[Terrapreta] Strong warning against "simple" charcoal kilns

[Kurt Treutlein]

Kevin Chisholm wrote:
>  <<snipped>> What we need now is "market development", not "be all and
>  end all solutions" that constrain or mis-direct development effort.
>

You're right. What we need is a way for the average gardener to try it 
out. The problem is that there is very little suitable charcoal 
available commercially. The all singing and dancing charcoal making 
devices that people are working on are still largely some time away from 
commercial availability. Consequently, DIY charcoal production is a 
necessity. Of course, local regulations will stymie a lot of DIY, but 
there will still be many people who can experiment at will. Once the 
average gardener sees the benefits of charcoal in soil, then the word 
will begin to move out into the community and be of interest to farmers, 
who will go looking for good supplies of charcoal and this will help to 
develop a market, thuis hopefully developing "supply" to fill the "demand".

Volke's device is very good. It is simple and will do the job of 
producing a few kilos a day from prunings and the like without much 
effort. In this regard it is better than the rubbish bin based TLUD 
device I was working on last year, because that one required metal work 
and experimentation to get a good flare off of the offgases. I will use 
both Volke's design and my own when I, shortly, get back to 
experimentation.

I have very good basalt based soil here, so it will be interesting to 
see what improvements, if any result from t he addition of charcoal to it.

regards,

Kurt