How do you air dry your wood down to 20% ??

[Big J]

Just now, Woodworks said:

Funny you should mention them being idiots. Had 2 in 3 drops today.

 

First one needed logs urgently as he was about to run out of telegraph poles to burn. I saw these "logs" when I got there and he was not kidding they were literally chunks of wet telegraph pole out in the rain!

 

Number two had got some fresh wood off a mate that he was struggling to burn on his open fire so could he have some nice dry softwood to mix it in with.

 

Wouldn't be surprised if these two dont give off more pollution than 20 sensible users with modern wood burners with our logs. The new regs wont make the slightest difference to either case.

 

Firewood is like a economic and logic blindspot for the British middle class. I find with my sites that they'd far sooner take a bootful of crappy logs than cash. And inevitably, they are retired, look like they are going to give themselves a hernia loading it, and invariably muck up their very expensive cars for the sake of a few quids worth of logs.

 

I had to stop supplying logs t most of my customers when I had the sawmill as I found that once they started specifying species, it was time to put them onto another supplier for the sake of my sanity.

 

I do wonder if the British hesitation to adopt softwood logs is resultant from so much bad press about tarring up chimneys, or whether they've just never burned properly dry softwood (ie, under 25%)? I'd take larch and pine over ash and oak anyday.

[openspaceman]

2 minutes ago, Big J said:

The notion that in order to reduce emissions from burning wood, we need to be burning more wood (to kiln dry the logs), thus creating more emissions and for the likely endpoint being badly stored logs that regain the moisture that was reduced in the first place is truly moronic.

Firstly I am a fan of using the natural drying processes, especially making use of the greenhouse effect of a transparent kiln but I did conceptualise a high temperature kiln which we built for a supplier of firewood. I still think this is a way forward but making more use of waste heat.

2 minutes ago, Big J said:

It's like having an electric car powered by fossil fuel powered power stations. It's madness.

Not necessarily, and as has been pointed out we use little coal  for electricity. the effluent from a coal plant can be cleaned and because it is running constantly the thermal conversion efficiency is optimised. When the electricity is used to charge a battery and then discharged to drive a car's motor I guess the conversion from power station to wheel is around 70% and is fairly constant. Whereas a IC engined car is operating at lower efficiency overall unless at constant speed.

[openspaceman]

6 minutes ago, Big J said:

 

I do wonder if the British hesitation to adopt softwood logs is resultant from so much bad press about tarring up chimneys,

I'm sure it is and equally sure it stems from use of high moisture content wood and the habit of turning down the fire to "keep it in".

[Woodworks]

9 minutes ago, Big J said:

 

 

 

I do wonder if the British hesitation to adopt softwood logs is resultant from so much bad press about tarring up chimneys, or whether they've just never burned properly dry softwood (ie, under 25%)? I'd take larch and pine over ash and oak anyday.

Yep both of those for sure. To be fair I have heard far less about how it will tar up flues over the last couple of seasons from customers so we need to keep plugging away as the message is starting to get through down here.

[Big J]

2 minutes ago, openspaceman said:

Firstly I am a fan of using the natural drying processes, especially making use of the greenhouse effect of a transparent kiln but I did conceptualise a high temperature kiln which we built for a supplier of firewood. I still think this is a way forward but making more use of waste heat.

Not necessarily, and as has been pointed out we use little coal  for electricity. the effluent from a coal plant can be cleaned and because it is running constantly the thermal conversion efficiency is optimised. When the electricity is used to charge a battery and then discharged to drive a car's motor I guess the conversion from power station to wheel is around 70% and is fairly constant. Whereas a IC engined car is operating at lower efficiency overall unless at constant speed.

On the high temperature kilns, I really don't think that there is an justification for burning timber to dry firewood. A better use of that waste wood is to dry sawn timber, where a specific moisture content is more important and the levels required for interior use are too low to be acheived naturally outside.

 

As regards the powerstation's carbon footprint, I know that we're rapidly moving away from a carbon based power creation economy, and my anecdote was half tongue in cheek. It's more a reference to how we're prepared to delegate our emissions production to elsewhere in the supply line rather than produce them ourselves. I also wonder how much voltage drop through the power distribution network affects overall efficiency?

[openspaceman]

1 hour ago, Big J said:

On the high temperature kilns, I really don't think that there is an justification for burning timber to dry firewood.

It's a simple economic proposition, if the dried wood attains a higher price in the market place than the cost of the drying, the heat source is immaterial. Anyway the waste from a logging operation probably amounts to over 5% of the raw material so burning it for a kiln makes sense. Actually about 15 years ago a government agency was burning gasoil to dry wood for Tilbury power station in order to get renewable Obligation Certificates and that was naughty.

1 hour ago, Big J said:

A better use of that waste wood is to dry sawn timber, where a specific moisture content is more important and the levels required for interior use are too low to be acheived naturally outside.

I wonder how much sawnwood kilning requires in the scheme of things, obviously I think it should be done with sawmill waste.  It's a bit of a no brainer but there's good reason to use waste wood at the point of production in any case where its heat can be used.

1 hour ago, Big J said:

 

As regards the powerstation's carbon footprint, I know that we're rapidly moving away from a carbon based power creation economy, and my anecdote was half tongue in cheek. It's more a reference to how we're prepared to delegate our emissions production to elsewhere in the supply line rather than produce them ourselves. I also wonder how much voltage drop through the power distribution network affects overall efficiency?

I agree with the first part and think I can answer the second; power loss in the grid and distribution runs at about 7.7% but this shouldn't impact any consumer as the voltage will be maintained at the substation, any circuits further from the substation will tap the transformer at a higher voltage to make up for losses.

[renewablejohn]

5 hours ago, richardwale said:

Would be great to see a picture?

Just do a search on here probably around 2010 for the original solar kilns then thermal solar around 2015. Nothing really to see but a polytunnel with sloping roof and a concrete floor to allow a fork lift to move the IBC containers in and out of the polytunnels.

[Ian C]

So glad I got out of the firewood market, all the faf involved for such little end profit!

[trigger_andy]

4 hours ago, Big J said:

I do wonder if the British hesitation to adopt softwood logs is resultant from so much bad press about tarring up chimneys,

British or international hesitation? 

[MattyF]

Simples then sell more than 2m cubes a time , more profit in a day than doing the usual 1.5m loads we do.
Will be impossible for us to reach the 20% in the north ,the logs will reach what’s in the environment, we can get them down to 15% in summer but it just goes back up in winter to around 20% and that’s with two years or more storage and then 10-8 months in a barn.