Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Smallhold Farming and Rural Living => Property, Buildings, Equipment and Alternative Energy => Topic started by: grinling on February 29, 2012, 19:18
-
Hubby made this, working very well, mainly paper with a bit of sawdust. Will update how it goes. Paper donated by neighbour, argos cat etc.
Drying bricks in polytunnel on racks.
-
Fantastic bit of kit there Grin!
Those wooden frames are just perfect to take the pressure I bet!
Have you considered using 4" drain pipe as the mould, drilled out along the sides? I saw that done somewhere...
-
That's a mean looking machine! ;)
Brian made one the other week out of a bit of waste pipe, but decided to buy a 'proper' one from Ebay. Have yet to try it out.
I'm afraid Brian's idea of 'frugal' is a bit different to mine! :lol:
-
Wood frame could outlast most things. Box frame going well, but I have suggested drainpipe next as we have 2 sizes available. Brick drying in potting shed and I have restocked the bin with paper, bit of sawdust and water.
-
Used to make these as s kid with friends had quite a little summer business going. Seeing your post has inspired me to have a go again, with my nieces and nephews. Thankyou!!
-
thank you, upgrading this year to a metal piston.
-
Probably a silly question but what do you use the bricks for?
-
On the woodburner! Bit better than just shoving a load of paper on there!
But we don't actually get a lot of paper, so now I just save it for actually lighting the wooburner, even though Brian bought himself a 'proper' paper brik make last year!
-
Ah, yes - that makes sense.
-
Newspapers are from the neighbour, we found shredded paper (from another neighbour) causes problems, so use that up in the compost bins.
Bricks last up to an hour with very little ash.
-
Newspapers are from the neighbour, we found shredded paper (from another neighbour) causes problems, so use that up in the compost bins.
Bricks last up to an hour with very little ash.
Do you leave the newspaper sheets whole then?
-
They get ripped into strips then ripped again to make squares. Fill a plastic bin then soak.
-
I use mixture of roughly torn newsprint and shreddies (bank statements and anything with name and address on) in one of the metal doo-dahs that I have owned for years. Quite therapeutic especially when I save up sacks of the shreddies and have an hour in the sunshine compressing the bricks. I dry them out in the glasshouse, often as a widely spaced array with my trays on top of them. Sometimes cheat and sit them on the top of the boiler for a day or two to get them extra dry.
THey are about 9" x 3.5" x 2" and very, very solid! You can tip them on edge, stack a couple on top of each other so they are pillars 27" high and stand on top until you overbalance.
They burn really cleanly, just grey ash.
edit: by breaking them loosely in half over the edge of the hearth I have found that the inside faces of the break and the dangling shreds there are simple to light and an easy way of getting the fire going from scratch
-
Im impressed by this, wood is getting expensive for my log burner, the last full load was £90. Two loads gets me from November through to March. So £180-£200 every winter ( I use the fuel allowance money).
I am seriously tempted to get one of these machines.