Taming the Dragon

In southern Spain, we are in the heart of olive country and olive oil.  This also means that there are a lot of olive pits (huesos) left over.  So there is a type of furnace that is common in these parts that burn olive pits for fuel.  Where we are staying, we have this type of furnace.

Olive Pit Furnaces in Spain

In concept, it is a great idea.  In application, they can be a bit fiddly.  I affectionately refer to my visits to clean and maintain the stove as going to tame the dragon.

There is an auger driven feed system from the pit storage area to the furnace.  With our system, the pits feed up one pipe from the storage room into the furnace room.  The pits then drop through a PVC pipe into another auger driven pipe, then into the furnace.

Once in the furnace, there is a pan that holds the burning seeds, and a blower to keep the air circulating for a high burn rate.  When it is running, there is quite a bit of flame and it really heats up.

The heat comes from water and radiant heaters throughout the house.  They are individually controlled, and can really put out the heat.

Every day, I go out to shovel more pits from the end of the storage room towards the auger.  If you don’t do this, you will run out of seeds at the auger.  The stove then goes out.  The problem is, this is not the only way the stove loses its fuel.

Rocks in the auger

Rocks.  I have come to despise them.  The pits seem to have all kinds of rocks mixed in with them at times.  Sometimes they make it through the auger, often times they jam it up.  Needless to say, I have torn the feed system apart over a dozen times to clear up jams.

My first experience with a jam was quite comical.  I knew the auger must be jammed so I dutifully shoveled all of the olive pits away from the feed system in the seed room.  This took me about one hour of hard labor.  I couldn’t find the jam, so called the property manager.  He came right over, and went straight into the furnace room.  I told him I shoveled all the seeds away from the auger to make it easier for him to fix.  He looked at me like I was crazy.  Then he disassembled the feed system in the furnace room, cleared the jam, and put it back together.

Of course, the jam was going to be at the end of the auger, not the beginning.  I then got to shovel all the seeds back to where I took them from.  Lesson learned.  I have now come up with a quick method of determining where the jam is, so that I can repair it much quicker.

Luie the Big Helper

Luie loves to help me haul the pits.  One time I did it without him knowing, and he got upset, wondering why I didn’t need his help that time.  His favorite part is pushing the wheelbarrow back to the pit pile.

The pits look a lot like wood pellets, for those familiar with wood pellet stoves.

Luie and I fill the wheelbarrow, and haul them over to the seed room.  It takes A LOT of loads to fill that room up.

There is a shoot outside of the seed room that I can dump the loads into.

Once they are in the room, I shovel them towards the auger, then get more loads.  It takes a while, but Luie loves doing it.

It is a really fascinating way of heating around here, with a readily available and fairly inexpensive fuel supply.  It addresses both the need for heat, and the need to dispose of the olive pits.

A little refinement on the furnace system, and I think they would be a great way to heat.