The economics of kiln drying wood using wood as kiln fuel without RHI payments.

[cessna]

Is  the kiln drying of wood, using wood  as  the kiln fuel only financially viable because one is claiming RHI payments?

[Stere]

No idea.....

 

Suppose it depends

 

Own your own  woodland or are you buying in all the wood....

 

Electric cost?

 

Yard & shed space...

 

Is kiln dried is seen (wrongly imo) as a  premuim product  that can be sold for  abit more than air/ barn dried etc even if its the same % moisture so  can cover some costs?

 

 

 

 

When if/it stops it will mean more imports?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Old thread:

 

[Steven P]

I'd always thought that kiln drying works that you can charge a premium but you also don't need to rent twice as much storage space for air drying - kiln dried the logs can be in and out in a year, air dried 2 years+. Consistent product and able to produce more from the same land / yard area. Wood fuel to burn the wood that isn't economical to kiln dry - softwoods, scraps, misshapen bits, chips ('waste')

[GarethM]

RHI is a sweetener if you can get it.

 

But economically speaking that should be a cherry on top not the whole desert.

 

Air drying in 6 months is fine, I do it relatively easily with covers.

 

If you're kiln dying expect a 500k investment with the boiler, chipper and such as it's a very hungry beast.

[openspaceman]

20 hours ago, Steven P said:

I'd always thought that kiln drying works that you can charge a premium but you also don't need to rent twice as much storage space for air drying - kiln dried the logs can be in and out in a year, air dried 2 years+. Consistent product and able to produce more from the same land / yard area. Wood fuel to burn the wood that isn't economical to kiln dry - softwoods, scraps, misshapen bits, chips ('waste')

Yes and spreading the labour needed for processing. I wonder about the benefits to a smaller producer who can fit a year's produce in a polytunnel as in SE England a polytunnel will dry wood sufficiently in a summer month.

 

On the larger scale if you need to dry 1000 green tonnes for a year  that probably means holding a processed stock of £100k for a year so the cashflow becomes a significant problem.

 

If you have a 100% efficient drier I think you would need 14% of the dry weight for fuel and our dryer was 50% efficient, I would guess sawdust and scraps would amount to about 5% of the processed material.

[GarethM]

I watch occasionally the oak firewood guy who's down south.

 

Whilst I get there must be a premium price being kiln dried etc, none of his numbers can ever stack up when you see what gets bought and spent machinery wise.

 

Even if it's on demo I can't make his numbers work.

[gdh]

We kiln dry 1800 tons of hardwood a year using 150 tons of softwood, probably less, although we are transferring over to using more waste. We store about 300 tons at a time so using 6 times the space wouldn't be practical. Drying cost is about £10 a cube.

 

When the RHI runs out we won't be stopping because I don't think we could air dry on this scale. Definitely not with the climate in mid Wales and with kiln drying we know the quality is there with every box. 

 

The cost of electric is probably the biggest worry although we have just put solar panels in so we'll see how it goes...

Edited October 1 by gdh
I shouldn't use voice typing...

[Dan Maynard]

Other thing with air drying is you have to forecast sales a year ahead, rather than being able to produce more during the season if it's a busy year.