Are air dried logs to be made illegal?

[Logsnstuff]

On 08/10/2018 at 08:14, Ian C said:

To be honest I have worked it out and to make it worh doing I need 120 a cube min, there shit loads round here doing dumpy bags for 40 quid, theres no way I will sell them at £120 a cube.

I’m charging £128 a cube bag and £98 for a 3/4 and if I had work for the forwarder I wouldnt do them at all, every year there’s more and more starting up slashing prices £60 roadside atm for birch makes you wonder how they can sell at £60 a cube delivered.

[Acerforestry]

I haven't had time to go through all the posts, but the cynic in me is saying this is just another government move to clobber the little guy. "If you are a mass scale kiln dried, DEFRA approved set-up, do please continue...if you are trying to make a bit of holiday money from flogging off some arb waste, we are going to  put the kybosh on what you do"...it all makes me furious, dry is dry for Christ's sake and once out of the kiln it will simply take on ambient MOISTURE. The country is run by bloody idiots

[aesmith]

That's pretty much it.  My understanding is that the whole thing is backed or maybe even kicked off by a couple of large kiln dried producers and importers.   However a couple of things occur to me that I don't think have been mentioned.

 

Firstly pretty much all serious firewood suppliers already seem to say that their products are 20% MC or lower.  So isn't there a contradiction if everyone is now saying that a legal requirement for 20% or less can only be met by kiln drying?

 

Secondly and speaking mainly as an end user but with some retail experience, there's a real problem with some of the stuff being sold in bags or nets where the customer should be able to assume it's ready to use.  We had a sample net from one supplier that was pretty wet.  Even worse some stuff my Father bought from a local country superstore type outfit, that stuff would have needed months to dry properly.

 

[Stumpy Grinder]

So  6,749.57 km² of California goes up in smoke and we are worried about the moisture content of wood burned here in the UK? Kind of puts it into perspective.

SG

 

[Big J]

4 minutes ago, Stumpy Grinder said:

So  6,749.57 km² of California goes up in smoke and we are worried about the moisture content of wood burned here in the UK? Kind of puts it into perspective.

SG

 

Let's say 40 tonnes per acre, for arguments sake and you've got nearly 67 million tonnes of wood. To contextualise that, the UK produces a total of around 11 million tonnes per year of roundwood according to the Commission.

[Stumpy Grinder]

31 minutes ago, Big J said:

Let's say 40 tonnes per acre, for arguments sake and you've got nearly 67 million tonnes of wood. To contextualise that, the UK produces a total of around 11 million tonnes per year of roundwood according to the Commission.

But how much of the 11 million tonnes is actually burnt? Even then it is burnt over a much longer period of time.

The CHP plant where I shoot burns more wood to create the heat that is then used to kiln dry the woodchip!

[Big J]

7 hours ago, Stumpy Grinder said:

But how much of the 11 million tonnes is actually burnt? Even then it is burnt over a much longer period of time.

The CHP plant where I shoot burns more wood to create the heat that is then used to kiln dry the woodchip!

Agreed. Most of it will be sawn, not burned. Would take decades of UK burning to do that one wildfire.

[Steve2011]

But how many tons need to be burned to kiln dry?

[gdh]

2 minutes ago, Steve2011 said:

But how many tons need to be burned to kiln dry?

We use around 150tons of softwood to dry 1500 of mostly hardwood from 40 to 15% moisture. That's very rough and includes drying some woodchip.

[brynseiri]

I'm of the opinion that all of these biomass schemes are a great big white elephant, a few people are fortunate enough to have drying kilns etc built and grant aid assigned to them to be paid for burning wood chip, so the more chip you burn, the more taxpayers £'s you earn. That is their good luck, and hats off to them for their business acumen. Where am I going with this? Basically, these operations will be those that kiln dry logs, so proposed regulations as regards to log moisture limits will undoubtedly give rise to their income, and then the price of firewood. Will firewood remain a cheaper and sustainable alternative to coal after all of this? I'm fortunate, brought up on a small farm with a fair few acres of woodland, and 4 generations of us have managed woods and hedgerows, and fuelled the hearth fire with air dried logs. Now I've come to the conclusion that even making my own logs isn't financially viable. It's a time consuming task that requires more money spent than you'd first think. Saw chains, oil, fuel, labour, time away from earning a living. then they need to be stored for two years. I might as well buy coal and not wear out my chainsaw and not clock hours on my tractor, and do a few shifts overtime in my job. It just doesn't add up to me, burn more wood to produce wood to burn. in the days when wood was a primary fuel, my grandfather would have had an advantage over other farmers, his household heating costs would have been unnoticeable. However in the 21st century where the place no longer can sustain a family on its own, making firewood to me is a pain, it's just too expensive. Crazy, but true.

Edited November 15, 2018 by brynseiri