wood volume

[ecolojim]

Evening guys,

 

hoping you could help me do my sums, or simply speculate some numbers for me. Doing a viability writeup for purchase of a crane for feeding the farmi ch260 at work for efficiency and manual handling/health and safety purposes.

 

What im trying to put a number on, is the volume of wood that we are trying to deal with on an annual basis. we have literally miles and miles of what should be 3-5yr willow coppice on the riverbanks. for argument's sake we'll call it 5 years and over for some as it's all got very behind schedule.

 

It's roughly one stool per half metre though it varies, and the willow can be pretty damned tall. 20ft wouldnt be a bad average, and more often than not, as deep front to back as they are tall. problem is, diameter at base is anything from an inch and whips to 4inch in some cases.

 

basically, the comparison between hand feeding and crane feeding in terms of cubic metres per hour is obvious, but im trying to impress upon the powers that be, just the sheer volume we are trying to deal with over the 40 some miles of coppice

 

If anyone could offer some suggested figures, thatd be gratefully received

[Quickthorn]

Don't know if this would help, but sites near me that grow willow for biomass harvest about 60 tons per hectare, and it's a 3 year rotation. If you take 1 ton = 1 cu. m., that's giving you a yield of 20 cu. m / ha per year.

 

Biomass willow is high yielding, but it might give you some idea, if you've got a rough figure for the area you're tackling and how long it's been stood.

[Brushcutter]

thats around 2500 stools a ha.

 

looking on my tarrif tables the volume with a 4cm at 6m would be 0.015m3 per stem.

 

So if you took 5 stems a stool and at 2500ha you'd get a 187m3/ha. Think my maths is right.

 

 

Think the best thing to do is to get out there and measure a sample area and work out a standing volume.