I'm not saying that the idea of burning straw is new...I'm saying that what I appreciate and am impressed by is the thought and elbow grease that goes into solving a problem on their own. I'm not a farmer (besides a small garden)...but I appreciate what they do.
During Depression none of the farmers stand in soup kitchen line. Only stock brokers, lawyers, doctors, engineers, all kinds of collar workers and brick jungle dwellers were fighting to get in line of soup kitchen. Farmers didn't feel a pinch of Depression. Be careful the world is heading to a global depression, hence get back to the original carrier of farming.
You have to admire this PRAIRIE RANCHER for his independent self sustaining mechanism to provide heat, and hot water. Not too dissimilar from a typical boiler, but uses Abundant Renewable STRAW as a fuel, instead of wood, coal, or oil.
@@74KU in 40 or 50 years. Straw is plentiful every year. After the harvest, it's just laying on the ground. So bale it up and use it to heat the houses. Sounds like a plan.
Still possible to employ a large reciprocating piston engine on the flue to create some suction or draught to assist with the combustion and also would burn the flue gases at the same time, the engine would then drive a generator to produce electricity. They called this principle a suction gas engine. Most Outback towns in Australia before1945 used this principle of suction gas engines using wood to generate electricity. Watching from Auckland, New Zealand
A backdraft event with this size firebox would be down right scary. I have goofed up in the past and opened a smaller outdoor hydronic furnace door right after the damper closed and pert near took all my eyebrows.
Really cool video !! How practical this man is , wow . He deserves a Gov grant for this alternative sustainable fuel boiler . When I worked at Saskatoon boiler the owner was all over that , this man should check that out but dont ask S.B those guys will rip you off for it
Have just fallen over this , down the youtube rabbithole..... But I'm interested in such straw boilers. Nearly choked when you burnt 2-3 bales per day! - but still saving so much on heating costs.THaks to the Green Econuts arond, straw has jumped up in price: getting too expensive for bedding or now even home domestic/ farm heating. LookslikeBulk bottled gas in UK untnil they rob us and we have to go all electric....by 2030 or so. Thanks for posting Sláinte!
Its a nice idea but they do make wood fired portable boilers for camps and remote areas. The other option would be to try earth heat pipes. The advantage is that system also cools in the summer.
Hi neighbor. We heat with a Portage and Main boiler using coal and heat a 1900 sq ft house and a 2000 sq ft shop. We get coal from Hannah Alberta. The stupid carbon tax is really costing dearly- almost doubling the heating cost. This year so far we've used about 6 tons of coal. I had thought years ago about building a flax burner like yours, and wish I would have. Great job setting up your burner. Some questions. Why would you make it portable, and is it really portable if it is hooked to pipes in the ground? Do you move it to dry grain?
@@evananderson3350 There's always smoke from tires, you'd have to be north of 800 degrees interior temperature to start getting rid of the smoke. Send tires to be recycled. The more tires we recycle the cheaper new ones are.
Yes the cool water from the houses is returned to the door first to keep it cool and stop it from warping as mentioned in the video. It’s then heated with the water jacket around the boiler
@jahaffe the bale's have value. They probably sell for $20 to $30 each. I know a guy that sells little square bale's for $5 to $6 each. He spent 110k on equipment to harvest 35 acres 2 to 3 times a year and says he'll pay for his equipment with just hay money. And pay his new 60k truck payment. I don't see how he could break even or make a profit but he says he has for the last couple years and is on track to have some nice equipment payed for while keeping his property maintained in the process.
@jahaffe it may be worth having the setup for drying the grain by itself though. I'm not a farmer so I don't know. I do know a guy who drilled a few water wells and only hit natural gas. Lol. That was a score.
So instead of fires to burn Flax straw after the season ends you could in theory roll the Flax straw up and use that . Great idea to burn that which is available naturally.
Wouldn't it be simpler to just insulate the house? This can save you tons of money on heating. At least it doesn't look like it is insulated, correct me if I am wrong. In Poland and most of Europe, we usually build using 24 (9.5 in) cm clay or aerated concrete bricks and insulate it with at least 15 (6 in) to 25 cm (10 in) of styrofoam. Foundations are insulated with even more hard styrofoam up to 1m (3.3 ft) below surface level. Similar story with the flooring. Oh, and attics are also insolated, usually using 15 (6 in) cm or more of mineral wool. So minimal loses of heat on winter and cool summers.
In Europe it's a bit more common due to high cost of fuels, this boiler does the job but is very inefficient. Biomas boilers work with acumulating tanks 60liters per 1kW. You do one batch a day and controls watch over temperaturs. Also we don't really use water systems for drying grain. You can only get up to 60C of hot air out of it by the time you put hot water through radiator. I understand its a compromise to use one system for drying grain and heating the houses. There are brick laid air heaters that can supplay you with temp up to 110C and work with 30t/h dryers. I have a straw 60kW boiler to heat my house and I use only straw to ignite the batch ow timber. I put a square bale at the botton then throw wood on top of it, fire it up and bugger off to work or whatever and thats me for another 24-36 hours.
You will add coal to the soil, which can help somewhat with the water retention. At our farm we burn grains and chipped wood, which makes for excellent fertilizer in certain crops in the garden. It also creates a nice dark insulator that keeps the soil moist in dry summer months. If a thick enough layer is put on the ground it also starves weeds.
WOW,,kool,,ingenuity is insane lol,, Im a NYC Oil/Gas commercial mechanic for 40 years etc i started out on residential and small commercial however this is pretty cool,, i got to watch a few mnore times because im trying to understand a few things here etc etc,,lol.. Ive seen crazy stuff in my 40 years especially some home made boilers lmaof but they worked but would never pass inspection or nyc codes ,,,lol
Wow, daily chores on a farm, keep the boiler going all winter or she going to freeze solid. Wonder how many bales per day? Does he need to put one in at night?
Bandit Keith I recognized the voice right away. I hated that show when I was a kid - literally ran out of the room . Couldn't stand the guys voice. I am more tolerant now and yes , this is an interesting piece
A bail of hay is worth what you pay for it I used to cut and bail the hay along the side of the road and it had weeds, barry viens, trash and you name it cause it was in there I mowed about thirty miles of highway frontage that we used for compost We got as high as twenty bails of hay off the highway that they paid me to mow otherwise they burnt it. I used about ten bails in the winter months of nasty below zero weather to keep my barn up in the forties and the house warm as I wanted...My cows loved the hear and when it was cold most of them just stayed in the barn including some wildlife that left our chickens alone. They almost got tame before spring as I didn't bother them .. I had a old wolf that lived there year round and I gave him dry dog food and people scrapes and not one lost chicken.... in fact it kept the chickens in the pen .. I think they figured out not to shit in the nest of bite the hand that fed it.
I wonder if this started as a way to get something out of hay that was no longer fit for livestock. Also the amount of energy in hay has to be pretty low. Bamboo is way lower than any real wood.
Very similar setup to the outdoor woodstoves that are sold ....a lot of farmers in my rural area use the outdoor woodstoves....I looked into it for myself but my house is to small for even the smallest outdoor wood stoves and its easier and cheaper to have my regular airtight woodstove...but for large applications this is the way to go.
We need to see more of this in some of our overstocked forests that need thinning. of course the boiler would need to generate power to send through the grid.
need one of those to put a whole log in. chainsawing and splitting stacking feeding cleaning. is alot. just forklift the log and let it burn for a week.
wood dries just 4 cm from each side per year, and that is without bork, so all the hustle is more about making it dry in a acceptable time rathen then just for handling it
Horribly inefficient. 1 to 3 bales a day? At $15 a bale (self performed) that's $450-$1350 a month to heat a couple houses. For $15,000 the houses could be insulted with expanding foam and heat conventionally cheaper than baling costs. Guy just got on a project and got carried away. Oh well, to each their own.
Flax straw is next to free in SK. They have to bunch it and burn it to get rid of it as you cannot till it under effectively. If he wasn’t growing it himself few farmers would object to him baling it instead.
Drying is typically done with heating oil burner and blower. Power demand would make their grid glow red hot, because every farmer is doing it approximately concurrently.
I don't care what some may say....Farmers are geniuses!
I'm not saying that the idea of burning straw is new...I'm saying that what I appreciate and am impressed by is the thought and elbow grease that goes into solving a problem on their own. I'm not a farmer (besides a small garden)...but I appreciate what they do.
Those "some people" are likely not very bright.... just like most of society.
I call things like this practical engineering...not over engineered amd complicated where it will fail...it just works
I am a farmer and I agree we are geniuses. Just one question; what do we need to boil straw for?(straw boiler)
During Depression none of the farmers stand in soup kitchen line. Only stock brokers, lawyers, doctors, engineers, all kinds of collar workers and brick jungle dwellers were fighting to get in line of soup kitchen. Farmers didn't feel a pinch of Depression. Be careful the world is heading to a global depression, hence get back to the original carrier of farming.
You have to admire this PRAIRIE RANCHER for his independent self sustaining mechanism to provide heat, and hot water. Not too dissimilar from a typical boiler, but uses Abundant Renewable STRAW as a fuel, instead of wood, coal, or oil.
Wood is pretty renewable..
@@74KU in 40 or 50 years.
Straw is plentiful every year. After the harvest, it's just laying on the ground. So bale it up and use it to heat the houses. Sounds like a plan.
This is genius this shows you don’t need big companies to get heat in your house you can do it yourself
i just got a very influential piece of my childhood back. so happy that PFR is still a thing!
Still possible to employ a large reciprocating piston engine on the flue to create some suction or draught to assist with the combustion and also would burn the flue gases at the same time, the engine would then drive a generator to produce electricity.
They called this principle a suction gas engine. Most Outback towns in Australia before1945 used this principle of suction gas engines using wood to generate electricity.
Watching from Auckland, New Zealand
Needs a gasifier on the exhaust port so you don't need to tap into the electrical grid to run the fans or charge a battery.
He smokes more grass than Snoop Dogg and Willy Nelson combined.
Best comment awards 2021. 1st prize 🏵
A backdraft event with this size firebox would be down right scary. I have goofed up in the past and opened a smaller outdoor hydronic furnace door right after the damper closed and pert near took all my eyebrows.
He is saving money even though he is bailing his own straw. Necessity is the mother of invention, I like it.
What a great piece of engineering! Have you thought about building and selling them commercially? Thanks!
What an outstanding idea! I'm surprised someone hasn't thought about manufacturing this type of unit for sale?
Because there are bio gas power plants for farmers, and you can heat up to 10 houses and earn some decent money . This seems like a waste to me.
@@dice3704 Interesting I didn't know that.
@@Danielj60 ua-cam.com/video/5RS-dqA7rio/v-deo.html
Check this out
I love farmer's ingenuity
Really cool video !! How practical this man is , wow . He deserves a Gov grant for this alternative sustainable fuel boiler . When I worked at Saskatoon boiler the owner was all over that , this man should check that out but dont ask S.B those guys will rip you off for it
Good idea to use flax seed the grass they used to use it to make clothing but it also has a really good Burn rate like he said....
if you make the bails @ 35.00 a bail (or buy @ 58.00), than it seams kind of pricey heat @1 to3 bails a day
*A very good technology* that can use sustainable fuel.
I like the idea of burning bales but seems like it needs to be way more efficient... like 1 bale in a 12 to 24 hour period
Have just fallen over this , down the youtube rabbithole..... But I'm interested in such straw boilers. Nearly choked when you burnt 2-3 bales per day! - but still saving so much on heating costs.THaks to the Green Econuts arond, straw has jumped up in price: getting too expensive for bedding or now even home domestic/ farm heating. LookslikeBulk bottled gas in UK untnil they rob us and we have to go all electric....by 2030 or so. Thanks for posting Sláinte!
very good
greetings from Minnesota
i actually need to tell my dad about this youtube channel
I've already saw it son.
Have you told him yet?
Horvát is a hungaryan name! Greetings from Hungary Magyarország!😁👍
nekem is feltűnt. Horváth! :D
Its a nice idea but they do make wood fired portable boilers for camps and remote areas.
The other option would be to try earth heat pipes. The advantage is that system also cools in the summer.
Can u burn old bales not viable for feed? There still feilds full from a real wet summer a few years ago. i always think there must be a use for them
Old bales are wet and mouldy, how do you expect too burn which is wet and mouldy? Its wet, it does not burn
7:05 Yep, that's why I use a stainless steel down-stem To clean it all you have to do is get it red hot, and tap it on the ground.
How many acres of land does it take to support burning 1-3 bales a day?
Hi neighbor. We heat with a Portage and Main boiler using coal and heat a 1900 sq ft house and a 2000 sq ft shop. We get coal from Hannah Alberta. The stupid carbon tax is really costing dearly- almost doubling the heating cost. This year so far we've used about 6 tons of coal. I had thought years ago about building a flax burner like yours, and wish I would have. Great job setting up your burner. Some questions. Why would you make it portable, and is it really portable if it is hooked to pipes in the ground? Do you move it to dry grain?
It could be upgraded in many ways but it works for what it's intended for.
When I imagine a farmer this is who I see
woodprix is full of awesome tips. Very helpful to me.
If you extended the stack up you could throw a few old tires in with each bale. Burning tires make lots of heat
That's the worst idea ever. What causes chimney build up? Smoke. What causes a crap load of smoke? Tires.
@@alec4672 it would be fine. People burn them in outdoor wood burners all the Time. If it's burning hot enough then there is no smoke
@@evananderson3350 There's always smoke from tires, you'd have to be north of 800 degrees interior temperature to start getting rid of the smoke. Send tires to be recycled. The more tires we recycle the cheaper new ones are.
how long does one bail last?
on a -35 C day
some of my fondest memories as a kid were watching the prairie farm report with my grandpa on cbc when i was a kid.
Necessity IS the mother of invention!
On my mom's side were Horvath's from Porva, Hungary
New inventions are easier for you, iff you are hungarian! We imagine something in Hungary, and it will exist at U.S. soon😀 God bless all of us!
Excellent idea, great implementation, and a well-made documentary!
And in the summer it's a huge barbeque 😁
Is there a water jacket around the hearth where the burning hay is? Is that how the water actually gets hot?
I think it's just the door. With the limited information we got from this... I tend to believe it is just the door. Not very efficient.
Yes the cool water from the houses is returned to the door first to keep it cool and stop it from warping as mentioned in the video. It’s then heated with the water jacket around the boiler
Wonder what 15k would do in a solar setup? Those rolls are pretty expensive these day's from what I hear.
@jahaffe the bale's have value. They probably sell for $20 to $30 each. I know a guy that sells little square bale's for $5 to $6 each. He spent 110k on equipment to harvest 35 acres 2 to 3 times a year and says he'll pay for his equipment with just hay money. And pay his new 60k truck payment. I don't see how he could break even or make a profit but he says he has for the last couple years and is on track to have some nice equipment payed for while keeping his property maintained in the process.
@jahaffe it may be worth having the setup for drying the grain by itself though. I'm not a farmer so I don't know. I do know a guy who drilled a few water wells and only hit natural gas. Lol. That was a score.
Absolutely brilliant and resourceful!
What is the reason that it's portable? We have them here but they resemble a shed and are stationary.
So instead of fires to burn Flax straw after the season ends you could in theory roll the Flax straw up and use that . Great idea to burn that which is available naturally.
Exactly!
Wow, this guy could be Wayne's dad from Letterkenny.
Wouldn't it be simpler to just insulate the house? This can save you tons of money on heating. At least it doesn't look like it is insulated, correct me if I am wrong.
In Poland and most of Europe, we usually build using 24 (9.5 in) cm clay or aerated concrete bricks and insulate it with at least 15 (6 in) to 25 cm (10 in) of styrofoam. Foundations are insulated with even more hard styrofoam up to 1m (3.3 ft) below surface level. Similar story with the flooring.
Oh, and attics are also insolated, usually using 15 (6 in) cm or more of mineral wool.
So minimal loses of heat on winter and cool summers.
It’s in northern Canada. It probably has heavier insulation than anywhere in Europe.
How cheap is that straw? $25 each is still $75 a day to heat!
use rubbish bales with weed, or a bit rotten.
In Europe it's a bit more common due to high cost of fuels, this boiler does the job but is very inefficient. Biomas boilers work with acumulating tanks 60liters per 1kW. You do one batch a day and controls watch over temperaturs. Also we don't really use water systems for drying grain. You can only get up to 60C of hot air out of it by the time you put hot water through radiator. I understand its a compromise to use one system for drying grain and heating the houses. There are brick laid air heaters that can supplay you with temp up to 110C and work with 30t/h dryers. I have a straw 60kW boiler to heat my house and I use only straw to ignite the batch ow timber. I put a square bale at the botton then throw wood on top of it, fire it up and bugger off to work or whatever and thats me for another 24-36 hours.
Hay sells for $25 a bale, 3 bales a day, 90 bales a month, whew, where is the savings?
Wpuld a round corn stslk bale work as well?
That's a lot of bails over a winter and drying season.
Probably can burn bails of any quality so goin around finding crappy old straw and hay bails for dirt cheap would be easy
And you could use the ashes on the fields.
You will add coal to the soil, which can help somewhat with the water retention.
At our farm we burn grains and chipped wood, which makes for excellent fertilizer in certain crops in the garden. It also creates a nice dark insulator that keeps the soil moist in dry summer months. If a thick enough layer is put on the ground it also starves weeds.
Get a generator on the smoke it will make electricity too.
gasifier.
Clever Wonder why they dont use wood from their field edges?
No trees in Saskatchewan
You mean like all those trees standing in the background?
LOL, probably just planted around the house for windbreaks, can't touch those!
Anyplace around route 15 has plenty of trees for wood heating. LoL Saskatchewan is a big place.
If you got straw piling up why would you go get something else...
so 90 bails a month for 9 months lets say, 270 total, how many acres does he have to grow hay?
He's got 5000 total so 250 acres should do very nicely with a good surplus.
Jay Smith
Straw not hay. Straw is fodder separated out from wheat and oats, probably beans and all other commodities I’m sure.
WOW,,kool,,ingenuity is insane lol,, Im a NYC Oil/Gas commercial mechanic for 40 years etc i started out on residential and small commercial however this is pretty cool,, i got to watch a few mnore times because im trying to understand a few things here etc etc,,lol.. Ive seen crazy stuff in my 40 years especially some home made boilers lmaof but they worked but would never pass inspection or nyc codes ,,,lol
Kann man bruke det til fjernvarme i fjøsen?
How many days does 1 bale last im wondering .
Эта штука просто жгет солому и потребляет электричество?
This guy looks and sounds like Wayne from Letterkenny if he was 20-30 years older lol
Can confirm.
He sounds like someone from Sweden
I thought the exact same thing...
Wow, daily chores on a farm, keep the boiler going all winter or she going to freeze solid. Wonder how many bales per day? Does he need to put one in at night?
6:36 they answer your question.
Very good, so about 8 hours apart, thanks
hahaha my dad watches this show on tv I never liked it as a kid but it sure is interesting now
Bandit Keith I recognized the voice right away. I hated that show when I was a kid - literally ran out of the room . Couldn't stand the guys voice. I am more tolerant now and yes , this is an interesting piece
A bail of hay is worth what you pay for it I used to cut and bail the hay along the side of the road and it had weeds, barry viens, trash and you name it cause it was in there I mowed about thirty miles of highway frontage that we used for compost We got as high as twenty bails of hay off the highway that they paid me to mow otherwise they burnt it. I used about ten bails in the winter months of nasty below zero weather to keep my barn up in the forties and the house warm as I wanted...My cows loved the hear and when it was cold most of them just stayed in the barn including some wildlife that left our chickens alone. They almost got tame before spring as I didn't bother them .. I had a old wolf that lived there year round and I gave him dry dog food and people scrapes and not one lost chicken.... in fact it kept the chickens in the pen .. I think they figured out not to shit in the nest of bite the hand that fed it.
That’s pretty cool
Great story, good idea about using the roadside cuttings rather than burning them.
Add a necessity you do what you have to do is specially in the climate like that
how much is one big baleof hay worth?
It’s flax straw. Needs to be removed from the land because it doesn’t rot down. Virtually worthless just the cost of baling and hauling.
I wonder if this started as a way to get something out of hay that was no longer fit for livestock. Also the amount of energy in hay has to be pretty low. Bamboo is way lower than any real wood.
Brilliant!
Very similar setup to the outdoor woodstoves that are sold ....a lot of farmers in my rural area use the outdoor woodstoves....I looked into it for myself but my house is to small for even the smallest outdoor wood stoves and its easier and cheaper to have my regular airtight woodstove...but for large applications this is the way to go.
Awesome
Ingenious!
Interesting.. I wonder how bad the exhaust fumes smell, a constant grass fire in your front yard doesn’t sound very pleasant.
No worse then a constant wood fire. I heat all winter with wood. Only costs $100 for 5 cord.
Very good system! Just build what you need! Thanks!
Wayne how are ya now?
You still have snow?
Thomas Skapnit this video was filmed in 2011... In Canada it was 32C where i live today.
Hope that pressure vessel is inspected annually by T-Sask inspectors. lol
We made a wood burner when like that and actually heated the house and water heater
You heat your water heater?
They use a similar system in European farms.
Thanks. Got it corrected.
:)
Omg! Wayne from letterkenny grew up!
Very nice
Great ideal
This man is a god damn genuis.
good idea
Wow 😳 nice job 👍
Для чего это скажите по русски?
Уземдэ белмим
didn't delorean make one out of stainless steel ?
They did, but that was a long time in the future.
We need to see more of this in some of our overstocked forests that need thinning. of course the boiler would need to generate power to send through the grid.
I want one.
Very cool
5:55 - 100 Degrees Fahrenheit applies to this video.
need one of those to put a whole log in. chainsawing and splitting stacking feeding cleaning.
is alot. just forklift the log and let it burn for a week.
wood dries just 4 cm from each side per year, and that is without bork, so all the hustle is more about making it dry in a acceptable time rathen then just for handling it
You could put some monster size logs in there. Burn for a week.
This guy literally burns hay all day
This is very interesting
I love it.
Switching from Trudeau's preferred, but ever more expensive clean energy to cheap farm sustainable energy. Wish I had that option.
1-3 round bails a day to heat the House? That's got to be a mistake.
To heat 2 houses and provide hot water for said buildings. Do you have any idea how many metric fuck tons of coal you consume in electricity a year?
Horribly inefficient. 1 to 3 bales a day? At $15 a bale (self performed) that's $450-$1350 a month to heat a couple houses. For $15,000 the houses could be insulted with expanding foam and heat conventionally cheaper than baling costs. Guy just got on a project and got carried away. Oh well, to each their own.
Gas isnt that expesive, but elektricety?
And elektric heating is not the most efficient one
Flax straw is next to free in SK. They have to bunch it and burn it to get rid of it as you cannot till it under effectively. If he wasn’t growing it himself few farmers would object to him baling it instead.
Save $5000 a year for two houses? Where is this, the Yukon? Oh, well, you do have the drying. Was that electric too?
Drying is typically done with heating oil burner and blower. Power demand would make their grid glow red hot, because every farmer is doing it approximately concurrently.
Guy looks like letter Kenny
Somebody put this man on shark tank billionaire in the making smart man
Nice
1-3 bales a day? 5k per year? Spend some money on windows and insulation.
Escaping the "Carbon Tax", for now.
why not wood chips, its less complicated
Be safe
Worlds largest pot bong.