Could brash be compacted and baled ?

[gensetsteve]

The whole wood burning thing has increased massively over the last five years. A lot of woody material gets turned to chip and left to rot. I struggle to get bushy brash into my incinerator and if I chip it green its hard to burn. But if I had a machine like a cardboard baler that made 18" bales they would fit nicely into my incinerator and I bet when dry, would contain a large amount of btus ideal for a large farm straw burning incinerator. The machine would be quieter than a chipper and not require the blades sharpening or bearings changed. The bales could be stacked in a chip box and still tipped out at the end of the day or loaded onto a cheaper vehicle ie ifor trailer and staked high. Is this a mad idea anyone have any thoughts.

[s.varty]

The whole wood burning thing has increased massively over the last five years. A lot of woody material gets turned to chip and left to rot. I struggle to get bushy brash into my incinerator and if I chip it green its hard to burn. But if I had a machine like a cardboard baler that made 18" bales they would fit nicely into my incinerator and I bet when dry, would contain a large amount of btus ideal for a large farm straw burning incinerator. The machine would be quieter than a chipper and not require the blades sharpening or bearings changed. The bales could be stacked in a chip box and still tipped out at the end of the day or loaded onto a cheaper vehicle ie ifor trailer and staked high. Is this a mad idea anyone have any thoughts.

 

Good idea:thumbup1: as said easy to store,lots of heat and long slow burn as its compacted

[AlexB]

Brash has been baled for a while now though on a much larger scale. If the machinery required could be cost effective at the scale you've suggested you could be onto a winner.

 

 

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[Dean Lofthouse]

Have you not seen the brash processor and baler at the shows Steve..?

 

Bit like a very slow running chipper, you put a bag over the outlet and feed in the brash, it cuts the brash neatly into 4 or 5 " lengths and drops it in the net bag leaves an all. It's only a small thing too, like a garden shredder

 

The net bag then allows the contents to dry and you just sell it by the bag or throw the whole bag on your fires as is.

[Riggerbear]

They make brash balers for use in forest situations, I see them in the woods round here. Then they are taken to the power stations in South Wales. They produce a bale about 8'long and about 1m in diameter.

 

 

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[gensetsteve]

Have you not seen the brash processor and baler at the shows Steve..?

 

Bit like a very slow running chipper, you put a bag over the outlet and feed in the brash, it cuts the brash neatly into 4 or 5 " lengths and drops it in the net bag leaves an all. It's only a small thing too, like a garden shredder

 

The net bag then allows the contents to dry and you just sell it by the bag or throw the whole bag on your fires as is.

 

Not been to a show for at least a couple of years. If its out there it should filter through. I have in mind a machine the size of a big tow behind chipper with small diesel engine running hydraulics to compact it down so its dense but still light enough to hand ball. When hedge cutting you would aim to cut everything down to 12" as you go which would avoid being hit in the face by a 4ft rose hip stem. You could rack everything off the floor as you have no blades to worry about.

[Dean Lofthouse]

Somebody will put a link up.

 

This machine is more of a shear action, a slow moving flywheel shears little lumps off straight into the bag, in effect you are logging every single inch of the tree to the branch tips, I think it did from about 4 or 5 inch down to nothing.

 

I aim to get one once I have paid off my loader, as they weren't cheap, somewhere around £4k but a cracking idea, why they aren't well known about I have no idea

[Chris Sheppard]

Somebody will put a link up.

 

This machine is more of a shear action, a slow moving flywheel shears little lumps off straight into the bag, in effect you are logging every single inch of the tree to the branch tips, I think it did from about 4 or 5 inch down to nothing.

 

I aim to get one once I have paid off my loader, as they weren't cheap, somewhere around £4k but a cracking idea, why they aren't well known about I have no idea

 

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytogT81EIvU]URBAN SM70 - YouTube[/ame]

 

Is this the one you mean, Dean?

[openspaceman]

I struggle to get bushy brash into my incinerator and if I chip it green its hard to burn. But if I had a machine like a cardboard baler that made 18" bales they would fit nicely into my incinerator and I bet when dry, would contain a large amount of btus ideal for a large farm straw burning incinerator.

 

What form is your incinerator, is it compliant as an exempt device? I could do with upgrading my boiler to one.

 

Anyway bundles of twigs have been traditionally utilised for heat, faggots for bread ovens etc. and it seems the women and kids would gather these behind the fellers.

 

Prior to the victorian demand for hazel coppice I think mixed broadleaved coppice was more prevalent and the rotation lengths increased as cutting tools got better from the iron age so thicker stems could be harvested.

 

There is also mention in "Sylva" of pit burning bavins to make charcoal.

 

A heavy duty conventional round baler was used used in trials in about 2000 but it formed "baskets" rather than round bales. The interest in baling was because of the ability to stack the bales outside at ARBRE power station prior to chipping and burning. Subsequently the fiberpac was trialled, this uses a conventional forwarder to handle lop and top along the axis of a compression chamber and feed it forward, like a stroke delimer. The resulting continuous sausage was bound with many wraps of a self adhering baler twine every 2ft and a chansaw cut the lot into 10 foot bales. The machine was expensive at £250k then and its output was only 80 1/2 tonne bales in an 8hr shift. I saw it working on heathland clearance at Canford. The advantage was the same sytem used for forwarding and hauling shortwood could handle them. It was then on a Rottne base, now presumably it has improved:

 

http://www.fiberpac.se/

 

After this trial we experimented with making a windrow of coppice which had been discarded after the logwood had been harvested and picking this up with a timber grab, tying off either side of the grab and then cutting into 2 metre lengths, it worked ok but was time consuming. The bales we produced were too dense for river revetment work so we did no more.

 

I did come up with a cunning plan for a baler for coppice waste but never attracted any interest. My proposal was to make biochar and produce heat in a conventional boiler but biochar hasn't gained much acceptance from the authorities as we head into more chaotic climate events...

 

So yes I do think woodland waste could successfully be made into faggots for home heating.

 

I think arb waste is different as there are time constraints and the chipper also loads the wagon.

[gensetsteve]

Somebody will put a link up.

 

This machine is more of a shear action, a slow moving flywheel shears little lumps off straight into the bag, in effect you are logging every single inch of the tree to the branch tips, I think it did from about 4 or 5 inch down to nothing.

 

I aim to get one once I have paid off my loader, as they weren't cheap, somewhere around £4k but a cracking idea, why they aren't well known about I have no idea

 

sounds like a good little machine but I am thinking no cutting in the machine just 10 tonnes of pressure. a bit like a dust cart pushing everything to the front. I would think 20-30k for a machine but you would produce a sellable product rather than waste.