alternatives to woodchipping

[Mick Dempsey]

7 hours ago, Paul in the woods said:

You don't say if this is forestry or domestic arb.

 

I've joked about this before but in all seriousness I wonder why the arb people who've done work on my property all insist on chipping even when I ask them to simply leave the brash. I have plenty of room for brash piles and the ones that have been left are still slowly rotting down after several years. (Even watched a family of stoats playing in one of the piles).

 

 

No here’s a point.

 

When clients say leave the brash, if they mean leave it where it falls and we don’t touch it, then...maybe. But normally they don’t.
 

 So if they want it stacked somewhere, that’ll cost more than chipping because it involves more work (usually)

Edited October 2, 2019 by Mick Dempsey

[Paul in the woods]

1 hour ago, Mick Dempsey said:

When clients say leave the brash, if they mean leave it where it falls and we don’t touch it, then...maybe. But normally they don’t.

As a pros worst nightmare, an amateur who offers to help, I understand that. On a big job I asked for the logs to simply be left where they were chucked and the brash left where it fell. The guys couldn't help themselves in stacking some and also chipping a bit. Force of habit probably or wanting to leave a job tidy.

 

I think my point is normally you don't get asked, some people would be happy for brash to be left.

[Mick Dempsey]

I get asked a lot, mostly by the French clients.

 

They think they’ll save money. I tell them they’re paying for the (payments on the) chipper in the price whether they know it or not, might as well use it.

[Mick Dempsey]

I’m exaggerating a bit, if they want a tree dropped and walk, no problem.

 

I guess I can usually smell the cheapskates, I also explain I have an ‘on the books’ employee, he can either sit in the truck on his phone, or he can chip the brash, either way they’re paying for him.

[openspaceman]

5 hours ago, Rough Hewn said:

Wood gasifiers producing distillates of all heavy and light tars and diesel, petrol etc and enough hydro carbons left in the gas to power an engine.
 

Not really, it's pyrolysis  that produces gases, liquids and solids, in proportions that are highly dependant on conditions in the pyrolyser.

 

A gasifier aims to produce just true gases and they get quite close but...

 

The simple fact is that pumping oil out of the ground and refining it is cheaper and as it is capital intensive it is attractive to big investors and that drives capitalist[1] economies.

 

Of course I'm with @Bolt in believing, in the absence of economic markets, that biochar is a reasonable product from arb arisings and well suited to distributed production. My gripe is the soil benefit hype, lack of markets and non holistic production.

 

[1] not a pejorative term but a description