Blog Action Day

I was looking for a good reason to make a blog entry. Today's Blog Action Day is that reason. I really wonder some times if burning corn is an environmentally concious thing to do. The fuel, its true, is renewable. But yet, it relies on the oil infrastructure to be in place. Farming is a resource intensive operation. Between the diesel fuel used in implements, to the natural gas feedstock that makes nitrogen based fertilizers, there is a lot of consumption. In the case of a serious shortage of these fossil fuels, corn burning isn't going to be in our future either.

So what is? Biomass fuels? Switchgrass? Or, something that is yet out there on the horizon? I have great confidence the inventor making up the corn burning community will be there at the forefront of what is next.


I would like to see this movie when it makes the rounds. Hopefully the preview shows up here in this blog above.

An interesting article in the Star Tribune last week. The Boom Fades as Ethanol Floods the Marketplace Profits are in the gutter because of the high cost of corn and the soft demand for ethanol. I wonder how much lower the profits are going to be in a couple of years when the administration in Washington changes and people are allowed to take a closer look at the ethanol business. My guess is the government payouts to the corporate ethanol producers are going to dissapear and suddenly there will be a firesale as oil, and other large corporations rush over themselves getting out of the business.

What will happen to farmers then? The ones that tied their whole future to selling five dollar a bushel corn are going to be in for a rude awaking. I hope that farm subsidies have not been allowed to expire while the general public has been looking the other way. Thinking about all the happy motoring they will be able to do in their ethanol powered SUV.

The weekend at Moms

I spent the weekend visiting my mother in the nursing home this last weekend. She is one of the few residents with an intact mind. Her problem is her 90 year old body just isn't what it used to be. Unfortunately for her also, her taste buds are still intact. It is a rough combination. Nothing worse than being mentally sharp enough to know; what you are eating should taste like meat...

The weekend also brought in in contact with the rest of the family who unlike me an my computer screen earn their money from farming. Two of them are big farmers, with thousands of acres in the ground, the others are much smaller operations. Universally their advice was to buy corn now. Two weeks ago would have been better. Now understand, this is a pretty small geographic sample, they farm in Mower and Filmore counties in Southern Minnesota. But all of them feel the crop is much smaller than expected. The good news for them, it is also dryer than expected. Corn was running 16-18% moisture. At this level no expensive drying would be necessary. They can run it into the bins and turn on the air circulation fan to dry it the last few points down to 15% needed for storage. It is much cheaper to run a fan rather than a fire. They will save thousands of dollars of propane. But, still, the crop is not as big as expected. The ears are smaller, the test weight is lighter and the yield is down from last year. All things that will cause our per bushel price to rise.

Also it was interesting to talk to them about the ethanol business. They all felt they were making hay while the sun shines. The ethanol business is a fluke of the government we live under right now. When the government changes, as it is almost sure to next fall, the status quo is going to change. My brother in law had invested money into an ethanol plant a couple of years ago, but he was very excited for it to begin production in the spring so he could immediately sell his shares.

An interesting report sent to me by my friend Andrew.

This report responds to a request by Senator James Inhofe for analysis of a “25-by-25" proposal that combines a requirement that a 25-percent share of electricity sales be produced from renewable sources by 2025 with a requirement that a 25-percent share of liquid transportation fuel sales also be derived from renewable sources by 2025.

This report I feel has some flaws. It assumes we continue our happy motoring society, everyone still behind the wheel of their own car. These people totally have their heads up their backsides. Everything is based on status quo. ...oh, wait, no, not status quo. They say auto traffic will go down by 1.6% :-) These polititions will blow sunshine up any oriface they can to not break it to the public the happy motoring utopia is over! Oil is the highest price it has ever been, with many people reporting we may have passed our world peak oil production in 2006. That means in the last hundred years we have used half of the available oil reserves, but yet according to this report, 25 years from now we are still going to be driving our cars to Walmart, buying plastic crap shipped here from China? Does that seem plausible to you?

Plus they make some rather bold leaps of faith. 61 billion gallons of ethanol produced? We produced 5.5 billion gallons last year and the price of corn doubled. And cellulosic ethanol? We haven't actually done that yet at the scale required to run an ethanol plant. Some people doubt we can get the feedstock to the ethanol plant in a viable fashion even if we figure out the technical hurdles of how to produce the ethanol.

We need to start thinking more locally.

Summer is wrapping up

Here is my annual promise to keep up better on my blog. :-)

It has been a busy summer. I have been painting the east side of the house this year. There were some old cedar shakes on the gable end that were falling off and rotten. So, I pulled all of them off and replaced them. I didn't replace the windows at the same time. I hope that wasn't a huge mistake. But, I was already enough $$ into this project.

Here is a shot from just after last weekend. I am just shy of finishing the first coat up on the gable end. And, I have about twelve feet of eves to do. Then, first coat will be finished. The second coat will go fast. I would think I could do it in about three days. Surely this year has three good days left in it, doesn't it?

Had to say though. Cold temps and rain tonight. I turned on the gas fireplace for a bit tonight because I was gone all day today. Usually the kitchen heat from baking and cooking warms the house during this season.

I have a few things to blog about. The first is something close to home.

The Chetek City Council recently approved the development agreement with James and Mary Bohl for Community Energy Corporation, a factory which will manufacture wood pellets as a form of alternative energy.

Quoted from this full article in the Cheteck Alert, of Cheteck Wisconsin. Though I have to say I don't like the picture much. These pellets look softer, less tightly packed than most I have seen. Maybe it is just the photo though. It is great to see these small scale pellet mills springing up on the market. My vision of the future doesn't have us hauling anything great distances, so to have more of these local producers is great! I really wish they were up to speed. I would love to buy pellets at $130/ton.

If agricultural scientists are right, all you need to reduce your home heating bills is an acre of land.

From an article in the CBC News. Is this the future? If these plants are hybridized and made to grow in northern climates, it could be a good thing. It has the capability of a much better acre to BTU ratio than what corn has. But, by growing it, we are offsetting our food supply. I am very happy to see this research though.

And, another article

Today, with 10 years of research under their belts, the farmers are gearing up to produce switchgrass for commercial use.

This one from Biomass Magazine, farmers are contracting their switchgrass to a 726 megawatt power generating station. This article also mentions growing the grass on land not particularly suited to growing corn.

So, as I say, I will try to keep up better on this blog. Jobs, kids, guitar and other web sites do take time too. Like a new year's resolution though, I will try to be better.

The State Fair

Welcome back everyone. It has been a long summer but it is time to start thinking about corn burning again.

The Minnesota State Fair.

I took off work an hour early today, since it was my day to sit in a cubical in St. Paul, and took a trip to the Minnesota State Fair. It was an enjoyable trip.

My first stop was at Freier's Fireplace Store where I ran into what I hope to be my next corn burning purchase. A Quadrafire Mt. Vernon fireplace insert. It is a beautiful stove and seemed to be very well made. It has a very nice design in the front made out of cast iron. I am heating an old house here with dark woodwork, I think the antique look of this stove will fit in perfect. The sales guy was very friendly. Seemed to know his stuff. I would buy there if I was closer.

I also hit the outdoor boiler circuit. Let me start by saying I don't know about any of these units. I am not interesting in outdoor boilers. Putting a building outside my house with the fire in it.? Ummm, part of the checking the enjoyment of corn burning is checking the fire. There is no way I could rig up a series of mirrors that far! So, what I am saying is I didn't look into the guts of these units. Unless noted, mechanically lets call them all equal.

So, with that caveat, Outdoor Boilers:
Central Boiler was the highlight of the customer service. The sales guy had literally no voice at all above a whisper. Yet he whispered his pitch, pointing out his products benefits. I looked at the Maxim. It is less of the garden shed look than most of the other brands. I also walked through the Woodmaster booth but the sales people were all involved in conversation. I saw the Heatmor and talked to the fellow there a bit. Pardon me. I just can't get enthused. Don't let me turn you away from one of these units. They have lots of advantages. They just arn't for me.

Last, of the outdoor units, I talked to a disarmingly beautiful sales woman who knew her product very well at the Aqua Therm booth. They carry the European manufactured Verner boiler. They make a product that seems very solidly built, though perhaps a little off in external looks. Yeah, yeah, I know, this is something that sits in your basement. But remember people, I do computer graphics for part of my living... So, I look at external design too. It could be I have to think about the fact eventually all of these corn burners will need to be worked on. Maybe having a less wrapped up design would be very practical when it comes to repair. So, I encourage you to take a look at this boiler. It is expensive, compared to what I am used to in indoor boilers. But I admit, I didn't price any of the others outdoor units. Maybe they are all more expensive. Also, this unit can't just sit in the outdoors. It needs to sit in a building. So you have to build your own garden shed for this unit. Humm. Before buying though, I would like to know how common the parts are for this unit in the states. If I can go down to Grangers to buy parts, I am happy.

Moving indoors, I talked to a fellow at the St. Croix booth that really seemed to know his stuff. I looked at their SCF-050. It seemed to be well made. The corn hopper is maybe a touch undersized by current standards, but, this is only a 45,000BTU unit, so a 200lb hopper might not be so bad. The St. Croix looks like a solid unit.

OK, I apologize for what I am about to do. I am going to gush. I don't have $11,000. I don't have anywhere near $11,000. But if I did.... I would spend it on an HS Tarm boiler. This boiler is a thing of beauty. The fit and finish was first class. Closing the door on an HS Tarm is like closing the door on a Mercedes. You turn the handle and the door gives you the impression of sealing, pressure cooker style. The paint was thick and professional looking. The metal was heavy. The feed auger seemed strong enough to chew up entire cornstalks if you really wanted. The heavy insulation and thick firebrick in the door would stop heat loss and increase efficiency. The hopper is tall. I would no longer be able to bucket the corn into the boiler.

I have to give credit where credit is due. My neighbor Jason first saw the Tarm boilers. He came home gushing. But, Jason is a touch more prone to gush that I am.

But, I do have to grumble a touch. The sales people at the HS Tarm booth were totally disinterested in my presence. I did flag down one sales person, saying to him "Wow, these units are incredible! I have only seen them in pictures, never in person!" Which is a pretty positive sales line to hear from a potential customer. But, the sales guy just grunted and walked away. I dunno. Maybe it was the pony tail. And, I like I said, I don't have $11,000, maybe it shows. And, to be totally honest, it was the end of a day, a few days into a state fair. But being a former employer of sales people, seeing this sort of thing show up doesn't bode well for customer service. Make sure you like who you are dealing with.

Absent, or maybe I just didn't find them. Bixby, and Energy King. I would have loved to see Energy King there. After all, I made the drive from Chippewa Falls, couldn't they? Bixby, were you there?

Mid November

Just a few details on what is going on here.

First off, I am sorry about keeping the "Fresh" graphic on the blog tab of the forum. In my mind, there was a fresh entry. My body had just simply not gotten around to typing it out.

I now have about a month of burn time on the new style bottom feed burn pot on the Traeger. Alls in all, I would have to say this burn pot runs exactly like the old style Traeger pot. It seems that clinker formation is not all about where the corn comes into the pot. At the corn symposium up in Rice Lake last month, it was proposed that lighter metals, such as stainless steel in the case of Traeger, conduct too much heat. This heat conduction allows the heat to pass right through, cooling the surface of the stainless. The cooled surface is what creates the clinker. Under this theory, burn pots made of stainless will always have clinker problems. Burn pots that are heavier metals and hold the heat, such as cast iron, won't have the clinker issue. ....humm. Opinions, anyone?

Open house at Energy King
Our local corn burning manufacturer Energy King, had an open house the other night. It was during the time I was sick with my two week long cold. So I had to pop a couple of Advil to break the fever and hop in the truck. Energy King furnaces continue to impress me. It seems like they are very well made. Just guessing, I am thinking I saw about a hundred furnaces sitting on their assembly line floor.

They had one unit in operation, heating a section of the shop, and it seemed to be pumping out the BTUs quite nicely. It seemed to be running real good. The burn pot seemed quite clean and free of clinker. The unit itself is quite function. It won't win any style awards for its feed auger and draft fan designs, because they hook right at the front of the unit instead of many other manufacturers that tuck their unsightly appendages off the back of their burners. But, having the parts out front could be real handy when something goes wrong. As we know from Cosmo Castorini, "And something always goes wrong." He was right. Something always goes wrong. Having the working parts right up front when you are having troubles far outweighs any aesthetic difference. ...And, as people would point out to me, this is a forced air furnace. You don't put it in your living room!

The Energy King controls are quite complex. They are two duel timer dials, so you can precisely set the auger run/wait for a high burn and a low burn (as I remember it... I wasn't a hundred percent that night) I think this complexity gets you a very high level of control about how the furnace is running. Initially it would take some work to get fined tuned I bet. Still, I think it would be worth it. Every setup is different and to tune your boiler to your exact setup, would be great!

The unit they have built is a forced air furnace. They are talking about building a boiler as well. Being a hot water heat guy, I would love to see it!

It was a brief visit there. I would have loved to hang around and meet some of the dozen or so dealers and other interested parties who were hanging around. I didn't figure I needed to infect that many people though, so I called it an early night.

In other news, I got word of yet another new corn burning manufacturer who is currently going through UL testing for its new line of corn furnaces. I have had an early peak at their designs and they look real nice. Look for more news here in a couple of months or so, after UL certification.

My house project.
Hey can anyone spot where in the attic I installed that first roll of insulation? I call this picture "Postage Stamp" for obvious reasons. I am looking forward to some improved heating efficiency once I am done with this project. Unfortunately, that might not be until next year. I worked on the project today again and got through all the insulation I have purchased so far. Seven rolls/batts. Still though, a long way to go. I figure another 22 rolls of R-29 and maybe ten more bags of R-15 batts. It is a big insulation project! When done it will take my house from having attic insulation of R-0, because I currently have no attic insulation up to R-29! For an old house, this is quite a bit of attic insulation. I have got to think I am going to be burning less corn next year. I still have old windows. I still have woodchips as my sidewall insulation. But up top, where most of the heat enters the atmosphere, I am going to be looking pretty good!

Thursday of this week.

Thinking maybe you are making your plans for the coming week, I am going to be speaking to a group of like minded folk, corn burners all. I will be in Rice Lake Wisconsin on October 26th, speaking for the Northwest Wisconsin Corn and Wood pellet Forum will be held at the WITC conference center, 1900 College Drive, in Rice Lake, Wisconsin. Barron and Polk County UW-Extension are organizing the 6-9 p.m. event,

I am going to be there and also Herb Schweitzer from Burns Best in Spooner, WI. There will also be some information sent from a professor in Milwakee on switchgrass pellets.

It should be an interesting time. Here is a link to additional info: http://www.iburncorn.com/artwork/Oct_26_Corn_and_Wood_Pellet_Forum.pdf

I also said I would post a blog entry about the new style Traeger corn burning pot. I have been putting it off because I would still say that I have not given it a good test. It did run a number of days without overflowing, and with minimal care. Still though, I did get clinker buildup eventually and had to pull the pot out because the airflow was blocked. Here is another downside, it seems the oyster shell we are used to feeding these units to keep the soft, no longer works with this bottom feeding design. When I pulled the burn pot yesterday morning, it was filled with a lay about 2/3s of the way up with very hard clinker. Clinker I have not been able to remove yet.

But, and here is where the stickler is, I am not even starting on the burning season yet. Is the burn pot going to work better once it is into a more steady burn? It sure could. Maybe the clinker buildup in this pot only occured because the temperature was swinging 40 degrees over a few days. So don't hold me to this yet.

Quick News

The pre-2006 heating season stuff.
Well, the corn has been ordered. It is coming from River County Co-op here in Chippewa Falls. I just bought today (Friday), as the price continues to climb. I feel like it will drop down at some point but right now I am predicting the corn prices to continue to rise. I think that the rise in price is somewhat due to speculation on buying corn for ethanol production and also I have heard due to poor world wheat harvest. I am leaning toward thinking the former. It is also an election year.

The price was around $2.90-$3.00 a bushel. I seem to have misplaced the reciept at the moment. I will get it posted later.

Burning Corn 2006, Day Five

Today is day five of burning corn in the new style Traeger burn pot. I would have to say I am cautiously optimistic. It has really been going quite well. Five days and I have been running the same burn pot. I have not poked or prodded at the fire and clinker, hoping to just see how it goes un-attended.

I can't give it an unequivocal thumbs up though because we have been having some warm days and because I am buying bagged corn and ran out on Sunday when the Co-op was closed. So, the fire has not been burning hard or continuously. So it is really hard to say for sure. Still though, five days of burning in a Trager pot without having to dig out clinker or swap out the pot for cleaning, seems really hopeful.

First Burn Night

So here I sit. Down in the basement again. Laptop balanced on top of a Traeger burn pot. Opening the boiler door once in a while to check on the fire. It seems like deja-vu. It seems like it, because it is. Two winters ago, I was a new corn burner. Still... um... yeah, I have to say it, wet behind the ears (heh heh) and I was lighting my corn burner up for the first time. Looking at the owner's manual, looking at the burner, saying “I don’t know” each time the wife would ask, “is it supposed to be doing that?”

Today is the first day of the 2006/2007 burning season. We had been putting it off, the house hadn’t really been *that* cold. We had been baking a lot. Living in the kitchen and office areas. Running the gas fireplaces a little bit each morning to take the chill off and keep those spaces livable. Tonight though it is predicted to drop to 17 degrees. That’s just a touch too cold to wake up to in the morning. That’s getting to be frozen pipes temperature. So, it begins. The heating season.

This time I am down here because I am trying something new. I have the new style bottom feed Traeger burn pot in place. I need to keep an eye on it for a couple of reasons. First off, it is something new. Using corn for heat is not an exact science and so any time you make a major change to your setup, it pays to keep a close eye on it. Here, I have a new burn pot. I don't know how the corn will burn in it. Will I need to change the draft fan adjustment to allow more or less air in? I don't know.

But, second, it wasn’t a real smooth start. Traeger’s, at least of my era, have trouble with a small $4 part that senses the smoke box temperature. I don’t know if current production units use the same part or not. I expect they might. This part, checks to see if the smokebox is hot. If it is, it allows the corn feed auger to come on. If it is cold, as in, the fire went out, it keeps the feed auger turned off.




Well, this part fails, or it sticks. I am not really sure which. I replaced two of them last season before I figured out they seem to work but just need a lot more temperature than what they are rated the first time they turn on. If your furnace has been off for a while no amount of initial wood pellets will generate enough heat to kick the feed auger on. The solution is to pull off the cover to the four dollar part and jumper the two wires. Then, the feed auger is in perminant feed mode, as long as the switch is in the feed position.

No problem as long as the fire keeps burning. Here I sit, with a new burn pot, not sure how the draft fan will need to be configured for this pot, and the feed auger jumpered into continuous feed mode. Not the best start. Don't try this at home folks...

Oh yeah. One other detail.

I have the jumper wire in place. (This is pre-ductape from what is shown above) And I am jiggling the wires around because I just realized the jumper wire insulation is laying in direct contact with the hot smoke box. I touched the bare ends of the jumper against the boiler. Well, better the boiler than my finger I say, but I did blow the fuse on the Traeger control board.

So, now I have the feed auger jumpered, and the fuse wrapped in aluminum foil, and I am off and running on my corn burning adventure.

I will shut off the power to the boiler before I go to bed.
And I will buy fuses tomorrow.

All this aside, the burn pot seems to be working quite nicely. The temperature on the boiler is coming up as I sit here. The temperature is still, only 70 degrees, but higher than the rock bottom it was when I flipped open my laptop. I really hope this burn pot works out. All in all, I have been fairly happy with my Traeger but it has been much more work that what I hear other brands are. Changing burn pots every four days during the coldest part of the winter is not a fun job. This could change all of that, and I really hope it does.

I see from the Pinnacle Sales web site, the new Traeger boilers look a little different than the model I have. The smoke box seems larger somehow, and, there is an upper blower fan on the chimney pipe. I am going to drop them an email asking for some info on the new design features.

One final thing. Clean those chimneys! I like to help out when ever and wherever I can. Many times, some of my best help is by being a bad example. Thus, encouraging others to better themselves. This time I might have taken it a little too far. Spring of 2005 I pulled my chimney pipe off to run the shop-vac into the cleanout. There really wasn’t much there. 2005 was a short season for us, we only really heated the last two weeks of February, March, April. No surprise the chimney was pretty clean. The 2005/2006 heating season though was a full season. I cleaned the boiler flues out three times during the season, but I didn’t clean the chimney at all. Why do it? There was hardly anything in there the year before!



Imagine my surprise tonight when I pulled the pipe apart to give it a quick clean before lighting up. There was a small hole, about the size of a silver dollar. Other than that, the chimney pipe was full of fly ash! This was an excellent kick in the pants for me. (which I seem to need on a regular basis) But, folks, this is how people die of carbon monoxide poisoning! Buy a couple of CO detectors for your home. Use them, but also remember to check that chimney pipe once in a while! I am thinking a mid January cleanout would be a good thing, putting it mid season, since a whole season seems to plug the pipe. If you are a new corn burner, I suggest you check it a couple of times this year just to get a feel for how fast the ash builds up.

Burn pot has been running about three hours at this point. Seems to be working really well.

Good night all.

Solar Fourm Coming Up

For those of you who are interested in solar, as well as biomass, there is a forum coming up you might be interested. It is put on by Andrew Dane and UW Extension - Focus on Energy. The program Northwest Wisconsin Solar Energy Forum Andrew is the same guy who put on the wind forum several months back. Hope to see you all there.

An interesting day today

I had an interesting day today. I took an hour off my day job and drove over to a local company that has just gotten into the corn furnace business. The company name is Energy King (http://www.energyking.com/)and I had a chance to talk, and get a tour from, John Anderson who is the national sales manager for the company. I have to say, I left their plant pretty impressed.

Though Energy King is new to the corn, or more accurately biomass, furnace business, they have been in the solid fuel furnace business for thirty years. They have a line of wood and anthracite coal burning furnaces and boilers, and large scale wood burning fireplace inserts.
The "Bio-King" is their corn and pellet burning forced air furnace. (The company has plans to build a boiler later in the year) The Bio-King had several features I really liked. First off, the furnace circuitry is build from off the shelf parts. No proprietary circuit boards and black boxes. What I relate this to, as a computer guy, is open source software. If something is wrong with the unit, there is the theoretical capability for me to go in and figure out what is wrong, and fix it myself. Or, even if I feel I can't diagnose the problem myself, if I can find someone who can diagnose it, the part is going to be available within a few miles of my house. A much better situation than furnaces with dedicated circuit boards, where if something goes wrong, you are pretty much going to be sitting in the cold until Fed-Ex arrives.

The burn pot on the BioKing is of the cast iron bottom feed variety. It is similar to the LDJ style caste iron burn pot, but seemed a little different at the bottom. The feed auger is very heavy duty and can easily be removed for cleaning. The feed auger is powered by a very high horsepower motor. Basically the thought is; cob, stalk, fines, who cares! Grind right though it. Push it in and burn it up!

What I was the most impressed with though is the layout and style of the heat exchanger tubes. They are horizontal, similar to the H.S. Tarm rather than vertical as in most of the corn burners I have looked at. It seems a better design to me (though I am no furnace designer) to capture that heat for a longer period of time with the horizontal tubes.

Then, the piece d'resistance, as far as I am concerned. You clean the heat exchanger tubes via a push pull rod that runs a scraper over the outside of the tubes. It was a slick design and I hope it works out well. It sure would be easier than what I have to go through each time I have to clean my boiler. I feel like the key will be how well the heat exchanger tubes will be able to handle the extreme heat of being inside the corn burning fire chamber. There is a heavy steel deflector plate that hangs below the exchanger tubes but still it is going to be very hot in that spot. Any warp-age of the exchanger tubes and suddenly the tube cleaning method isn't going to work very well.

The suggesting list price on the BioKing is $4250, it weighs in at 575lbs and is adjustable from 70,000-140,000 BTUs. The hopper capacity is 17 bushels. It is rated for corn and pellets and is being tested with switchgrass.

I really look forward to someone buying one of these units and putting it into their house. I feel like most of the corn burners we are all running are first generation units. They are built by companies that have good ideas, but after time and experience even good ideas can be improved. I think the Energy King has improved on some existing ideas and the Bio King deserves a good look.

A cool night!

Tonight is the first night where there is just that little bite in the air. It is sixty degrees out right now and it feels it. A corn burner's heart starts to look toward the winter. Thinking about those first fires of the season. Checking the gas meter after a warm cozy day and seeing in the exact same spot it was yesterday. Yeah, that get's a corn burner's heart beating faster....

It should be an interesting heating season. We have a war on, our Alaska oil fields just went dark. I wouldn't want to be owning a fuel oil burning furnace right now. No matter how many times the experts will tell you this is only 8% of our total production, it will effect prices. ....And here's a news flash, they ain't gonna go down.

Traeger Bottom Feeding Burn Pot

So here it is. The Traeger bottom feeding burn pot. I am really excited to try this baby out. If it would have shown up a week earlier, we had a spell of fifty degree weather, it would have had a fire in it. As it was, it was mid eighties and I just didn't feel like starting a fire.

Here are a few more images of it:

You can see here the air hole configuration. They no longer have air holes around the bottom of the burn pot and where the corn comes in you can see is obviously no longer in the middle of the burn pot. The other thing that is important to note, the seam for the inner chamber is no longer directly across from where the corn comes in. I think that will be an important detail when it comes to the life span of these pots. Directly across from the corn inlet, on the old pots anyway, is an area of very intense heat. I always thought having the inner welded seam in that spot seemed like a bad idea. That was always the first spots in the old pots that the welds seemed to crack and let go.

Also, one other thing that seems to be a little different from the old pots is that the stainless seems to be scored or something. You can actually see it in this picture. See the vertical lines down next to the corn entry hole. The old pots didn't have those, they were perfectly smooth inside. Now, I don't know if this is just because it is an early production unit, close to a prototype. Maybe once this goes into production it will be built differently, or maybe there is some advantage to building them this way and it is the wave of the future.

Here you can really see where the corn is coming in. It is way down at the bottom compared to the old pots. From the outside, it is almost like they took the old design and turned it upside down.

Also you can see now that the went to a different structure on the holder for the bottom slide door. My old burn pot had a stainless channel that formed right in with the burn pot above. Now, it is more like a hunk of angle iron that was welded on the side. Again, I don't know if this is because it is an early production unit.

I have had this pot sitting here for a couple of months and I am just now getting around to writting. Life is just so busy sometimes. I did one day get a fire in this burn pot. ...and it went poorly. Not because of any fault of Traeger's though. It was really pretty funny, in hindsight, that is, and, I shot video of it. If I get some time I will go ahead and post it just so you can get to see me being a dumb ass. Basically what happened was the boiler really needed cleaning. I mean, it REALLY needed cleaning. But what was happening was the outside temps were hovering in the low sixties during the days, and drop into the 40s at night. But, clear and sunny almost every day. I hadn't given the boiler it's spring cleaning. It was still dirty from the winters burning where I had run alot of corn through it since the last time I cleaned up the flues. They needed to be cleaned. ...but, every few days we would get a cloudy day, and I would have to run it. So, I didn't want to do all the work of the spring cleaning, then two weeks later when it did finally turn warm, have to clean it again. So, I put it off and put it off. Then, this pot shows up and I just had to run it. ....but, because it was a warmer day, with less draft because of the heat, and being nearly plugged with fly ash, the draft was almost totally gone. The results were pretty smokey. I got the fire out after a few minutes of me saying on video, ....jeeze sure is a lot of smoke commin' outta there...."

So I am sorry to my Traeger readers. I don't really have a report for you. You will have to wait for the first cool day this fall, when I can light a proper fire. I do offer this as a beacon of hope. I live in Wisconsin. The first cool day of the fall could be next Tuesday.

--ja

A report from N 47.00.011 W 94.50.719

I am sitting in a coffeeshop in Walker Minnesota, pondering the future of corn burning and the future in general. Northern Minnesota is a great place to sit and ponder. I came to this coffeeshop hoping to get wireless internet access but I was out of luck. The guy behind the counter told me that though the shop had did not have wireless service, one of the businesses close by had it and he said I might be able to connect. As it turned out, the signal was too weak for me. Apple laptops, for as great as they are, have internal wireless antennas that truly suck. So, here I am at the Walker Bay Coffee Company, with it’s sticky door (sign says “pull hard, we are open”) and its remote charm (no wireless) and I write here. I think here. I will post from somewhere else.

Vacations are wonderful things. We have been doing little to nothing. Relaxing in the lake canoeing to a couple of the islands. All this time though I think about the future. We have lived through some great times but do you see such great times coming in the future? I have lost touch this week and tried to forget about the troubled times in the middle east. On this powder keg rests the United States security and economy. It is a powder keg sitting in the back yard of a nations that hate us – and hate us for good reason.

It is easy for us corn burners to appear smug, to say we don’t care. I am even thinking of getting some t-shirts printed up that say “Screw OPEC, I burn corn” because that is exactly the sentiment we all share. These shirts would sell! I like to conserve, to save, and to use alternative forms of energy, but is it really true? No, it isn’t. We as corn burners are just as tied to that mideast oil as the next guy. We all drink from the same tap, it’s just that right now, in this economy, with the government protecting the corn farmers with a sustenance living, we corn burners are able to save money. Take away that fossil fuel infrastructure though and our house of cards will collapse too.

I am reading a really great book, which I think every corn burner should read. The title of the book is The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan. It has less to do with corn for fuel, and more to do with corn as food. I am only about a third of the way in though, and so it might get to the fuel aspect of corn yet. The book breaks down all the uses for corn and how it shows up in our diet. It is really amazing the uses for corn in processed food and it contends that 45% of an American’s diet is either directly or indirectly corn based.

The free market doesn’t work in agriculture and it never will. If a factory gets caught in an over supply of product, if the widgets it produces drop too low in price, factories can be idled, workers laid off, and demand can catch up with supply. It is impossible to idle land however. If a farmer goes out of business, someone else will step up to the plate and plant corn on the ground. The over supply problem will not go away, it will just shift to a different farmer.

Corn costs about $2.50 a bushel to produce, how can the price of corn hover at $1.45? Even now, with the US drought covering more than half the country http://www.drought.unl.edu/dm/monitor.html the price is still below $2.00/bu.

So, to change the subject. :-)

A little conversation about burn pots. I am a Traeger owner and for the most part a satisfied customer. My major point of contention however is the burn pot design. The Traeger than I own and have run for the past two heating seasons is a top feed burn pot design.

The corn feeds in from the top of the burn pot and dumps down into the bottom of the pot where the fire is burning. The fire is quite strong because there are combustion air holes all around the inner cylinder and so after the first few minutes of building a new fire, the burn pot looks like the biggest blow torch you have ever seen.


Here is the trouble. The corn feeds in from the top and everything is just rosey for the first day of burning. Corn klinker is building up in the bottom of the pot and begins to cover over some of the air holes that blow into the fire. The instruction manual on the Traeger says to remove the klinker daily. ….Yeah, right.

The manual doesn’t really tell you how to go about removing it but there are two ways to remove the klinker. Either, shut the feed off, let the fire die down. Let the boiler cool down some, dig all the klinker out, and rebuild the fire. Lots of work, but it is the best way to remove the klinker. The second way, and the way I usually use, is to shut off the draft fan and dig right into the burn pot with a short crow bar. By running the 12” crowbar along side the interior burn pot walls you should be able to – without damaging the burn pot, knock the klinker loose. You can’t really use much force, but if your fire has just been running the klinker should be in sort of a plasma phase. Sort of like very, very hot putty. So, it really shouldn’t take much force to get the crowbar along the pot wall. Then, without dislodging too much of the actively burning corn, flip the masses of klinker up and over the edge of the burn pot. It is tricky. If you chuck over too much of the burning corn, your fire goes out. If you don’t get out enough of the klinker, the corn doesn’t burn efficiently and you don’t get as much heat out of the boiler as you should.

So I had mentioned this several times on the blog and on the forum and had talked about what I consider to be a better design on the LDJ boiler, using a bottom feed. Instead of the corn dropping into the burn pot, it is pushed in from the bottom. You don’t get the klinker buildup in the bottom of the pot. In late May Traeger contacted me and said they had a burn pot design they would like me to try. It is a bottom feeder of this design.

In design, the new Traeger burn pot is similar to the LDJ pictured here. However this LDJ burn pot is a heavy weight cast iron pot. It would be hard to imagine this burn pot warping the way the Traeger top feed stainless steel pots I currently own have warped. The LDJ has two rows of air holes, spaced around the inside. They are much smaller holes than the Traeger uses, but much closer spacing. The corn auger you can see just at the bottom of the burn pot is a solid fin style, whereas the Trager uses the hollow core, spring style auger.


And, this is pretty much where I was planning on sticking the pictures of the new style Traeger burn pot. I burned them onto a CD and stuck it somewhere in our stuff that got packed for the lake. Do you think I can find them now that I want them? NO...... Rats. I will post them when I get home.

Until then, goodbye from Spider Lake.

--ja

Forum

Hello everyone. I have been on vacation for the past week so naturally the day after I left town the forum died. Sorry about that. I am back and will be looking into the forum tonight and tomorrow.

I also have a blog posting that I have written up at the lake. Going to try to get that posted tomorrow as well.

Forum open to the public

The Corn Burner's Forum is now open to the public. The address is http://forum.iburncorn.com the testing is over. It still has one feature that doesn't work, the spell checker, but I am working on that and hope to have it fully working soon.

The forum is online!

Still hidden though. I gave out the address to about a dozen people who are in there posting a few messages in it and testing. It seems like it is going to work. If you want to get in on the testing, drop me a mail and I will send you the address.

Server is on the way!

The new web server, setup to be the new Corn Burner's Forum, has been shipped to the ISP. Here is a photo of it all boxed up, the wife is just ready to go out the door and take it to the post office with a bunch of her EBay sales. I am hoping it shows up at my ISP on Thursday. So, don't dispair folks! The forum is about to be back online!

I had really hoped that I would be able to migrate over the old usernames and passwords from the old forum, over to the new one. I was able to get the migration to work on my laptop, but then when I tried to get it to work on the production server it failed everytime. I don't know quite why. I decided not to take the time to figure it out.

I will send out email to a few of the heavy posters (ahem, Tallcorn) and let them get in a day or two in advance to secure their old usernames back again. With all the work that they had put into all the posts they did, I would hate to see them loose the name to someone else.

In other news, I am pretty sure I am going to be going to the Wind Energy Forum that I mentioned in my last post. It is about an hour's drive from Chippewa Falls but I think a couple of my neighbors are going to go up there with me. It sure sounds like it is going to be an interesting forum. Make sure you send your registration forms in. There are going to be FREE SNACKS PROVIDED, :-) and they want to get a good count on the attendees so they are sure to have enough.

And one final note. A rather interesting box showed up in the mail a couple of days ago. It is a new burn pot design from Traeger. A bottom feeding burn pot, similar in style to the LDJ, that will push the corn up from the bottom. I don't think this burn pot is on the market yet. It sounds also like the weather might just be cold enough tomorrow to try it out. I will do some burning and let you all know how it goes. If this works, it could be the solution to many of the complaints everyone has about their Traeger boilers and could be a great thing for the company! I will post some pictures of the new burn pot in the next couple of days so you can all see it.

Another Day, another crisis

I don't know about you, but I am burning corn again. As a matter of fact, I think you are doing the same thing. You want to know how I can tell the outdoor temperature? I look at the hits on my website. The hits go up, people start emailing me asking when the heck the forum is going to come online again. That pretty much tells me that it is cold outside. Today, you are sure right. It's 40 degrees outside right now! Heading toward the lower thirties tonight! Snow in the forecast! What month is it???

I tell you folks, I like Wisconsin and all, but, sometimes I get listening to that Jimmy Buffet music and get thinking about those little latitudes. My friend Dave Jones says he wants to live a life where his biggest decisions of the day involves what color of umbrella to put in his drink. That seems to me like a really warm weather thought, doesn't it? Yeah Dave, you got the right idea.

Yesterday was another interesting day. I was driving in to St. Paul for my weekly penance of sitting in an office cubicle. Driving down I-94, the far side of Menomonie, just (luckily) a mile past the single lane road construction area my old dependable Saab coughed. Then shortly later it coughed again. Then it choked, sputtered, spat, gagged and, finally, coasted. Damn. That's how I got to meet Tim, the tow truck guy. Heck of a great guy. I even say that now, after he lightened my load by $200. I hit him up with what I consider my universal conversation starter.... "So, how do you heat your house?" Ummmm Propane huh? We had a good chat about global economics, peak oil production and how are children's live are going to be different than ours. He was much more of an optimist than I am. I suggested some depressing reading material, _The Long Emergency_. Depressing, but one of the best books I have ever read. We'll see if he is still an optimist the next time I run into him.

One thing Tim was real interested in was wind energy so it was quite a coincidence that when I got home and was telling my friend Andrew Dane about the whole experience he hit me with a brochure for a Wind Energy Forum he organized. It really sounds like a great forum and I plan on attending. It looks to be a real overview of where wind energy is at and might offer some information on local wind generating systems. Hope to see you there.

A corn burners forum update. What with car trouble and now the wife is gone again for a couple of days I didn't get the new server packed up to ship down to the ISP. I still have hopes for tomorrow. I would like to get the forum online early next week.

--ja

An update

Hello everyone! It has been a long month, and it is what, the 9th? Oh dear.

Already this month we have had some low points. I took a call I had not been looking forward to receiving. My wife's step dad passed away from cancer last week. It was a very rough week on her. She went to her mom's house for the week. She delt with a whole bunch of family issues, as happens at times of death. It was a very rough week for her. I stayed home with the kids and though there were still three of them left after the week was over, I sure didn't get much work done on the corn burning web site.

This week though has been much better. I was able to get the web server reformatted with a new version of the OS and got the forum software up and running on it. Just today I got my new IP number from my ISP and I hope to put the server in the mail to them on Thursday. I would like to think that the forum will be live by early next week.

Everything always takes longer than I expect it to. Even when I inflate my expectations by 2x

On a corn related note, my neighbor got his corn burning stove in tonight. He bought an LDJ boiler. I have already been down to his house to take some pictures of the room before the burner. If I can talk him into waiting until Thursday (I am busy tomorrow) to bring it home I can also get some pictures of it coming in and being moved down into the basement.

It should be interesting to have a second case study on the web site.

--ja