Do our critters hold the answer to home heating costs?!

[mom'sfolly]

I think in most of India, cow manure is collected and used for heating and cooking fires. I'd be afraid that there would be considerable odor...not an issue here because we need cooling not heating.

 

[annmarie]

According to the article, there's no odor.
From Backwoods Home article
At the same time I was just a little surprised to find that burning manure in this manner didn’t stink like you’d have expected. In fact, it didn’t add any odor at all to the interior of my workshop. While out of doors, rather than any sort of manure odor, or even any normal smoke odor, what you noticed was a faint smell much like that of burnt modern smokeless gun powder.

He then goes on to write that after his workshop experiment his wife (who was very much against the idea in the beginning) began using it in the livingroom fireplace.

Also:
Packed and dried, animal manure actually does provide a perfectly suitable and odorless heating fuel, with a somewhat greater heating value than seasoned hardwood. And the yields I’ve achieved using the resultant manure ash as a garden fertilizer have repeatedly been greater than those grown on identical soil using either manure or commercial fertilizer.

 

[Kusanar]

Hey, I know this thread is ancient, but has anyone tried this yet? I bought a farm and the tack room/well house will have a wood stove to help keep the chill out of the air in there and to heat water when needed. I am planning on getting one of the "paper brick" presses and making manure bricks to stack next to the stove in the winter for easy heat. I have 7 horses and where they gather around the hay pile gets LOADED with manure. I think I will keep a metal 5 gallon bucket next to the stove for the ashes, when it fills up, dump into 55 gallon barrels, then in late winter/early spring, use a small spreader pulled by my mini to spread the ash where it will do the most good, probably in my small orchard I will be planting out there. I will be getting the press soon and probably will be playing around with making bricks some this winter and really gear up in the summer. I have a stall that 2 of the horses use as a run in, it is around 6 inches deep of pure dry manure now, I think I will just add some water, mix, press into bricks, and let dry.