Finishing the crust and covering the insulating the top of the biomeiler was going to require more shavings than I had in the storage bin. So, I got a load of shavings on Saturday and added them to the biomeiler on Sunday, after I got home from church. It was good that I got the wagon unloaded in one day, because the shavings were already freezing into a block. If they had frozen solid in the wagon it would have been a huge hassle to get them out before spring.
A frozen pile of wood shavings is quite difficult to break up. It is called Pykrete (like concrete) when it is mixed in a special ratio. The combination of wood fiber and ice crystal makes the mixture flexible enough that it doesn’t break like ice and insulated enough that it can’t thaw as easily as ice. When made on purpose it is an interesting material to work with, but when it is made by accident it is an “interesting” problem to deal with. My accidental mixtures are usually a random ratio of chicken manure and wood shavings, rather than ice and wood shavings. So, even worse than true Pykrete because of the unpleasantness of dealing with poop.
I have dreamed of making my own Pykrete island in one of the lakes near Fairbanks. The lakeshore property has all been bought up, but I could buy a boat license for my Pykrete island and live on it without paying property tax. The difficulty would be that I would have to bring truckloads of shavings onto the ice in the deep winter and build in a refrigeration system to keep the island frozen during the summer. It would also need a fair amount of insulation to keep the above-water surface warm enough to enjoy camping on it. However, the huge advantage is that I could extend the island every winter and continuously reduce the risk of it thawing too much in the summer. I should put this on my to-do list.
