Are air dried logs to be made illegal?

[westphalian]

shit, and i've started to build a new air drying shed

[felixthelogchopper]

Suppose I got caught with a couple of net bags of air dried logs in the boot by the babylon; could I just claim it was for personal use?

[gdh]

22 minutes ago, westphalian said:

shit, and i've started to build a new air drying shed

The irony is you won't even be allowed to cut it up for firewood... 

[Woodworks]

1 hour ago, devon TWiG said:

If any one is stopped for delivering wet wood , then you can say I am not selling it , the wood is free ......I just charge for cutting splitting and delivery   !!!!!

 

Yes there will probably be ways around this. No it's not firewood officer the customer has ordered a 1m3 habitat pile 

[mixedangased]

11 hours ago, Mark Bolam said:

I'm looking forward to selling black market air dried logs.

 

They will never take me alive.

Me too ?

[Martin du Preez]

As a stove retailer I feel that not only is this a positive move but the max moisture content should be lowered to 16%.   I have by far more problems with customers feeding their stoves wet wood than all the other issues put together.    Some log sellers seem to think that seasoning logs starts the day the tree comes down,  alas its only once the log has been split or the bark has fallen off that most timbers can dry out.  
 
However there are nowhere near enough civil servants to enforce current smoke control regulations,  I cant see any way that this can be enforced other than following a complaint from a home owner about smoke emissions from a house nearby.   But it gives Hetas a nice little earner !!,  all suppliers to be registered, cost of initial registration plus annual costs as a per ton sold basis.     Think it would have to put £10 onto the price of a cubic m of logs given my volumes.   You have to keep an audit trail of where their cord comes from and are subject to annual audit to include taking at random sample of their ready for sale stock for in depth analysis.  I would like to think that anyone seen with a load of logs on the back is likely to be stopped and checked but by who and with whose support.  No Police any more so they wont help,  to busy catching speeding motorists. 
 
Be interesting to see how it pans out, we live in interesting times !!.
 
A

16%??? If your stoves can’t handle anything up to at least 25% surely you should be looking at the stoves not the logs??? The stove supplier who hands my name out recommends 18-25% and so does the booklet from the manufacturer. I mean obviously I stand to be corrected as that is our trade, just repeating what I’ve been told.

[bilke_user]

Instead of selling ready to burn logs just label them as ready to store.
Instead of us lads worrying a lot about this, have a thought for the filling station owners who have nets stored in their forecourts open to all weather and unlikely to ever see 20% moisture content.  Will they not be the easy target for the wood police

 

[Alycidon]

3 hours ago, Mark Bolam said:

Hopefully rural areas will be swarming with crack units of gun-toting cops to police this genius plan.

They might catch a few thieves while they’re at it.

In this area we are practically Police free,  any one they have is manning a radar trap.

 

But dont start me on that one.

 

A

[richardwale]

I agree, 16 % is taking it too far. All modern stoves with secondary burn will happily feast on wood 25% or less, no problem at all. No smoke from the chimney, clear glass, lovely flame pattern, job done. 

 

 

[Matt Fitzpatrick]

It's a done deal , just seen Therese Coffey on Twitter video saying the goverment is going to phase out the sale of high polluting fuels which includes house coal , high sulphur smokeless briquettes and Wet wood .  So were supposed to be in a period of consultation and yet their putting videos online. Hetas, the stove industry alliance,  CPL, fuel express ,certainly wood ,Whitehorse are all pushing for this .

The ready to burn scheme will  become an industry standard and with that additional costs to small businesses ,annual subscription- audit and maybe a tonnage levy .

Personally I only sell kiln dried imported hardwood logs and will meet the criteria if necessary i will join  the ready to burn scheme to safeguard my business. What they are proposing in the consultation paper is wrong it is not possible to air dry logs consistently to 20% and that needs challenging so I urge you all to complete the consultation paper  online and have your say . Defra will recommend to government and it will become law.