An update to my earlier post on this concept: I will begin building a prototype of this at my house starting the week of June 22. GOOD NEWS: I found a source for FREE wood-chips from a local tree-service. I bought a chipper/shredder that will easily reduce the chips to finely shredded biomass.

By mid-July I hope to be pumping 140-degree water into my household plumbing, so that my gas-fired hot water heater will become simply a storage/backup system.

(see pictures/video at http://www.vtcommons.org/blog/2009/04/01/energy-optimist-hot-water-and-n... )

I will not be attempting to integrate the methane-chamber into this first prototype. My goals are to get year-round hot water and gather data on what the annual BTU output is. Once we know that we can keep the system producing hot water in the winter, and how long the system will produce heat before the digestion process concludes, the next step will be figuring out the methane-capture/storage system for the next systems.

I plan on covering the mound with hay-bales and black plastic to keep the winter-elements from depressing the temperature of the water coming out. I am using a ditch-witch to dig a channel from the mound-location to the house so I can easily lay insulated PEX tubing from the water-lines coiled inside the mound and connect the system to my houshold plumbing, and eventually to a hydronic or radiant heating system.

I will use high-pressure black poly-tubing as the coil inside the mound. By June 22 I will have the ditch in place and a large pile of wood-chips and begin "chipping away" at reducing the chips to shreds. As the pile of shreds grows we'll begin mounding it up and coiling 400 to 500 feet of water-line inside the mound, soaking the mound and packing it down as we go. Then I will connect a loop of insulated/buried PEX tubing from the house to the coil in the mound and the coil will become pressurized and feed into my hot water heater.

Anyone connected to the Carbon Shredders, Vermont Commons, BERC, Waterbury LEAP or the Valley Futures Network in the Mad River Valley is welcome to lend a hand in this "carbon shredding" project. Feel free to email me at gaelanb@gmail.com if you would like to participate. I am also looking for help from experienced plumbers or installers of outdoor wood-boilers.

Remember that the end-product of 18 to 24 months of steady hot-water will be a pile of perfectly digested compost that will then be used as a soil-generating input for my property and garden. NO WASTE.

Jean Pain Biomass Co-Gen Digester