So as I'm storing away fuel of all sorts, I'm thinking of a SHTF scenario where commercial fuel is hard to come by. If that ever comes to pass, you can forget about wood. I'm pretty sure that with 300 million people every tree will be cut down in no time. So this got me thinking - what else is cheap plentiful and burns: TIRES. Ugly nasty and smokey no doubt, but plenty of BTUs in those babies. Thinking about building an outdoor furnace that could burn ANYTHING. Tires, garbage, plastics. Of course, it would be an "all else fails" apparatus, but hey, if all else fails.... It would be kinda like those outdoor wood furnaces, but more robust, maybe a fan to drive air into the combustion chamber for hard-to-burn material, a water jacket and a pump to supply radiators indoors. Pump and fan generally point to electricity, but with all that heat, I'd make them steam driven. So what do you think? Feasible? Anyone care to undertake a virtual project? Heck, maybe it even exists already.
A friend of mine was thinking about the same thing. He was going to use a water spray on the exhaust stack to keep the "floaties" subdued.
