Burrowing wasps or bees or both

Two insects; the black wasp and the bubble bee seem to be making a home in the earthen walls of the Moonunit. I couldn’t tell which one has been boring holes into the walls. I’m guessing it’s the wasp doing the digging and the bumble bees are just busy inspecting… crawling in and out. You’d expect the wasp to be a Mud Dauber, but it wasn’t the black and yellow type. It may have been the Organ Pipe Mud Dauber, though it doesn’t look like their nest type. I’m sure there are enough spiders crawling around to make for a meal or two. The Moonunit hasn’t been used too much lately. Constant visitors might scare the insects a way a little. I’m not too concerned about the creatures making a home there, though getting rid of them might be difficult.

The cow manure plaster I used 2 years ago is really holding up well. It’s not tough enough to keep insects from creating holes, but it’s holding up to the weather nicely. I used as much cow poo as possible, sometimes up to half. As I recall the mix was something like 1 part clay, 2 parts sand, 1 part cow manure and straw to taste.

So, earthen walls can have insect issues, but as far as I know every wall type does to some extent. Continue Reading…

Evening at the Moonunit. A video pictorial of Project MoonUnit at night.
With special guests Jo-anna Horn and Nedly Underfoot.
Video by Michael Blaha.
Music by Low.

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Continue Reading…

I didn’t have a lot of experience building when I began this project, but I always enjoyed making forts and helping with the family house when I was young. I’ve worked with sculpture before, and in a way that’s what Project Moonunit is to me… that or a goat shed, winery, art studio, guest house, a mud hut, hacienda, ‘dobe, spaceship, pod, playground and home.

Continue Reading…

View photos here »

I experimented with the plans that Ianto Evans and Leslie Jackson prescribed in the first draft of ‘Rocket Stoves to Heat Cob Buildings: How to Build a Super Efficient Wood Fired Heater‘. I gotta tell you that it didn’t sink in the first time I read it. I understood it in principle, but it just seemed counter intuitive. The smoke goes down instead of up? Every time I’ve seen fire and smoke it goes up.

The rocket stove is a efficient wood burning device. All the heat is stored in the thermal mass; cob bench, soil bed, wall or floor. By the time the smoke leaves the building it has lost a significant amount of heat and transfered it into the building. So much that you can keep your hand on the chimney top. It’s mostly hot air and moisture leaving the flue.

The rocket stove is a down-draft heater. The oxygen hungry fire sucks air into the mouth of the stove. The fire and air move down the horizontal burn tunnel, in this case made of fire brick, and up into a insulated internal chimney. The insulated chimney was constructed with a clay tube embedded in vermiculite and clay, embedded in a metal cylinder. Then the hot air and smoke moves into a 55 gallon drum, cools ever so slightly, releasing heat into the building and sinks / is pushed into the 8″ horizontal stove pipe. The pipe is embedded in a cob bench, releasing the heat into the thermal mass of the bench there by storing it like a battery. From the bench the pipe leaves out of the building.

Updates:

Here is a of Ianto’s Rocket Stove book.

Read a review by Ocean Liff-Anderson at Dirt Cheap Builder.

The second edition, Rocket Mass Heaters-Superefficient Woodstoves You Can Build (and snuggle up to) is available here:
http://www.rocketstoves.com/