Future Firewood Demand Optimism?

[Paul in the woods]

We have a couple of acres of very rough pasture that could provide a feedstock. I also wonder about all the waste silage that's left to rot in the farms around here. There's a few wrapped bales rotting just down the road.

 

As for the human waste, no mains sewers round here, or water, or gas. Some of the locals still look surprised when you turn on a light...

 

The fields are frequently spread with sewage sludge which gets washed off into the streams and out to sea. I don't think I'd be causing any problem with a little domestic spreadding.

[devon TWiG]

1 hour ago, Paul in the woods said:

We have a couple of acres of very rough pasture that could provide a feedstock. I also wonder about all the waste silage that's left to rot in the farms around here. There's a few wrapped bales rotting just down the road.

 

As for the human waste, no mains sewers round here, or water, or gas. Some of the locals still look surprised when you turn on a light...

 

The fields are frequently spread with sewage sludge which gets washed off into the streams and out to sea. I don't think I'd be causing any problem with a little domestic spreadding.

I am pretty sure sewage sludge is not just spread on fields but injected below the surface to prevent run off , AD residuals are the same as well I think , it also allows grazing / cropping of grass to begin sooner ... farmers do not feed their cattle on contaminated crops ...

[Steven P]

Hydro - look to 'old fashioned' water wheels and the race to get water to the wheel - a pool upstream with a weir and a sluice gate to one side - open the sluice, water flows to the wheel. If you own 1 river bank, is there anything to stop you creating a pool / widen the stream on your side dug down a bit and take water off from that (pipe or a 'race') - hydro is all about the head of water, don't need so much water if you take off the supply high enough and pipe it to your turbine. Hydro like this is good, as long as your pool is a big enough store for the dry spells then it is constant, day and night

 

There are digesters out there that will harvest methane from slurry and silage I believe, not sure of their costs though

[openspaceman]

1 hour ago, devon TWiG said:

I am pretty sure sewage sludge is not just spread on fields but injected below the surface to prevent run off , AD residuals are the same as well I think , it also allows grazing / cropping of grass to begin sooner ... farmers do not feed their cattle on contaminated crops ...

Yes, I have not kept up with the legislation but it remains a hazardous waste and rules have to be followed for spreading on land. Twenty or more years ago the water companies invested in Short Rotation Arable crops to provide a non food outlet for the sludge but I don't expect many farmers are still involved in growing it.

[Paul in the woods]

There may be rules but that doesn't mean they are followed. Farm slurry should be injected but old equipment can still be used to spray it so that's what's done round here. 

 

The sewage sludge has most of the water removed and is dumped in piles on the fields for a month or two. It's then spread using the same trailers that spread rotted manure, so just thrown out the back. It's mainly done before planting crops, such as forage beet but I've seen it spread on grass. (Obviously animals are not put in the fields immediately afterwards but I think it's only kept animal free for a month or two). There is plenty dragged onto the roads etc so possibilities of cross contamination.

[Chalgravesteve]

On 24/04/2022 at 11:08, Steven P said:

Hydro - look to 'old fashioned' water wheels and the race to get water to the wheel - a pool upstream with a weir and a sluice gate to one side - open the sluice, water flows to the wheel. If you own 1 river bank, is there anything to stop you creating a pool / widen the stream on your side dug down a bit and take water off from that (pipe or a 'race') - hydro is all about the head of water, don't need so much water if you take off the supply high enough and pipe it to your turbine. Hydro like this is good, as long as your pool is a big enough store for the dry spells then it is constant, day and night

 

There are digesters out there that will harvest methane from slurry and silage I believe, not sure of their costs though

It depends what happens to the water after it has been "used" by the wheel and you probably need permission from The Environment Agency before you divert any water from the river. The current restrictions are any volume less than 20m3 per day is unlicensed, so you have to be able to control the flow of water into your "pond" to be less than that in any 24 hour period. However, if you are returning the same volume of water to the same river further downstream, then you are simply diverting the water, not abstracting it. If you don't return it to the river then it is abstraction and you will need consent once you abstract more than 20m3 (which wont run a water wheel for 24 hours!) in a day.

 

In order to have the head of water at the top, and still be able to return it to the same river further down, will require quite a bit of frontage as if you are dropping the water by 4/5/6/ft or more, then the river has to drop by the same height for you to get it back in there.

 

The reason why you cannot just abstract from a river that is passing your doorway, is that when you take water from the river at that point, you are denying that resource to someone further downstream who may already have a license. There are lots of regulations and hoops to jump through with the EA.

 

        

[waterbuoy]

Too add further:

 

You may still require a consent to 'discharge' the water back to the river/stream as, believe it or not, some parts of the EA (and SEPA) consider that water which has been through a turbine to be trade effluent.

 

Another consideration is that at low flows they will not even permit the diversion as you would take the main watercourse below sustainable levels for aquatic ecosystems etc.  In the past the threshold used to be related to either Q95 or Q90, is the flow which would be exceeded for 5% or 10% of a typical year (c. 18 and 36 days).  This is partly why I had suggested that you try and measure the flow in the coming weeks as some rivers are already getting below Q80.

[Paul in the woods]

This is why I wanted to try something small scale to work out if it's worth jumping through the hoops. I've spoken to the EA about something else to do with the stream and quickly realised there is very little logic to their rules - if you ask you have to follow them even if there's loads of other people not following them and causing more harm.

 

On the note of low flows, I could cope with only using the power when the stream is in full flow. Even though it's still cold at night, because it's been dry we have much less need for heating. The need for heat and wet weather go hand in hand down here.

[Rob_the_Sparky]

Does not a simple weir automatically regulate the water you take?  If the main stream level drops below the height of your weir then you stop taking water.  Sounds simple to me so I'm sure the regulations will make it much more complex

[Chalgravesteve]

On 25/04/2022 at 18:42, Paul in the woods said:

This is why I wanted to try something small scale to work out if it's worth jumping through the hoops. I've spoken to the EA about something else to do with the stream and quickly realised there is very little logic to their rules - if you ask you have to follow them even if there's loads of other people not following them and causing more harm.

 

On the note of low flows, I could cope with only using the power when the stream is in full flow. Even though it's still cold at night, because it's been dry we have much less need for heating. The need for heat and wet weather go hand in hand down here.

Correct about no logic to their rules. Years ago, we needed to abstract more than 20m3 per day and the EA said we couldn't and we should build a reservoir into which we could abstract 20m3 per day every day and then use that water at whatever rate we wanted to once it was retained in the reservoir. We took that advice and submitted a planning application. The first people to object to the application were the EA!! Got there in the end though.