Kiln dried Firewood - The future ?

[Duffryn]

A quick tip for you with your GF kiln set up. So long as you are comfortably hitting tier 1 then insulating your kiln will make a HUGE difference to your the performance. Please trust me on this. I put a considerable amount of time into helping arbtalk member Ash Smith with his set up and he will vouch for the difference it will make. It will be the best £1,500 or so you have ever spent.

[arboriculturist]

A quick tip for you with your GF kiln set up. So long as you are comfortably hitting tier 1 then insulating your kiln will make a HUGE difference to your the performance. Please trust me on this. I put a considerable amount of time into helping arbtalk member Ash Smith with his set up and he will vouch for the difference it will make. It will be the best £1,500 or so you have ever spent.

 

Here here

[Duffryn]

A quick tip for you with your GF kiln set up. So long as you are comfortably hitting tier 1 then insulating your kiln will make a HUGE difference to your the performance. Please trust me on this. I put a considerable amount of time into helping arbtalk member Ash Smith with his set up and he will vouch for the difference it will make. It will be the best £1,500 or so you have ever spent.

 

I have had a couple of PM's on insulation so hope the following helps:-

 

Two key metrics in drying logs. Temperature and airflow

 

 

1. Insulating the kiln will increase the temperature you can achieve by an

additional 10 degrees (or circa 20%) proportionally a much higher

impact on drying times.

 

2. You will dry logs circa 25% quicker for the same energy expended / fuel

used.

 

3. Insulating the inside is more efficient than insulating the outside of the container but is more complex and expensive. A 40ft container will cost circa £1,500 to insulate with kingspan insulated external cladding

 

If you are farming the RHI and struggling to hit tier 1 then it would not make sense to insulate the container.

[ash_smith123]

I would be the last to recommend an uninsulated structure and 220 seems very little on finance.

 

 

 

What I am amazed is that you produce enough dry arb waste to dry 1000 tonnes. Most Arb. waste is large thick rings and random lengths of cord, far to thick to air dry even in 12 months ?

 

 

I use about 3/4 cubic metres of wood to dry 30 cubic metres. I get loads of rubbish bits from processing, all knotty/branchy bits that don't go through the processor properly that I would rather cut big and burn. A lot of the stuff I get from my 2 main tree surgeons are sub 10" stuff so they cut them into 500-900mm lengths for me and I just dry them and they go straight in with no processing needed. If it's nice outside in the summer and I've not got much on we will go out and have a day in the yard cutting and splitting some big stuff for a bit of a change. Can get loads of 500mm+ stuff done in a day if you don't care about the size. I also mix my chip and the shards from the processor which from over 1000 Cube last winter we produce quite a lot of it! We get quite a lot of dry clean chip from a local waste management company on our estate as well. it's easily doable.

[ash_smith123]

A quick tip for you with your GF kiln set up. So long as you are comfortably hitting tier 1 then insulating your kiln will make a HUGE difference to your the performance. Please trust me on this. I put a considerable amount of time into helping arbtalk member Ash Smith with his set up and he will vouch for the difference it will make. It will be the best £1,500 or so you have ever spent.

 

 

Still can't thank you enough!! The new one is working like a dream!

 

If you are looking to insulate the outside with kingspan there is a company on eBay called seconds and co. They sell all the kingspan seconds. Most of it is brand new but you need to buy it in the summer! The price it goes for at auction nearly doubles in the winter.

Edited July 24, 2015 by ash_smith123

[wills-mill]

All very informative! Well done guys, thank you for putting the time in.....

[arboriculturist]

All very informative! Well done guys, thank you for putting the time in.....

 

I'll second that:biggrin:

[arboriculturist]

Still can't thank you enough!! The new one is working like a dream!

 

If you are looking to insulate the outside with kingspan there is a company on eBay called seconds and co. They sell all the kingspan seconds. Most of it is brand new but you need to buy it in the summer! The price it goes for at auction nearly doubles in the winter.

 

So did you manage to add a 2nd Eco Angus within 12 months and get it on the same RHI tariff level as you 1st boiler?

 

OOh and I can see Arb. waste works for you 1m - 40m3 25m - 100m3. Thumbs up for that one.

[Woodworks]

I use about 3/4 cubic metres of wood to dry 30 cubic metres.

 

Now that sounds more like it

 

I had read talk of a 25% of the wood used to fire a kiln but with that sort of efficiency can see how you can run it on "waste"

[ash_smith123]

It doesn't work like that unfortunately. My 95kw boiler is on 8.8p and the 130kw eco Angus is on 6.9p.

 

Yes as I said I do mix a bit of other stuff with it too. Chip and processor waste to bulk it up!