Are air dried logs to be made illegal?

[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

 

[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!

[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

[swinny]

1 hour ago, brynseiri said:

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.

I get what your saying there...

 

I'm a contractor. We bring back plenty of wood. We do sell some but in fairness I don't really have the time to do it.

 

I've started to send a lot of wood and decent wood at that! Beech ash etc off for biomass. It pains me to do it and I always question if its the right thing to do..... financially and morally. 

 

At the end of the day it clears my yard to give me space to work.

 

Still pains me but its the way it is. Not worth having someone coming up and cutting all the lengths into rings then splitting or on the bigger diameter stuff..... ringing then quartering then splitting.

 

If this system does come in place, annual fee for joining them, on spot checks for moisture content, and then maybe a tonnage fee for how much you sell then I'll gladly give up and leave it to some other mug. I work hard enough for my money to give it away to someone for bugger all.

[gdh]

2 hours ago, Big J said:

I'm sure I heard on Radio 4 the other day that they were starting to investigate the whole RHI system in the UK. I can't reference that though. 

 

Worth remembering that "cash for ash" brought down Stormont in Northern Ireland. The RHI scheme in the rest of the UK is no less corrupt. And I say that as someone who has repeatedly considered jumping on that bandwagon and don't hold it against anyone who has. I just think that in most cases, it's clearly bananas to burn good timber to produce heat and power.

The UK system is different to Northern Ireland in that they had the common sense to put a limit on the heat you get paid the full amount for.

 

There's still people taking advantage of the system by heating huge open sheds/factories but it's not limitless.  

[SbTVF]

The UK system is different to Northern Ireland in that they had the common sense to put a limit on the heat you get paid the full amount for.

 

There's still people taking advantage of the system by heating huge open sheds/factories but it's not limitless.  

 

The issue with the UK system though is that it was only intended to replace the use of fossil fuels so they shouldn’t have allowed log drying as a suitable use where it wasn’t already being undertaken by fossil fuels which the vast majority of kin dryers now definitely weren’t doing back then.

 

They’ve literally created an industry financed by RHI through their shoddy legislation and shitty implementation of it as per usual.

 

We kiln dry but the boiler was entirely financed by the farm and farm house. The log kiln is on the system but only uses maybe 15% of the output and it would still be cheaper to use (if they made us take it off the heat calculation) than putting up a great big shed on field space that we can’t afford to give up anyway.

 

When we applied, all they asked for pretty much was that we were a business that had been operating for the last 10 years or something. Didn’t check that the log kiln was existing and being fired off gas.

 

Then again, ofgem wouldn’t have hit their implementation targets if they’d said no to all those installations would they ?‍♂️

[difflock]

Typical Government attitude, needing a hi-vis instant result, rather than a sustainable slow grown product.

Unfortunately the Government, nor its servants care one hoot about the actual viability of these projects, or unforseen side effects, they will simply move on to another much publisized "wonder" project.

I experienced it at a smaller scale in local Government.

Absolutly no thought given to longivity, a "rip-out-and-replace" policy was always favoured, which was then conflated by the shoddy specifications and installation and maintenance  practises, but no one really cared, because they were always moving on to the next-new-thing.

For instance concrete paving was reckoned to only have an expected 10 year life, exceptionally 15, then pay for it to be replaced, this being architect/engineer specification 9 or 10" thick reinforced slabs, "poured" with pish-thin overwatered concrete for handiness/lazyness, never mind the haphazard reinforcement placement.

Wheras "farm" concrete would have been placed perhaps 4" thick, without reinforcement, and expected to last 30-40-50 years, from my direct experience.

marcus

Edited November 16, 2018 by difflock