drying wood

[scbk]

I'm suprised no one has come up with the idea of painting the container black?

[nick channer]

all i no is we;re signing up for 20 yrs at a guaranteed set figure.. like i said without the incentive and being in the tree business where vi burn hundreds of tons a year of conifer willow poplar etc on fire in yard to get rid of it it'll be put in a heap and used to heat 4 houses that normally cost 5 or 6 grand a year to heat.. my dad will get his house heated for nothing and charge the tennants 4000 a yr for the heat... and i'll get my logs dried quicker.... obviously there be a small cost in processing the wood to put in boiler.. but it needs o be cut to 900mm long and can be up to 12-14 inch diameter.. basically as long as you can lift it in there it'l do...

the guy who's selling them is looking and has succesfully found houses where he can install a boiler and heat 2 or 3 of the next door neighbours.. he will guarantee them heat and charge them for it at reduced rate to what they pay and he gets the incentive money.... he reckons the money from the heat will more than pay for the wood and labour to process and fill boilers every day and incentive is all profit...

he is also offering a top up service to customers who buy a boiler.. where he'll go round the sites..[mainly big hotels..stately homes etc] in 7.5 ton lorry with hiab and drop stillages of wood ready to go in boiler and take the empty ones away.. obviously some people would be put off with the processing/handling of the wood but this eliminates that problem...

once theres a few boilers installed and people can see them in action etc i think it'll take off in big way...

theres 840 million in the gov pot at min and once thats gone there be no incentives which is why you have to jump on quickly...

[Spruce]

Surely buring wood is largely carbon neutral? You may argue otherwise but if there is an industry created to supply people like Nick (not that he needs supply I guess) then that is a good thing. Better than digging coal out of the ground and lighting it up isn't it?

 

The only way to move these things is subsidy or tax on the whole. People won't just do what's right.

 

Yes, burning wood is fairly close to carbon neutral bar the machinery used during production, road transport etc.

 

My issues are with burning wood to provide heat to dry wood to burn when time and wind will achieve the same thing *and* being paid a subsidy to do so. I agree totally that burning wood to provide necessary heating is better than burning coal, although you could form an argument that we should dig a big hole in the ground, cut down all the trees and bury them to permanently remove the carbon from the atmosphere. Obviously you then plant more and repeat.

[dave fox]

we're in process of fitting a large outdoor wood boiler to heat the houses on our farm... we're supposed to get a very good incentive from gov for doing this and the more heat we produce the more money we earn... obviously in summer it will only be running on tick over so i thought i'd put a feed into a nearby shed... partition the shed off and install a drying fan [my mate has exactly same thing to dry bricks at his brick yard] which is only £400, and fill crates with logs [shed should hold at least 30].. means i can dry my logs for free as all wood we will use will be softwood otherwise destined for fire in yard and get paid by the gov for privillege...

nick couldnt you use the excess heat for drying wheat in the summer or beans, peas ect....

[bobh]

my dad will get his house heated for nothing and charge the tennants 4000 a yr for the heat...

 

£4000 seems like a lot to charge, how big are the houses?

 

A couple of guys up here looking at doing a similar thing, mini hydro plants seem popular as well.

[Spruce]

Yes but Nick would have burnt the wood outside as a waste product otherwise.

It's true that we are paying him the subisdy but farmers have often benefitted from subsidies so whats new.

Also remember we are only jealous- we looked into pv solar but didn't have the right aspect so had to leave it.

Look at other subisidies- child benefit/housing benefit/free bus travel for elderly/etc etc. It's called government control of the population and has been going on for hundreds of years

 

But it isn't a waste product - it's perfectly good firewood. If it really is the case that nobody down south will burn softwood in a stove because of some sort of nonsense their granny told them then I despair.

 

What's new about the subsidies that are being paid for so-called 'renewables' is that the money is not being used to develop a sustainable power generation industry, it's going to grabbit and run opportunists who are in it until the subsidies are gone. Then we'll be right back at square one but a heck of a lot poorer.

 

Of course we should subsidise things that help people who are on low incomes - that's social responsibility. However, I don't want to subsidise (and I'm thinking more about wind here) huge profits for the already wealthy especially when there will be no long term benefit to the environment.

[openspaceman]

it is mainly part seasoned ash, and on average was 38% mc when starting, i could probably do the maths on that to get it down to 23% i wish i was weighing the water deposit from the start but it is a fair amount ,will weigh a daily deluge at start of next cycle, but for sure the higher the starting mc% the more water needs to drain.

 

That's quite a high starting point for ash, it's notoriously difficult to give a general rule for a species moisture content and it can vary between parts of the tree.

 

Anyway to get where you want from 38% to 23% from an initial tonne you need to lose about 200 litres of water.

 

There's still not enough details but a couple of points, the recirculating air affects how saturated it becomes. Theoretically you maximise use of fan power when the air leaving the wood is saturated. At saturation air holds different amounts of water according to its temperature and it isn't linear. Without going into detail if you draw a graph of absolute humidity verses temperature at saturation you will see there is a point around 25C where the moisture carrying capacity starts kicking off. Below this and you have to pay to circulate a lot of air for no great drying effect.

 

A chap posting here on another forum gave some useful figures which illustrate this:

http://arbtalk.co.uk/forum/milling-forum/38987-kilning-theory-discussion.html#post610301

 

And this sort of chart contains a lot of useful information if you take the time to figure it out.

 

 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/05/PsychrometricChart-SeaLevel-SI.jpg

 

 

From this you can see that it your container is uninsulated in a british winter the ~ 20 degree difference is losing you a lot of heat.

 

This has a knock on affect on your dehumidifier, which is really just a heat pump that recovers latent heat from the circulating vapour and dumps it back into the container but the container loses most of this recycled heat because it isn't insulated...

 

Aloso then consider the COP of the heat pump and compare the cost of electricity to drive it with heat from other sources.

[Spruce]

Are you talking about the Renewable Heat Incentive Feed in Tariffs?

 

These will be paid from the exchequer.

 

It's the solar PV and wind generated electricity that are paid from a pool collected by Distribution Network Operators via the Climate Change levy on all fossil generated electricity.

 

No point ranting about it because the over generous incentive was necessary to attract installation of solar pv (in particular) in order to avoid an EU fine for failing to meet our renewable obligation, the fine would have exceeded the cost. As it is it attracted carpet baggers and the government over reacted and cut it off too sharply.

 

 

 

We pay for the government so it's a bit semantic.

 

Ok, yes, I'm sure you're right that the renewable heat subsidy comes from central taxation, and yes, we do pay for the government. The difference, though, is more than semantic. The FITs for solar pv and wind push up the price of electricity which hits people on low incomes hardest. If all the FITs were paid from central taxation then the bulk of the subsidy burden would fall on the wealthy, which seems to me to be fairer.

 

It's absolute madness to try and meet our 'renewable obligation' by encouraging a huge number of tiny but very expensive and unreliable generators. We won't meet the target (if it is measured by carbon emission reduction, at least), and we'll have a huge 20 year plus cost burden to deal with. The only low carbon options that are realistic are tidal and shale gas with carbon capture, wind/solar etc that rely on the weather are of virtually no benefit. Aside from anything else the grid infrastructure was designed to distribute power from a small number of large generators, we have already passed the point where the grid can't absorb all the wind power generated in disparate locations and at times the wind generators are paid roughly 10 times what they would have 'earned' from their electricity to turn their turbines off.

[dave fox]

You're not being paid by the gov, you're being paid by the rest of us through our electricity bills. I find it ridiculous that I'm paying for you to pointlessly put more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere when the idea (supposedly) behind the subsidy is to reduce the amount.

 

I'm sorry if that was a bit direct, but we are becoming more and more fed up with these crazy subsidies and the idea that somehow the government is paying rather than us.

yes but spruce next time you buy fish and chips or a ham sandwich and get change from a tenner remember if it wasn't for subsidies food would be alot dearer and that tenner wouldnt get you squat. its not for the benefit of the man selling its for the man buying!!

[face cord]

Sounds a really good deal that. Im just always abit wary if it something sounds too good to be true.Also I don't get why woodstoves aren't included in it?

 

RH Premium Payment | RH Incentive

 

What is it?

It's like a grant for household renewable heat installations installed after August 2011 and before March 2012

 

So only one month left on claim the intitial bit of it the subsidy for buying the boiler etc or only one month left for the whole scheme?

 

Small biomass: Rate is 7.9 pence per KW for 20yrs

 

Energy Cost Comparison | Nottingham Energy Partnership

 

Seasoned firewood cost 5.47pence per KW (accordong t0 above site)

 

So it does look good...