Ive got I think 8 pallets stacked with rounds mostly with tarps covering them. Haven't got round to figuring out a log splitter yet so a lot of time with the old axe in the not too distant future. I've got 3 tattie boxes for log stores on ends with mostly old pine etc from house and bit of beech from big branch that came down from one of the trees on our boundary, wish I had more of that stuff.
- Thread starter Dilkris
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I think half the problem is getting material. One of my friends father in law was saying a couple of years ago that they were importing firewood as supplies were scarce locally, they have a firewood business. Few years back the place that makes osb nearby was complaining that they were struggling to buy the crud that's used in its manufacture as all the crap was going to biomass places for chip/ pellet manufacturing. Shame when it starts impacting on building materials etc.
AVI_8
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You are right about wasted wood, I sometimes collect free pallets, run my saw over it and use my nail gun to make logs from the free wood, I can get 2 days of free burning wood from 1 pallet, and every industrial estate has them in abundance, not for everyone though, I do it when I have free time on my hands and I’m in the area with my trailer, I love a freebee!
addjunkie
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Wood is big business, efficient forestry now take the brash, its layed outside and mixed in slowly with other wood with less contamination, keeping ash content down and used in biomass power stations. Other rubbish is composted as peat compost isnt fashionable any longer. Almost no waste from a non government commercial forest. Having said that most the spruce isnt much good for anything more than chip board or burning.
But importing wood to burn, or wood pellets to burn just seems wrong to me, I guess its driven by the biomass supplements making some of the numbers more viable
brewdexta
The biggest tool in the box
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In terms of pollution, I know the fancy Austrian boiler we have is better than the wood stoves we use, but not sure how much better.
The wood stoves meet the latest spec and the boiler does gasification and all that good stuff but not sure how they compare to each other or other fossil fuels. The pellets are very low moisture, but I guess even seasoned logs are 10% moisture
I haven't bothered to look into it until know, I may take a closer look. We always use well seasoned timber, even if they say its seasoned, it gets at least another year in an IBC in the barn.
The boiler takes logs and pellets. You can set off a full load of logs manually, then it will cut over to pellets once there is more demand on the 2000 litre heat store
That's the plan after RHI runs out, currently on pellets only that meet BSL standards, apart from the occasional test during servicing.
I think we have about 18 months left of RHI. Once we can burn what we want, I'll be calling on lots of small local woodlands that are too small to go BSL. Plus we can use the coppicing from our own small wood.
We planted a few hundred hazel and willow about 5 years ago, that will need a few more years. Our other wood was planted around 1998, but it's slow growing up in the Pennines, but is starting to coppice nicely.
In case you haven't heard of BSL, here's a link https://www.biomass-suppliers-list.service.gov.uk/
The wood stoves meet the latest spec and the boiler does gasification and all that good stuff but not sure how they compare to each other or other fossil fuels. The pellets are very low moisture, but I guess even seasoned logs are 10% moisture
I haven't bothered to look into it until know, I may take a closer look. We always use well seasoned timber, even if they say its seasoned, it gets at least another year in an IBC in the barn.
The boiler takes logs and pellets. You can set off a full load of logs manually, then it will cut over to pellets once there is more demand on the 2000 litre heat store
That's the plan after RHI runs out, currently on pellets only that meet BSL standards, apart from the occasional test during servicing.
I think we have about 18 months left of RHI. Once we can burn what we want, I'll be calling on lots of small local woodlands that are too small to go BSL. Plus we can use the coppicing from our own small wood.
We planted a few hundred hazel and willow about 5 years ago, that will need a few more years. Our other wood was planted around 1998, but it's slow growing up in the Pennines, but is starting to coppice nicely.
In case you haven't heard of BSL, here's a link https://www.biomass-suppliers-list.service.gov.uk/
AVI_8
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That’s properly seasoned then
Noooo. Think of the heat going up the chimney - hope you've covered it over?
blackolive (Ste)
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£80 here. Gone up recently from £60. When I had the navara I got them to forklift a bag on the back, and handballed them out into the woodstore but that won’t work with the freelander . We have a 6kw morso in the kitchen extension (on what was the back wall of the house). Ive just picked up a little tower fan from b+m for £6
Ive put it on the breakfast bar and it blows the warmer air out through the kitchen door and upstairs
House is running solely off a 60Kw wood furnace. We put about 10 cords of wood in it a winter, and the past two years the price of wood has gone mental, even though its a really rural area surrounded by forests as now large forestry companies are coming in and buying whole forests from the locals to process and sell elsewhere so the scarcity produced has raised the price. Its also difficult to find anyone to sell in big bag's or ibc frames, even at a higher price. They all seem to want to turn up with a 3.5t pickup truck with it loose that they tip off after payment in case, so they can sod off before you realize that seasoned dry oak you paid for was mostly softwood underneath, and far from being the actual quantity. And only the top layer is dry enough to burn. I guess the people set up to package and load big bags just sell it to the firewood industry direct rather than pishing round with normal customers.
Personally I'm well behind this year as I only have about 6 ibc frame's full of dry logs stacked up and covered ready to go , maybe another cord or so left in the log store from last year and a whole large ash tree still to split that we felled about 2 years back because it was dangerous, but first I have to rework the shop bought splitter because its not powerful enough to split the ash rounds. 16 chinese tons of force at play no doubt.
Its not the future for everyone because its a massive amount of manual work but I just look at it as its cheaper than a gym membership, and you can't skip sessions if you want to be warm. There will come a day eventually when I'm not physically capable of it though.
We live too remote for mains gas, so my main fear is before that day some edict comes out about pollution blanket banning wood burners even in rural areas, and we will have the double problems of what to fuel the house heating with, and what to do with all the dead fall wood and any sick trees that have to come down.
Personally I'm well behind this year as I only have about 6 ibc frame's full of dry logs stacked up and covered ready to go , maybe another cord or so left in the log store from last year and a whole large ash tree still to split that we felled about 2 years back because it was dangerous, but first I have to rework the shop bought splitter because its not powerful enough to split the ash rounds. 16 chinese tons of force at play no doubt.
Its not the future for everyone because its a massive amount of manual work but I just look at it as its cheaper than a gym membership, and you can't skip sessions if you want to be warm. There will come a day eventually when I'm not physically capable of it though.
We live too remote for mains gas, so my main fear is before that day some edict comes out about pollution blanket banning wood burners even in rural areas, and we will have the double problems of what to fuel the house heating with, and what to do with all the dead fall wood and any sick trees that have to come down.
Exactly, Theres a place up the road from us that sells the used ibc's at markets and stuff. I just ask them to buy the ones where the plastic part is too damaged to stack wood in. You get a known size, they stack and you can forklift them or pallet truck them around easy.
Pigeon_Droppings2
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Few years ago I was looking at larger log burners/furnaces....the idea was it's sited in an out building and you fill it with wood and set it off on a slow burn. The heat is then passed to a water holding tank...if I had the space I'd love to do a setup like that.
Erie Fred
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Very common "over here" and they are a problem.
The "slow burn" is the main problem, they smoke all the time.
My neighbor has one, I tried to explain that smoldering /smoking is wasting fuel up the stack, but to no avail.
And he claims he's an engineer.....
finyuk2005
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i was at an air b&b this year that had a wood fired hot tub, great bit of kit!
but i suggested they brick the firebox up a bit, as it was far too big, I tried to load it right up and damp it down so it would burn for a while before needing more wood, but as you said, that just resulted in tones of smoke, and then the fire died out!
It was basically all or nothing! I figured a smaller firebox might keep the heat in the fire better even when dampened down
A big firebox would be handy if they were heating the whole hot tub from cold, but they were re-filling with hot water from a gas boiler before each new guest anyway.
mike os
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So coming on line in 2050 or so? 10 years after the pulp plant closes?If they build the bog roll factory there will be a Prototype Fusion power station next to it
Five sites shortlisted for UK fusion energy plant
The STEP programme will pave the way to commercial fusion and a virtually limitless supply of low-carbon energywww.gov.uk
