Future Firewood Demand Optimism?

[openspaceman]

@Billhook what happened to Navitron and all those forums?

[openspaceman]

1 hour ago, mrchips said:

 

3 - British Gas have kindly just sent me details of the 1st April price increase. Gas and leccy combined is something like a 45% increase. Ouch. Time to consider an alternative method for heating my domestic hot water. Any recommendations??

 

Apart from the solar thermal panel in summer suggested  can you fit a backboiler?

Edited March 4, 2022 by openspaceman
typo

[mrchips]

9 minutes ago, openspaceman said:

Apart from the solar thermal panel in summer suggested  can you fit a backboiler?

No, log burner is too far from the water cylinder. Unless it can somehow be plumbed onto the central heating loop?

 

[Billhook]

36 minutes ago, openspaceman said:

@Billhook what happened to Navitron and all those forums?

Good point, the name is there but the old website is not. There still seem to be many tube manufacturers around though

it is a shame as I thought that they were leading the way ten years ago

[openspaceman]

10 minutes ago, mrchips said:

No, log burner is too far from the water cylinder. Unless it can somehow be plumbed onto the central heating loop?

 

That's an interesting one, I know someone who has done just that for over thirty years now but it didn't meet building regulations then. In the old days a solid fuel back boiler could only be sited near enough directly below the feed and expansion tank and had to have a 1" pipe going directly up to it. The reason being if a pump failed and the stove was fully stoked up and blazing there needed to be a means of boiling water getting out . The trouble with piping in a boiler in place of a radiator (which is what I would have to do too) is if the pump failed would there be enough thermal convection to dissipate the heat? In my case no as we do not use any radiators upstairs, indeed we have not even has the lounge radiator on this year and that is the only one we use (I could run a pipe up in a high loop in the loft to over the F&E tank but the loop would have to be high enough to prevent pump over when the CH is running normally). Also radiators are balanced by variably  restricting their outlets so that all achieve the same temperature when they are on, the backboiler would effectively look like a short circuit to the gas boiler.

 

The regulations changed to allow pellet and chip stoked system on a pressurised system, this was allowed because there is only a small amount of woodchip or pellets in the combustion chamber at a time, so less chance of boiling but there also has to be a pressure relief venting in such a way no one can be scalded by it.

 

Someone more up to date may be able to come up with a lawful work around, if so let me know and I might do the same.

[openspaceman]

11 minutes ago, Billhook said:

Good point, the name is there but the old website is not. There still seem to be many tube manufacturers around though

it is a shame as I thought that they were leading the way ten years ago

So did I and had been considering adding evacuated tubes to a lean to roof that was too low for extra PV. Now I have decided to switch excess PV to an immersion during sunny days ( full sun even in February, only 2 days last month) means I have 4kWh to spare.

[Woodworks]

3 hours ago, openspaceman said:

@Billhook what happened to Navitron and all those forums?

Navitron came under new management. They closed the forum and deleted everything.

A great resource gone

[GWYNFIL]

2 hours ago, Woodworks said:

Navitron came under new management. They closed the forum and deleted everything.

A great resource gone

explains a lot! great site rarely posted but got an email out the blue that i was booted off the forum. for wait for it attitude and tendency to disrupt! had not posted on the site for months.as you say great mine of info from members on there.

[Billhook]

7 hours ago, Woodworks said:

Navitron came under new management. They closed the forum and deleted everything.

A great resource gone

Did somebody throw all their toys out of the pram?

[Woodworks]

10 minutes ago, Billhook said:

Did somebody throw all their toys out of the pram?

I guess the forum didn't lead to many sales as it had become pretty diverse. Probably not cheap to run either as there was so much data to store. Mr B could probably enlighten us on what it costs to have info just sitting there. 

 

Green Building Forum is still going and may not be as diverse but its still a mine of information on there from some pretty clever folk 

Edited March 5, 2022 by Woodworks