Time to re-stock the firewood pile

[coppicer]

Looks like a satisfying few days of work. Just about enough to last your wood burner through next winter, maybe?!

 

I was looking at the photos with that little Kioti and was surprised that the FEL seems to be handling it so easily, and wondered how much the wood weighs. One of your billet bundles, for example, or one of those big builders bags. Surely a few hundred kg each? And what size is the Kioti? About 30hp?

Edited April 25, 2020 by coppicer

[difflock]

Should be more than 2 winters worth with a single woodburning stove  heating 750-800sq ft to 25+ deg (with oil fired underfloor heating am only, for 2 hrs maximum to provide background heat).

The loader will lift 1800kg at ground level, being 2 straps of concrete blocks on a pallet.

The tractor is 50HP, and  weighs 2000Kg

The 0.5m3 volume bundles weighed 350Kg wet and the 150Kg dry(from somewhat hazy recall) but I need to purchase another set of crane scales, since I was perhaps unlucky with the first set I bought.

But I am timerous about buying more Chinese shite(and they are all Chinese sourced!), nor can I justify a professional set.

350Kg to 150Kg =more than 50% moisture, for fresh felled Lodgepole and Sitka?

As I worked my way through the outside stockpile, from oldest to newest, i.e. from 2 or 3 years to guessing only 6 months(ish) since splitting, I noted the moisture levels seemed to rise a little, though the last few bundles I lifted had not been top-covered, and still had moisture trapped beneath the bark in places.

marcus

P.S.

With the current price of oil it seems like a whole lot of investment and labour for a rather poor return on my investment!

Edited April 25, 2020 by difflock

[coppicer]

2 hours ago, difflock said:

With the current price of oil it seems like a whole lot of investment and labour for a rather poor return on my investment!

Well, maybe, but who knows where the price will be in six or twelve months?

 

I'm still spending £1,000 a year on Calor gas, and I'd like to cut that by 50%, preferably 75%. We've already got solar thermal panels, but when they built the house five years back the hot water tank they put in for the system boiler seems to have been designed for Economy 7 overnight heating, which we don't have. The result is that you can't get a full bath's worth of hot water out of it using solar (even when the water coming from the solar panels is 75C), and it struggles to heat a full tank even using gas and the immersion heater. We probably need a new, properly designed thermal store, and if we did that then we'd likely need no gas at all for hot water between April and September - and we don't use any for cooking either.

 

The next step after that would be to add a woodburner with a boiler and plug that into the tank as well. Obviously this all costs money, but savings on gas and electricity (getting that bloody IH out of the equation) of £750 plus a year should lead to payback within a few years. We don't have as much wood as you, but we should have enough to charge the thermal store for hot water twice a day without too many problems.

 

As always, it's finding the money to get the project rolling!

 

Edited April 25, 2020 by coppicer
clarification

[difflock]

I had in the past priced up solar domestic hot water panels, but the purchase costs(even if self installing) would never? be financially  re-couped since the oil boiler only runs for 20-30 mins to heat the 210l hot cylinder skelping hot.

But it would be nice to have endless "free" hot water over the summer months at least.

And I might yet install some, just because.

We have the perfect fully south facing roof to install the panels on too.

Edited April 25, 2020 by difflock

[trigger_andy]

51 minutes ago, difflock said:

I had in the past priced up solar domestic hot water panels, but the purchase costs(even if self installing) would never? be financially  re-couped since the oil boiler only runs for 20-30 mins to heat the 210l hot cylinder skelping hot.

But it would be nice to have endless "free" hot water over the summer months at least.

And I might yet install some, just because.

We have the perfect fully south facing roof to install the panels on too.

Out of interest have you calculated how much oil you burn for the 20-30 minutes it takes to heat the hot water cylinder? 

 

I have a 2500l Oil Tank and Im considering picking up another 1000l oil tank to sit beside it as oil is so cheap just now. 

[openspaceman]

1 hour ago, coppicer said:

The result is that you can't get a full bath's worth of hot water out of it using solar (even when the water coming from the solar panels is 75C),

Is this because the hot water from the panel is entering too low in the tank and rather than stratifying at the top it is mixing with the whole bulk of water in the tank?

[coppicer]

7 minutes ago, openspaceman said:

Is this because the hot water from the panel is entering too low in the tank and rather than stratifying at the top it is mixing with the whole bulk of water in the tank?

I haven't been able to get (and wouldn't want) anybody on site due to the lockdown, but having sent photos around and talked to a few people on the internet and the phone, lack of stratification seems likely to be part of the problem. Essentially, instead of providing relatively small amounts of piping hot water, it's providing a whole lot of tepid water.

 

I'm looking at getting something in the 300L range, such as a McDonald Thermflow or one of the TMS products. It won't be cheap, but the current system isn't either - and it can't even run a hot bath.

[youngsbury]

I’ve got a eco Angus orlingo biomass coming up for sale shortly would one of these be any use ? 

[openspaceman]

18 minutes ago, coppicer said:

I haven't been able to get (and wouldn't want) anybody on site due to the lockdown, but having sent photos around and talked to a few people on the internet and the phone, lack of stratification seems likely to be part of the problem. Essentially, instead of providing relatively small amounts of piping hot water, it's providing a whole lot of tepid water.

 

I'm looking at getting something in the 300L range, such as a McDonald Thermflow or one of the TMS products. It won't be cheap, but the current system isn't either - and it can't even run a hot bath.

There must be a solution that allows stratification, even if it means a separate and much smaller pump reversing the flow through the solar system and  tank unless the solar is a separate coil within the tank.

[coppicer]

4 minutes ago, openspaceman said:

There must be a solution that allows stratification, even if it means a separate and much smaller pump reversing the flow through the solar system and  tank unless the solar is a separate coil within the tank.

I'm sure there is something that could be done, but in the longer term, rather than try to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear I'd prefer to spend the money and have the job done right at the system level. My feeling is that it would be more difficult and time-consuming to come up, install and debug a custom-engineered solution than to just rip the whole tank out and replace it with something that works from the off. Whatever is done, I want minimal disruption, as the missus won't wear the water being off for longer than a working day.