included, their greater thickness tends to cause far slower decomposition, again roughly in proportion
to the thickness of the twigs. Quarterinch thick twigs can be expected to take most of a week to decompose.
Thicker branches take even longer. Oneinch thich branches seem to take as much as a month to decompose, although it
seems to depend in species of wood, with softwoods being faster and hardwoods being slower.
Putting any pieces of wood thicker than one inch seems inadvisable (with the one exception of really rotten wood as noted
below), because of how slow they decompose.
You can estimate the rate for any other types of organic materials by the above guide. For example, sawdust generally has
rather thin and small dimensions, and it (rightfully) can be estimated to decompose very fast. Newspaper CAN if the sheets
can become separated, but if the newspaper is rolled up or otherwise compact, its decomposition can take quite a while.
There are certain exceptions. Egg shells tend to take a lot longer to decompose than most other things of their thickness. It
appears to be due to their high density and probably the calcium in them. Plastic bags tend to take quite a while to
decompose, although the reason is still unclear.
I have discovered that in relatively MILD weather (like September or November or March or April in Chicago) it is possible
and even attractive to load it primarily with wood chips or similar THICKNESS pieces. Such materials decompose far to slowly
for the greater heating needs of January and Februry, but they seem ideal for the milder parts of the winter. They produce
and give off much less heat AND they last for a number of weeks! ALL of September seems to require only one loading of
such materials! (the black dirt is still necessary to provide the needed bacteria.) October seems likely to require two loadings,
of mostly such materials but mixed with some weeds and field grasses and some leaves.
So I now tend to SAVE the cut lawn grass to be used mostly during January and February, when greatest heat output is
needed.
I have also discovered another handy thing about that cut lawn grass. I now use a BAGGING MOWER but mow the lawn with
the bag REMOVED. The cut grass then lays on the lawn for about three days. It turns yellow as it dries. Then I put the bag on
the mower and run it around the yard again! It now sucks up all that dried grass, so I can immediately put it into leaf bags or
storage bins until I will want to use it several months later. Otherwise, cut, wet lawn grass seems to quickly go into its own
mode of natural decomposition, where it then heats up in the storage container and starts consuming itself!
Finally, it appears that each square inch of surface area of ANYTHING I put in the HG 3a is able to produce roughly ONE
FOURTH Btu/hour. When I have used wood chips that are around 50 pieces per pound, when I have put 400 pounds of them
in the HG 3a device, that would be around 20,000 separate pieces. If each has a total surface area of one square inch, that
would total about 20,000 square inches. At 1/4 Btu/hr/square inch, that comes out to about 5,000 Btu/hr total heat production
for the unit, which seems about in line with the performance I have seen in this lowoutput mode of operation. (the 3.6 million
Btus of chemical energy in those 400 pounds of such wood chips would then last for around 720 hours or 30 days at that
rate!)
That is an excellent situation during MILD weather when little heating is needed for the house!
A pound of cut grass seems to usually contain maybe 3,000 blades of grass. If each are 2 inches long and 1/8 inch wide, the
total area of each grass blade (both sides) would be about 1/2 square inch. At 3,000 blades per pound, 400 pounds of such
grass would contain about 1,200,000 blades or around 600,000 square inches total area. At 1/4 Btu/hr/square inch, this
arrangement could produce around 150,000 Btu/hr total output. (the 3.6 million Btus of chemical energy in those 400 pounds
of cut grass would then last for around 24 hours at that rate!)
That is a little more than I have yet obtained, but I have never put in a full load of just cut lawn grass! But when MOSTLY
using cut lawn grass, I have obtained the 90,000 Btu/hr mentioned in these pages.
You might see that thick pieces of firewood have such small total surface area that little heat gets produced. Consider a
standard piece of 6 inch diameter firewood which is two feet long. The total surface area is about 500 square inches. Using
the numbers above, this would imply that only around 125 Btu/hr of heat would be generated. Such a piece weighs about 14
pounds, so it would contain around 121,000 Btus of chemical energy in it. That piece of firewood WOULD gradually
decompose in the HG 3a unit, but it would likely take about 121,000/125 or 1,000 hours! That is close to two months! So it
WOULD work, but the heat output is so extremely low (130 Btu/hr) that it does not seem very desirable.
Yes, a really LARGE HG unit that could contain a THOUSAND such pieces of such firewood (14,000 pounds of wood) might
produce the heat needed to heat a house. Another possible future application! Or an explanation for why it is much more
acceptable to mix in pieces of firewood inside the larger Version 2 or Version 4 systems.
Suggestions regarding people's experiences of putting specific materials into HG 3a units.
This is ONLY for people who enjoy pain! Here is the THEORETICAL explanation regarding the heat radiation that is
created by each blade of grass or leaf inside the unit!
There is a relationship that has long been known in science and Engineering called the StefanBoltzmann Law. It
calculates the amount of radiative energy produced by any hot object inside a cooler environment. It is fairly simple in its
crudest form:
Q = σ * (T 14 T 24) * A
The temperatures are the temperature of the object doing the radiating (1) and the temperature of the surrounding
surfaces (2). A is the surface area of the object doing the radiating. And the sigma σ symbol is a constant, called the
StefanBoltzmann constant, which is 0.1713 * 108 Btu/square foot/hour/((absolute degrees R)4)
When wood is burned in a woodstove, the flame temperature is around 2300°F or 2760°R. These calculations show that a
square foot of burning wood (actually in flame) creates around 100,000 Btu/hr of radiant (mostly infrared) heat. A
woodstove generally only has 1/8 to 1/3 square foot actually on fire at any instant, so it creates the output that woodstoves
are known to generate!
OUR situation is at a far lower temperature! We only create heat of around 1/3000 as much (per square foot). If we
assume that the actual temperature at the bacterium is 160°F and the actual temperature of all the walls are 140°F, we
can use the StefanBoltzmann Law to calculate that each square FOOT of material should be creating radiation of about
32 Btu/hour. Therefore, each square INCH would be creating 32/144 or 0.22 Btu/hour. This is in pretty good agreement
with my experimental findings of 0.25 Btu/hour from the material in my HG 3a units.
We also need to note that when we use ALL chunks of larger material, we are INTENTIONALLY not creating as much
heat output, but this also results on the temperatures being lower. If we use mostly straw and field grasses and weeds, we
might assume that the actual temperature at the bacterium under such conditions is 140°F and the actual temperature of
all the walls are 120°F, we can use the StefanBoltzmann Law to calculate that each square FOOT of material should be
creating radiation of about 29 Btu/hour. Therefore, each square INCH would be creating 29/144 or 0.20 Btu/hour.
If we use mostly wood chips, we assume that the actual temperature at the bacterium under such conditions is 120°F and
the actual temperature of all the walls are 100°F, we can use the StefanBoltzmann Law to calculate that each square
FOOT of material should be creating radiation of about 25 Btu/hour. Therefore, each square INCH would be creating
25/144 or 0.18 Btu/hour.
In case you were interested, you now know WHY the various organic materials you can put into an HG 3a unit generate
different amounts of heat output. The greatest factor is the total surface area which can interact with oxygen and therefore
create and radiate heat away, but even the overall temperature of the activity has additional effects!
This also explained why a woodstove only needs to have a FRACTION of a square foot of wood actually on fire at any
instant, and we need to have a LOT of square feet of surface area decomposing, to produce similar amounts of heat
output.
There is a way to estimate the amount of water you should put in when you start this unit up. If we are considering around
400 pounds of organic matter inside the chamber, we will consider the two extreme situations:
IF the grass, weeds, or leaves are fresh, essentially still alive, then they already contain within them a large amount of water.
In this case, very little additional water needs to be added at the start. I add around five gallons so that there is a decent
sized puddle in the bottom of the chamber. Then, as the device rotates, all of the organic material has a chance to get wet
from passing through this puddle.
If the grass, leaves, straw, or hay is fully dried (for better storage), then a large amount of water needs to be added FOR
FULL SPEED OPERATION. We know that the glucose weighs about 180 pounds per poundmole, and the water weighs
around 18, but there are six waters necessary for the reaction so they total 108 pounds. Using this proportion, if we start with
400 pounds of FULLY DRIED material, we would need to add around 240 pounds of water! That is around 30 gallons!
So you need to judge how damp or dry the material is when you first start the unit, to estimate the amount of water you need
to add. However, that amount of water is for MAXIMUM performance! By providing LESS water than that to dried materials,
the decomposition can be substantially slowed down, which is wonderful for milder weather!
Once it is in operation, you should only need to add extra water due to two conditions: (1) the air exhausted from the unit
carries a substantial amount of moisture/humidity in it. This amount of moisture loss depends on the actual temperature of
the air exiting the unit, as that air is essentially always at 100% humidity. But it can be fairly substantial, and you are likely to
need to add extra water on a regular basis. (2) if you add in materials such as dried leaves or dried hay, you will need to also
add the appropriate amount of water.
Except for the moisture that leaves in the vent pipe, we note (from above) that the decomposition of 400 pounds of organic
material will PRODUCE about 240 pounds of water, and so it tends to provide its own supply of water to a great extent.
Storing the Organic Materials
If you are able to mow the lawn all year, you may not need to store amounts of the material to decompose for a winter. But
most of us live in climates where we need to plan ahead.
It is impossible to store most organic very long if they are not dried out, as the decomposition process will occur naturally in
the presence of moisture, resulting in rotting and decay (and foul smells due to anaerobic processes occurring). Therefore, if
you need to store materials for more than a week or two, you need to dry it out. Farmers have long had appropriate
processes, in drying hay and straw before baling it up to be able to last many months. Also in drying feed corn for storage in
grain silos. Even in leaving corncobs and crop debris out in the fields so that the sun can dry it all out naturally. Essentially the
same processes can be used to dry cut grass and leaves in order to bale them up for later use.
Such bales then obviously need to be stored in a dry location. When they get damp, they start to rot and decay. THAT can
sometimes cause an unexpected hazard in large stacks of hay bales! If one of the bales got wet, the decomposition process
can begin, which creates the heat we have been discussing. There have been cases where large stacks of hay bales have
spontaneously caught fire due to such internally generated heat. Therefore, really large stacks of hay bales should be
avoided.
Similarly, great care needs to be taken regarding WHERE these bales are stored! If a single person wanders by and tosses a
cigarette butt onto the stack of bales, a very serious problem can quickly develop. So you need to find a location where such
a danger either cannot occur or if it does, it would not affect too much else. Farmers generally store hay bales in a building
separate from where they keep valuable animals or equipment for this reason.
The storage of so much material that has been very well dried, and which is therefore extremely combustible, is a matter that
requires great attention to ensure safety.
There seem to be endless new uses for this critter! Here are several more that I have started to experiment on!
I have discovered that there may be a peculiar way to "wash the dishes" without any soap or really water! It turns out
that if a frying pan or pot or dishes is put INSIDE THE DECOMPOSING CHAMBER (and not in a separate cooking
chamber), then the thermophilic bacteria simply consume EVERYTHING that is organic! In other words, all food scraps
and dried eggs, but also ALL dangerous pathogens in the materials that might cause us harm. You may be aware that
one of the most contaminated objects in your kitchen is the scrubbing pad you use to clean your dishes, because it
always retains some of the dangerous pathogens on it, which then grow, for the next time you do the dishes. THIS
concept is capable of such extreme sterilization that it should be of hospital grade cleanliness! However, I HAVE found
a downside to this! It always seems to take at least 12 hours to complete, and I often feel more comfortable with 24
hours. It is also sort of weird to be pulling a (very hot) frying pan from out of all the nastylooking organic materials that
are degrading and then just pitching some eggs into it! Still, it probably is technically more pathogenfree than the
chlorinated Municipal water which comes from my kitchen tap (which I still choose to use to rinse it off first)!
This device is an excellent source of hot air for drying clothes after washing them. No fossil fuels are used. Even the
high humidity exhaust works great.
This device's extensive water heating ability (as described above) turns out to be wonderful for heating an indoor
swimming pool or an indoor hot tub. I suspect it will turn out that in summer, it will also be great to heat an outdoor pool
or hot tub!
There seems to be a way to supply several different levels of safe water. Here is the most pure. If you are familiar with
a solar evaporator or a still, you know that it is possible to take ANY quality of water and evaporate (boil) it so it
becomes a gas (and it therefore leaves all the minerals and impurities behind in the remaining water or as solids if all
the water is evaporated). In a solar evaporator, that hot air, containing water vapor, is then blown to pass along a cold
surface, such as a glass cover plate. The high amount of humidity in the air has to drop when the air becomes cooler,
as there can never been greater than 100% relative humidity. If you wear eyeglasses in cold weather, you know that if
you go indoors when the glasses are very cold, then the warm humid air in the house always condenses on the cold
glass and fogs the glasses for a few minutes. A solar evaporator does that intentionally. However, solar evaporators
are not very efficient at that, partly because they use the same piece of glass to allow the sun's heat in and also to chill
the air inside. So solar evaporators CAN provide safe drinking water, but often only a quart or two per day, not very
much and not very fast.
We have a source of heat that does not need sunlight, so we do not need the glass surface. This also means that we
do not need to pass the air near a rather warm piece of glass, but possibly far cooler (aluminum?) pipes that are
cooled by 70°F available (impure) water or even underground. The speed of condensation of the resulting Distilled
Water should therefore be much faster than is possible with a solar evaporator, even though the process is exactly the
same. Hopefully, I will soon have time to do some experiments to see if a 150°F heat source and a 52°F deep soil
temperature might be able to provide decent amounts of very pure Distilled Water per hour or per day. Solar distillation
has never been very popular because even getting one gallon of pure water per day is weather dependent. This
seems to have the potential of providing maybe 10 to 30 gallons of very pure water every day, or possibly even more.
Another approach for obtaining much large quantities of less pure water is available. Assuming that other processes
are used to filter out dust and other impurities, and that the water does not contain significant dissolved mineral
material, (both of those situations would be completely taken care of by the Distilled Water method discussed above)
the remaining need would then be to kill off pathogens and other organic materials. The water could then be passed
through the chamber, where the water was then heated to the 150°F heat of the interior of the chamber. Any organic
materials, specifically dangerous pathogens, would be killed by the heat in the HG 3a unit. Traditionally, this function
has been done by adding chlorine to water. I am not sure that I see any advantage either way, except in not adding
artificial chemicals to our water!
Following this same theme just above, but more extreme: Imagine that there was a huge epidemic of something like
Avian Flu or Ebola. Actually, medical science has discovered that a newly mutated virus called Acinetobacter
Baumannii or staph aureus (soldiers have named it Iraqibacter) has somehow combined all of the most terrible aspects
of around 40 different previous viruses, but has also somehow managed to become very resistant to ALL of the
medicines and chemicals that had previously been used to try to control some of them. (The current presentation on it
in the CDC website was last updated in 2004! Large numbers of infections in American Hospitals are being reported
during 2008.) As it now spreads from person to person, that person tends to get sick and die very rapidly. Also, many
of the cases have occurred within Intensive Care sections of Hospitals, but that seems to recently be spreading more
broadly. As it happens, that has been a good thing so far! Just like Ebola which did the same, the victims generally die
so fast that they do not have much chance to spread it! However, Medical Researchers think that this new pathogen
will eventually mutate in yet another way, where victims stay alive long enough for the aureus to be spread by airliners,
trains and buses. Doctors not only have no idea how to try to treat patients with this amazing pathogen, no one even
has any idea of how to START the years of research that would be necessary regarding it! This could be VERY bad!
Regarding the Bird Flu danger of 2006 and 2007, authorities had already told everyone to get three months of food
supplies, such that each family could exist for three months without having ANY contact with anyone else, due to the
extreme danger of some epidemics. Authorities are aware that the Black Death in around 1340 AD killed around 1/3 of
all the people living on the entire Earth, and that some of these recent dangers are very similar to that one.
So imagine that you make a footsquare "tunnel" through your house's wall, with some insulation and end plugs, and
you make it so that a nearby HG 3a unit could provide plenty of 150°F air to fill that tunnel when you would want.
So someone stops by OUTSIDE to leave you clothing or canned goods or bottled water or toys for your kids. They
would place the items in your walltunnel, and you would then surround the items with the 150°F air for half an hour or
an hour. When you then let it all cool down and then bring the objects into your house, they would all be excellently
sterilized, essentially to hospitalgrade standards!
Hopefully, no use like that would ever become necessary! But the same sort of use might be made in Third World
countries where massive disease exists due to lack of being able to sterilize materials, clothing, food and water. Maybe
there is some use in that direction.
Where children play in areas that have sewage deposits, maybe their toys and clothing could be heated to the temp
where all pathogens die. It might not guarantee their safety, but it might really help.
I find the need to add two personal comments here!
(1) People seem to INSIST on "improving" anything and everything with their own ideas! It does not seem to matter whether
they actually have any education, knowledge or experience in the specific subjects or talents or abilities! An example has
come to my attention, which will probably be repeated countless thousands of times in the future. A woman, with NO
construction experience whatever, and no education or background in either Engineering or Design, decided to "make
changes" in the above instructions, and intended to also improvise in the actual construction due to her lack of tools and
experience. She decided to change the dimensions of the device, change the construction of it in dozens of ways, such as
using two layers of thin used plywood for the sidewalls, and in using very small diameter pex tubing instead of the far larger
poly tubing that is specified here. In addition, she did not like the limitations of how it is described to be used, and improvized
her own ideas on how and where she would install it, such as building an insulated room inside her garage, and then doing
incomprehensible things to pipes and ducts to provide heat for rooms and functions throughout her house. As near as I can
tell, she is NOT using even a single one of the above directions as it is described, modifying or entirely dismissing every
single one of them! What was the point of even providing construction instructions if they will be absolutely ignored? Will I
expected to be responsible when such an extremely modified attempt will only partially do what is described here?
I realize that people throw away the instructions for the Christmas bicycle they need to try to assemble for their child; it seems
to be part of human nature. That's fine, as long as I do not get blamed for the results of such "improvements"!
Here's another example, of hundreds of such things that we know about. In the late 1970s, someone near Detroit bought one
of the JUCA woodstove/furnaces that I manufactured. As was usual, he easily heated his house entirely, and like other JUCA
owners, bragged to relatives, friends and neighbors that he was no longer paying any heating bills (where they were!) A
neighbor soon bought his own JUCA to eliminate HIS heating bills. We knew nothing about all this for around four years, at
which time he called us to register a complaint. Since that was the FIRST complaint that we had ever received regarding a
JUCA's operation, we were extremely interested in knowing why it was not doing as he was expecting. He said that the
neighbor's whole house was very comfortable, while his had many cold rooms, and also that he was using around 20 cords
of wood (while the neighbor was using about 4 cords to completely heat his house for the entire Detroit winter. It was very
puzzling! After probably twenty long phone calls, where the owner always insisted that the unit was EXACTLY LIKE the
neighbor's [but faulty] we still had no clue as to why he was not getting the normal massive JUCA heat. But finally, I happened
to ask him regarding confirming that he could press his hand against the JUCA for at least a minute while it was operating.
He laughed, and said that he did not dare even touching it for a fraction of a second!
Since we had learned by then that a lot of housecats discovered that sleeping on top of the JUCA was a cozy place, this was
clearly very strange. We asked the logical next question, regarding WHICH JUCA blower he had been using. He was puzzled
by that question! He said that the blower was STILL IN THE BOX! He said that when they received their JUCA, it was bigger
than they had expected it to be. When it was also necessary to mount the blower on the back of the JUCA unit, which causes
the JUCA to be around 10" (or more) farther out into the room, they DECIDED not to use the JUCA blower! For four years,
they had been trying to operate a JUCA without even having a blower on it! (JUCAs are all forcedair furnaces, which
REQUIRE the blower to be operating nearly all the time. In fact, they decided to push the (big) JUCA completely against the
rear wall, which even blocked off the opening where the blower should have been mounted. So the unit could not even
thermosiphon to circulate the warm(hot) air naturally!
They had done absolutely everything possible to defeat the proper operation of the JUCA unit! For four years before
complaining to us! It is actually astounding that they did not burn their house down, since they therefore had a large unit that
was so hot that they feared touching it, pressed right against a rear wall!
It turned out that since he knew that the neighbor was entirely heating his house with his JUCA, he decided to just constantly
be loading wood into his, to try to match the performance!
Too bad he never read the Installation Instructions or the Operator's Manual, which both make crystal clear that the blower
MUST be running nearly all the time.
We later discovered that the neighbor had also bought an optional (larger) JUCA blower which is necessary to feed the
WARM air through the house ducts to all the rooms. This customer didn't see any value in a blower in the first place, so he
certainly would never have seen cause to get an even BIGGER blower (which would have pushed the JUCA even farther out
into the room!)
It would be one thing if there had only been one such customer who entirely ignored all instructions! But over the years, we
learned that that joke about the Christmas bicycle is actually very commonly true! So, a Disclaimer! IF you choose to follow
the construction instructions (above) fairly well, the HG 3a will work like a charm. However, if you greatly alter even ONE
characteristic of it (without actually knowing enough Engineering to be able to actually calculate the proposed improvement),
you are on your own!
(2) An immense number of people seem to not comprehend the concept of a GIFT! The exact same thing occurs in the Free
Air Conditioning webpages, which I have provided, FOR FREE, since late 2000, where all the necessary construction and
planning information is included, as well as all the information regarding the Engineering concepts behind why it works so
well. However, so far, over SIX THOUSAND PEOPLE have DEMANDED that I provide them PROOF that it works! Several
thousand others have demanded that I give them names and addresses and phone numbers of some of the 9,000+ people
who have installed and are using the (Free A/C) system. The same is already starting regarding this HeatGreen heating
system.
This information is provided by a fairly intelligent Nuclear Physicist FOR FREE! I thought that was a nice and generous
gesture! WHY do people think they deserve to get "free custom personal Engineering" or to receive whatever they might
consider to be proof or to be allowed to annoy some happy family with hours of endless questions? This DID used to
sometimes happen with the JUCA SuperFireplace wholehouseheating woodstove that I DID actually sell for many years.
The owners nearly always found it very annoying, except for people who THEY INVITED to their homes! But when a
CUSTOMER was considering BUYING A PRODUCT, it seemed vaguely credible that they might want to annoy owners of my
woodstoves like that. A woman from Alaska ended that! She DEMANDED that I give her a dozen names and phones of
owners (who had each generously offered to talk to potential customers). I expected her to pick out one of the twelve, and
then to make a politely brief phone call. But NOOOO! She spend a dozen evenings, calling each of those families for phone
calls which I was told were all between two to three hours! The entire quiet evening for a family was gone for every single one
of those wonderful families! (All that to consider buying a $1400 woodstove which we had GUARANTEED [since 1989] to be
able to ENTIRELY HEAT ANY HOUSE.) But she alone managed to infuriate all dozen of those people, each of whom then
immediately asked to have their names removed.
A single inconsiderate woman really destroyed a fine way that JUCA owners had been previously able to help people who are
not familiar with the performance of JUCA units. Unbelievable. Now, do YOU think that I am going to put ANYONE at risk of
having that happen to them, WHEN THERE IS NOT EVEN ANY PRODUCT BEING SOLD?
(I may have a very old Bridge in Manhattan to sell you if you do!) But separate from that, apparently no one has ever heard
of the Gift Horse story! For the Free Air Conditioning, and for this HeatGreen system with its several configurations, and with
the free system to monitor Children's Bodyfat in a fun and easy way, and in the method to try to drag Beached Whales back
to the ocean, and on and on; IF you demand PROOF, then I would PREFER that you simply go away and stop bothering me.
Go stare in the mouth of some horse somebody has offered to give to you! In fact, I make VERY sure that I provide massive
Engineering and scientific proofs for each of the statements made regarding any of these systems which I offer.
You actually DO have access to a way to PROVE that the HG3a or the Free A/C works as described. You could HIRE a top
quality Thermodynamics Engineer (at around $400/hour), and he/she can then duplicate the Engineering which I provide in
the webpages. A talented Engineer should be able to research that my information is sound and then calculate the needed
things in maybe 25 to 40 hours of work. Of course, this means that you will have to pay that Engineer between $10,000 and
$16,000 to confirm the information WHICH I HAVE GIVEN YOU FOR FREE!
In order that you not waste $200 on building materials from a local store!
I can only say, DUH!
Please do NOT be annoying me with demands for proof (before you dare spend $200 for materials), OR where you will insist
that YOUR application IS UNIQUE and you therefore REQUIRE me to personally Engineer (the exact same unit) for your
needs. IF you are willing to pay me at the standard $400/hour rate for such advanced Engineering, and will provide a
Retainer for a number of hours to start with, I MIGHT be willing to listen. But probably still NO! If you are so convinced that
you have a totally unique situation, then get that local Engineer to do the Engineering and Design for you!
The main presentation was first placed on the Internet in February 2007. This highperformance version presentation was
first placed on the Internet in November 2007.
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This subject presentation was last updated on 08/15/2016 10:34:01
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C Johnson, Theoretical Physicist, Physics Degree from Univ of Chicago

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Q = σ * (T 14 T 24) * A