Adelaide Hills Biochar Initiative

The first trial of my new Maccy-Kontiki Kiln took place last week and I can report that it was most successful.

It was a sunny still day but cold.
I started a small fire with paper and twigs and a firelighter in the bottom of the kiln which burned rapidly with some initial smoke.
I added small twigs for a few minutes and gradually increased size of twigs until I was adding sticks and branches.
Smoke mainly ceased and flames grew quite large and high (up to a metre and more at times).

When the kiln was about 1/3 full I ran out of large sticks.
Reverting to twigs caused a flare-up with smoke.

So I decided to quench the fire.

After quenching the kiln appeared about 1/4 full and there were some larger sticks that had not completely carbonised.
But on the whole the result was charcoal.

It produced about 1/2 a wheel barrow full.

I distributed most of it between 3 compost bins and gave my wife a bucket-full to play with.

I now have a Council permit to burn my wood heap so will use all three kilns down at the wood heap at the next opportunity and then report back.