How to build a house in Hawaii for next to nothing

 

I'll tell you right up front, it's going to entail a lot of hard work.

 

And it will take time. Not to be coy or anything, but this is inevitably going to be a ridiculously extended series of posts. You gotta start somewhere though, right?

 

 

 

 

This side of the big island is rife with wonderful old houses that have seen better days. Since even before we moved here, it's been my dream to somehow get one of these tumbledown old shacks, dismantle it down to its roots, and salvage all of the materials that I can.

 

 

 

 

See, many of these old houses were made from some nice materials, stuff that is virtually unobtainable today, at least not without selling your child into slavery. Renee says that option is off the table however, so it looks like a-scavenging I will go.

 

 

 

 

A wonderful woman who bought a piece of property a few years back (just outside of Pahoa) had exactly that sort of place, the tumbledown shack. The house was too far gone to be salvaged, so they tore it down, saving and reusing what they could. New construction in Hawaii does not allow for the use of used or salvage materials, but at least they could use some of the old siding lumber to build a fence. They also saved the windows, and that's where I come in.

 

 

 

This is stack of old sash windows, at least 3/4 of which I should be able to make good again. For some inspirational reading, I refer back to a Shinglemaker post a while back, on rejuvenating some of his old Dutch beauties. These windows won't be too terribly different and I'll go into the details of the restoration agonies in a future post.

 

I am pretty excited to begin with the fixing, because it will be a crash course (no pun intended) in how things used to be done. Many of these windows were built the old way, by hand, lots of through tenon, wavy glass, and unfortunately, some termite damage. I'm also looking forward to using the old-school lime/linseed oil putty, something that I've never made or used before, but who's qualities I've heard worshipfull references to for ages.

 

 

So I got all of the old windows, and while I was there, I cleaned up the site a bit, picking up the leftovers that were headed for the burn pile.

 

It took a few trips with my little car, but I've got most of it home now. That's a big pile of old growth redwood siding, totally clear (no knot holes), something that I can't even imagine trying to buy now, just WAY too expensive. Expensive to buy new, but every day tons of this stuff is tossed into the dumpsters island wide. I had been looking for exactly this type of material, to use for building my traditional Japanese forge bellows, the fuigo. Tight CVG redwood was tops on my list of materials to use and.........here it is. Now I just need to pull a bazillion nails and scrape off the old paint.

 

 

 

Also while I was there, the owner brought in a crew to cut down some of the larger nuisance trees that were in the immediate area. Most notably were four smallish Albizia, generally referred to as "That G#*!!!!#%#%*{+}!!!!), and any number of less polite epithets, dependant upon present company. Smallish in size, all four are only about 24" in diameter, which ages them at about 10-15 years old or so. The owners decision to remove them now is a sound one because these trees grow incredibly fast, and though the trees themselves are beautiful, they are also weak and prone to shedding monstrous limbs at the slightest provocation. They call this the "Albizia tree epidemic", and it is a legal liability nightmare.

 

 

The owner had girdled this tree last year, so it has been seasoning for that time, loosing some of its moisture and all of its leaves.

 

 

I asked the tree crew to leave me a good sized section of the main trunk, so that I can try my hand at working with this stuff, cutting planks mostly. The Albizia wood isn't commonly used, and is generally considered to be trash, barely worth even chipping for mulch. People don't even use it for firewood. That sounds about perfect for me, with my penchant for trying to find a better use for everyone else's garbage.

 

The crew left me four trees, about 50' linear feet of 2' diameter logs. That's about the same volume of area as what my car occupies. My arms are feeling bigger already!

 

And.

 

That's just the main stems. There are huge amounts of limbs still laying everywhere. It's funny to me, seeing a 1' diameter limb, 10' long and thinking....ehh, what's the point of cutting that little crap?! And these trees aren't even particularly large. Some of these monsters are closer to 5' diameter.

 

 

Like a fool, I forgot my inkline to mark the initial cut, so I had to eyeball it and was wandering all over the place. Not pretty.

 

 

Pardon the forced perspective, they aren't really as big as they appear. Even after splitting the 12' log, I still had to shorten the lengths to 6' so that I could move them around, much less squeeze them into my poor little car.

 

 

 

Once I got home, I slapped some paint on the endgrain to slow the drying some, try to minimize the checking. I still need to strip the bark, if I hope to save the wood from the beetle larvae.

 

 

Sammy likes them.

 

 

Opening these logs up was like seeing an old friend. I realized that this is most likely the same type of wood that gets used as a lightweight core stock on some of the solid core plywood panels that I've bought in the past. The panel manufacturer rips the core into strips, glues them back together, and finally, glues down an attractive face veneer.

 

 

This log shows rather bland grain, but nothing objectionable. The color is a light tan and cream thankfully, as some of the other stuff that I've seen has a distinct greenish cast to it, green with undertones of mud.....yuck. The fuzzyness that is apparent in places seems to indicate that the grain will be slightly interlocked but again, nothing surprising.

 

My immediate impression of the wood is that it will make for some interesting furniture building, if not the house. The wood is light in weight and considered brittle. It's not rot or insect resistant either, so if we were to use it for building, it would be interior only. I look at the wood and see.....thick tabletop surfaces, or very thin panel stock. I think that this wood has good potential, and it's free for the asking. You could get a mountain of this stuff in days, if you had a loading truck and trailer. I've read technical papers that measured it's overall strength to be somewhat on par with eastern White Pine, which is what got me interested in this lumber in the first place. Let's find a use for this stuff.

 

 

 

One of the many other nuisance trees that were cut, were a handful of Cecropia. I used some of the shorter pieces as sleepers to keep the Albizia off the ground.

 

Growth rings! I haven't seen that in a while.

 

The center pith is hollow with very thin and brittle membranes that divide the length. One of the common names of this plant is "Pump-wood", and it's obvious why. It would be an easy task to push a stick through the divisions, creating a long, hollow tube. That would make for some very rustic plumbing, but sanitation might be questionable.

 

 

It has distinctively radiant, palmate leaves.

 

 

The leaves look a bit similar to the Jamaican castor bean plant, and nearly everyone that I've met has the mistaken impression that it IS the castor bean, but it's not. If you were hoping to make some Ricin, you're SOL......sorry.

 

 

Back to Cecropia obtusifolia .....

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/

 

There is some very interesting reading there. Turns out its got a muriad of tradition and modern medical uses, a far more interesting character than just being on the "100 worst invasive plant species" would indicate. In retrospect, it seems like it's often the most prolific and resilient species that have the potential for having interesting qualities. I've always had a sympathy for difficult personalities.

 

The general consensus is that it is a weak and non-durable wood, opportunistic in disturbed areas and it has large, stinky blossoms too. From my limited experience, it feels pretty strong to me, so I'm looking forward to exploring it's potentials in the near future.

 

 

So what has this to do with building cheaply? I guess that it's obvious, but I'm finding that free materials abounds, if you've got the knowledge and energy to invest in the gathering.

 

Oh yeah.....time. This is a huge time element here. You can't just start building tomorrow, you know?

 

 

 

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Build a charcoal kiln part 3....The first results.

 

 

So I built this charcoal kiln to make proper bladesmithing charcoal.....If you want to see it from the beginning:

• Part 1
• Part 2

It's ugly, I'll grant you that, haha.

 

 

 

How did yesterday's burn work out?

 

Not the greatest I've made....

 

 

.....but not the worst, either. It looks badly overcooked. The barrel is only half full, but started out being packed.

 

 

Given that this was a newly constructed kiln, surrounded by wet grass/clay insulation (didn't work, BTW), and filled to the brim with wood that was far from dry....my expectations were low. I was anticipating a lot of undercooked stuff though, so go figure. This was probably a worst case scenario, so the results are encouraging.

 

My only real successes in the past have been using a 5 gallon retort style kiln. I've cooked in 55 gallon drums a few times before, but that only resulted in badly overcooked or badly undercooked charcoal. Certainly nothing approaching a consistent result, anyways. What did I get this time?

 

 

The first shovels don't look so hot (no pun intended). This ashy, shrunken and fractured look is overcooked. Too much heat, over too long a time period.

 

 

 

 

I sift out the fines using a nominal 1/2" mesh.

 

When I first opened the barrel, it looked to me as though much of the wood had been reduced to ashes –generally that's due to having an air leak somewhere– but as I am sifting, I'm not really finding as much ash as I had thought.

 

 

I do find a couple of pieces that aren't fully cooked. This chunk is 1/2 charcoal, the other 1/2 still a little bit brown.

 

 

You can still see the holes in the wood, tunnels left by beetle larvae. So cool!

 

 

Here is a perfect example of overcooked charcoal. Spongy looking, soft rounded edges, and a gray cast to it.

 

 

This is charcoal that has had all of the volatile elements burned from it, not really what we want for the forge. It's great for the garden though. I am surprised how little there is of this. Only 4-5% of the total, if that. I got similar results when using my 5 gallon retort.

 

 

Most of the charcoal came out looking like this. A perfect piece is on top, a slightly overcooked piece below.

 

 

The perfect charcoal breaks cleanly with a crisp *snap*. You can see how fine grain this Guava is. That is another variable to this attempt, I've never cooked a hardwood species, much less Guava. I've only used softwoods in the past.

 

 

A before and after comparison.

 

 

 

 

One of the aspects that I love the most is how little the wood is affected by a proper coaling process. If done well, the charcoal product will look exactly like the original, just shrunken and black after having all of the liquid components removed. The Japanese have turned this into an art of sorts, converting all sorts of things into charcoal themed displays.

 

 

I recognize a pineapple and a sea urchin, but the other stuff? Is that a lufa sponge?

 

 

My guava charcoal isn't that pretty, but you can see how many of the sticks had fissured, peeling bark when they went into the kiln and still have it upon coming out.

 

 

 

You can see evidence of the larvae tunneling underneath the bark. I just love this stuff.

 

 

It's hard to tell from the photos, but the charcoal itself has a silvery sheen to it, and it rings slightly when tapped. Pouring the charcoal into the bag, it has a musical sound to it.

 

 

And here is the yield. A small 4 lb bag of fines (mostly the small fragments of bark that fell off of the sticks), and a large bag of decent charcoal.

 

 

This Guava charcoal is MUCH heavier than the pine and cedar charcoal that I am used to. I would guess that the bag weighs around 70lbs, more than the bag can withstand in any event, so somewhere around there.

 

The small bag of fines can be crushed further and used for the bed of my forge, added to the clay for yaki-ire, used as a component of the welding flux, or just spread in the garden. Nothing is wasted.

 

 

Here is the barrel after shoveling out the interior. I took no special care here, just scooped out the charcoal, but my point is that there was actually very little ash produced, far less than I was expecting.

 

 

So in retrospect, the yield wasn't as poor as I had initially thought. The cooked charcoal is dramatically reduced in diameter after losing all its water, and also had settled quite a bit. It's hard for me to guess at a yield, but based primarily on the amount of ash I saw.....jeez, 80% maybe? 

Another good thing about proper charcoal.....it's clean. Well, kinda clean.

 

 

Despite having shoveled out a whole drum of char, screening it all and bagging it, my hands are barely dirty. My feet are still clean! It's nice stuff.

 

 

This particular batch of charcoal doesn't have the clear pure *ring* of some charcoal, but had I started with dry sticks to begin with, I suspect it would. The next batch (I'll probably start today....I'm a charcoal junky, haha) I will shut down sooner, earlier in the blue smoke phase, so we'll see how that affects things. The kiln is dry now too, not buried in wet mud. That should help. This charcoal will be fine to use, but I still want to do better.

 

Another improvement will be to construct the fire chamber to be more like a self feeding rocket stove, with a tilted or vertical entry for the fuel sticks. Put gravity to work for you, right? Nothing too fancy though, because you need to be able to seal the coaling chamber quickly.

 

So, a success! If you are into traditional blacksmithing and need some fuel, this works well. We've got tons of downed trees sitting here that I need to clean up, nearly all of it being thin, invasive guava that everyone else hates. I haven't used the guava charcoal in the forge yet (still haven't built my forge even, so I guess that I better hurry up, huh?), but this should work fine. There is a never ending supply of free guava here.

 

This is a great way to use what many people view as waste, and that's a huge positive in my book. Cut the tree, and what isn't suitable for lumber gets turned into charcoal. The smallest twigs and twistiest branches are used to actually make the charcoal, while the leaves go into the garden compost.

 

The only real problem that remains is the noxious smoke thing. Maybe we can devise a scrubber for the vent stack. One of the more common uses for the Iwasaki kiln is to capture the "Wood vinegar" distillate, used for lots of different things but I'm not really familiar with that side of stuff. Essentially, the smoke gets funneled into a long cooling pipe, then condenses back into a liquid which then is collected. Something to think about. It might be worth a shot.

 

 

My charcoal producing kiln is not really an original idea (nothing is, right?), but is loosely based on a traditional Japanese coaling kiln.

 

http://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/okakawa2/62354573.html

 

The fire never actually touches the wood that will be turned into charcoal, and the blue line presumably represents the liquid distillate. The traditional kiln is packed with wood as tightly as possible, but much of the wood is stacked vertically, and there doesn't appear to be an air channel underneath the wood, only a small space that runs just under the ceiling. I might try this next firing.

 

The 55 gallon drum that the design is based around has a limited service life, so perhaps I will make the real version one day. That a fun class that would be!

 

 

So there you have it. Now you can make awesome charcoal too. It's pretty easy and might even be called fun. If the neighbors get fussy, have them come talk to me.

 

 

Now if only I had a forge......

 

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Building a charcoal kiln #2..."FIRE!"

More about making a kiln to produce blacksmithing charcoal.......Installment #1 here.

OK, where was I?

I toss on a few more sheets of tin to serve as a roof and it's time to give it a try.

I first lay a perpendicular floor of sticks, to keep the wood slightly elevated and to give an air path for the initial stages of burning.

I fill the barrel with short 15" lengths of cut Guava branches, trying to fit them as tightly as possible. Here's half full.

 

 

Now, as tightly as possible might not be the best choice, but being the curious sort that I am.........

See, the problem is that:

• The insulating grass/mud mix is wet as hell still, and will likely never dry completely, given that it rains here so frequently.
• The sticks that I am coaling were cut 6 months ago, but have been sitting out in the elements. They are far from being dry.
• By nature, I am sometimes perversely contrary (just ask my wife), so what the hell. Fill it to the brim! Bring it on!!!

 

I've got two remnant circles of roof tin staring at me, so I trim one down to fit inside the barrel, forming a baffle. Notice that the corrugations run vertically and there is an air-gap at the top of the divider. I want about 2" of clearance between the baffle and the very front of the lid. Hopefully that will be doesn't restrict the airflow too much.

 

 

 

 

I had cut an 8" square opening on the lid, three tabs that I bent over to give rigidity to the thin steel.

 

I also built up a soil platform to get the firebox up where it belongs.

 

 

I bent a small sheet of tin into a box-like shape that will serve as the firebox. I support the tin with dirt, rocks and bricks, whatever is close to hand.

 

I forgot to take pics, but it's nothing special. This is an area that I want to improve some. V#2 will probably be a rocket stove variant. More on that to come....

 

 

 

 

 

Grab a healthful breakfast of leftover seaweed salad, snag the fire extinguisher and the propane torch and......let's see what happens!

 

 

 

We've got smoke! The white smoke phase is relatively cold, and nearly all of the smoke produced is water vapor/steam. The guava that I'm burning smells nice, just perfect for smoking meat!

 

You can see that I've got a chunk of broken CMU restricting the opening at the front of the firebox. You need to balance the amount of air that gets to the fire, enough air for combustion, but not so much that you lose the draft. It's tempting to build something fancy, but I'll think about that later.

 

 

 

For a baseline measure, the firebox is at 200F.....

 

 

 

....and the lid temp is 236F.

 

 

 

 

The all important stack temp reads 134F.

 

 

I'm psyched, the 134F means that hot air is being drawn through the tightly packed sticks, no problem.

 

 

 

The amount of time required to convert a drum full of wood into blacksmithing charcoal will vary. I started this burn rather late in the day and given that I packed the kiln full to the gills with only superficially dry wood, leaving little room for air to flow, this batch should take quite awhile. Between searching out dry twigs to get the fire established (you'd think I'd have a pile of already dry wood set aside, wouldn't you, haha) doing dishes/laundry/cooking dinner, changing the brakes on my car and ten other things......6 hours later it was getting dark, right when the kiln really started pumping out the smoke. Bad timing, because the nightime's cooling air will hold the smoke right at ground level. I capped the vent stack, blocked the air intake, then called it a night.

 

 

The next day the fire was much quicker to take, given that the wood in the kiln was now partially cooked. The stack was pumping white smoke for a good hour before the color of the smoke began to shift to the yellow. The yellow smoke phase is the nasty part of the process, as this is when the more interesting volatile compounds are being released from the wood. The yellow smoke stinks, plain and simple.

 

 

Your neighbors won't thank you for this.

 

 

Is it any wonder that I need to live in the country, haha?!

 

As I mentioned before, the yellow smoke is volatile, and quite combustible. Clever people channel the smoke back to the burn chamber and harvest those otherwise wasted BTU'S, but this is right about the time where the process starts to speed up, so extra heat isn't what's needed. Still, my sense of economy is offended.

 

People ask whether you can just burn straight wood in the forge instead of charcoal, and the answer is yes, BUT.......All of that white smoke we saw is water vapor that pulls huge numbers of BTU's from your forge, so a straight wood fire isn't very hot. Also, the yellow smoke is exactly what you get from a smoldering fire, virtually guaranteeing that everyone you meet will ask if you were recently at a bonfire party. Sure thing, the smoke goes right in your eyes and because the wood burns with a visible flame, you'll be doubly blind. In comparison, good charcoal burns with a nearly invisible flame, gives off almost no smoke and very little scent. Apples and oranges.

 

 

The yellow smoke phase sees elevating temperatures everywhere.

 

 

 

I love the double wall vent pipe. Warm to the touch, that's all.

 

 

 

And the vent gasses themselves.....nearly 400F.

 

 

 

So, things start to happen more quickly now and it's time to be attentive. From yellow smoke to finish took about 1.5 hours but again, this was wet wood, packed tight. A loose or cross stacked pile would produce only 1/2 the amount of charcoal, but might only take a few hours if you use dry wood.

 

 

1 hour or so of billowing yellow clouds of smoke, but now the smoke is getting thinner, less yellow, more gray.

 

 

You see how the air is getting clear, right where the gasses exit the stack?

 

 

462 degrees Fahrenheit.

 

 

 

 

 

Remember my clever grass and mud insulation? That's not just steam from it drying out, haha.

 

117F is great, but that's due to the insulative effects of the lava. The grass has turned into char, and the only reason that it didn't burst into flame is that the lava cinder kind of smothered it, deprived it of air. More clay might have helped, but the drum temperature gets extremely hot, so maybe straight dirt/rocks is just the way to go.

 

 

You need to have *some* flame pics, right?

 

 

Once the draft is established, nearly all of the flames and smoke from the heat fire get drawn into the kiln. The flames hit the baffle then travel up and over. I assume that by that time there isn't enough oxygen to support true combustion, just what we want. You can also see how wet this wood is. I'm actually surprised that it burns this well!

 

 

Another 15 minutes goes by, and the flue gasses are even more clear. Almost all the water and other stuff has been expelled from the wood.

 

 

 

Almost 500F.

 

 

 

Another 10 minutes, gasses are clear at the exit, and the smoke is developing a distinct bluish cast. Almost done.

 

 

 

Almost 600F, a rise of 100 degrees in just a few minutes time.

 

 

 

5-7 minutes more and it's time to shut it down. There volume of smoke is drastically reduced and the smoke exiting the pipe is blue, not gray.

 

 

 

Almost 800F.

 

 

 

I pull the firebox away from the mouth....

 

 

...and pile up some bricks and dirt to shut off the oxygen. I cap the vent using an old coffee can topped with a rock, should the breeze kick up.

 

 

Tomorrow I'll open it up.

 

Fun, right?!

 

 

 

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