Mr Ed

Have you ever seen the state a builder, plumber, window fitter etc will leave a customers site? Its disgusting the mess they leave behind themselves. And we come along, and for a lot less return, leave the site tidier than when we started? Stuff that.

My suggestion is get a proffesional consultant in.

Step outside and say that:mad1:

We must be related. sounds like a typical friday for me.

Hakki is slightly better quality than Japa. And I have Japa, so not biased - [ame]http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=hbcPZ2xxQD8[/ame]

Did I say I had any vids? edit- bugger, I let it slip.

Jeez, is this going to be a recurring theme? Grab a vid off Utube and pick holes in the technique? I reckon people could shoot great big holes in my technique from watching my Utube vids... Depressing.

99% of homes run on fossil fuels. Which way are prices going on them? Biomass fuels have been in mainstream use for 40 years on the continent. We've got some catching up to do....

(note the price of the pellets! and thats at a slightly cheaper price than Oil!) Wood Pellet Fuel Wood pellet fuel is a renewable, clean-burning high density biomass fuel made from recycled wood waste or sawdust. The use of biomass fuel is a 'carbon neutral' process. The carbon dioxide released by burning is balanced by that absorbed by the tree during its growth. Wood pellet fuel is manufactured from sustainable resources, is Carbon neutral, clean and easy to use. The ash from the pellets, which is rich in minerals can be recycled to fertilise forests, parks or gardens. The wood pellets which have a consistent size (ours are 6mm in diameter) flow like a liquid and so are easy to handle and can be burned in specially designed wood pellet stoves which are fed from a hopper via a worm-drive. It is difficult to say how much wood pellet fuel you will use but if you use one of our smaller wood pelelt stoves, a 15kg bag of pellets may last for about three days. If you were using a wood pellet stove to heat a reasonably well insulated British three bedroom semi-detached house you would probably use 1.5 tonnes of wood pellets over the whole of the winter months. The wood pellet fuel costs £5.25 per 15kg bag inc vat @5% although this price would fall for deliveries of 1 tonne or more. Price comparisons with gas for example are favourable and becoming more so. The price of wood pellets can fluctuate but looks set to fall rather than rise in the near future. Bought as a pallet of 65 bags (975kg) this works out at £341.25 ex-works. The Artel 6 average usage is about 1kg per hr This is a running cost of 35p / hr. The Artel 8 average usage is about 1.2 kg per hr This is a running cost of 42p / hr. The Artel 12 average usage is about 1.6 kg per hr This is a running cost of 56p / hr. The Artel 14 average usage is about 1.8 kg per hr This is a running cost of 63p / hr. For local deliveries in the Greater Manchester area we could carry and stack the fuel to where it will be stored. Due to the high energy density of wood pellet fuel there is less volume to transport and store and fewer fuel deliveries to be made. One ton of wood pellets is equivalent to approximately 1.5 m³ of fire wood or 500 litres of heating oil. Wood Pellet fuel quality, standards and availability The wood pellet fuel is held together by the wood's natural lignin that is released during the pelletising process due to heat and compression. This means that no binding agent is necessary. Most wood pellet fuels have a 5-10% moisture content. Well-seasoned fire wood is usually around 20%. Some wood pellets contain either petroleum or non-petroleum lignin used as a lubricant in the wood pellet production process, though most contain no additives. Pellet fuel made from agricultural waste contain more ash, but they may produce more heat than pellets made from wood. Pellet Fuel Specification Bulk density 650 kg / cubic metre Dry matter content 91.5% Calorific value 4.8 kWh / kg Ash content < 0.7% Carbon 50.1% approx Oxygen 42.5% approx Hydrogen 6% approx Nitrogen 0.1% approx Sulphur 0.01% approx Chlorine 0.01% approx

PM me for details

Its a fully automated plant, and produces 700kgs per hour. Its designed for 24hr operation, but I'm planning on running mine on a 12 hour per day basis.

A470 between Porthmadog and Machynlleth A5 between Bethesda and Llangollen - up through the Nantfrancon Valley, along the edge of the lake under the shadow of Tryfan, the blast through Capel down into Betws Y Coed. Fantastic runs.

The only people who get them that cheap is Drax power station. Domestic high grade 6mm pellets are about £180 per tonne delivered. Still much cheaper than oil or gas. The ideal situation I would like to see is arb firms having the capability to turn all their woodchip and waste into pellets with a £150 per tonne return.

Tilia platyphyllos - large leaf Lime?

the Farm 2000 boiler is about £7k. Very expensive IMO.

Nice one Ed! I was researching this myself last year but got stumped on how to convert chips in to pellets. I found that at present pellets are made from sawdust, shavings and grasses - I assumed woodchips were too large and wet to compress in to pellets. Pellets are the way forward for sure. Your right, woodchips are to bulky and wet to pelletise, so we have to run them through a hammermill first, to get the particle size down to 5-6mm, then run that through a large tumble dryer to get the moisture content down to 12- 15%. Then it goes through a pellet press.

If you pay staff to cut logs, it works out dearer than oil.

As an arborist, I'm always running out of firewood because I have NO TIME.... Pellets may cost, but they are sustainable, carbon nuetral, convenient and clean....

Cool as Marc. how did they respond to your felling?

I've done a LOT of research and looking at Biomass. The problem with woodchip systems is the feed systems are very expensive, usually 3 phase powered, and are not really suitable for domestic (under 50kw) applications. A 50kw woodchip system might cost you £15k, but a 250kw system only £18k. its econmoies of scale. Pellets solve this issue by having a high calorific value, and move / flow very easily. They are easy to transport, and need a lot less room to store. The downside I always felt was the availability of pellets. Usually shipped in from abroad, or produced by huge sawmills that then pricefix the market. However, in the last few months we have been working with a manufacturer to build a small scale plant that will dry and pellet ordinary arboricultural woodchips. My hope is that we can soon bring this to the market as one simple unit - pour woodchips in one end, high grade high value pellets comes out the other end.

Andy, pellet burners are self igniting and self modulating. You can go for woodchip, but the infrastructure and feed systems are much larger. A pellet burner will ignite as fast as an oil burner.

depends on what you need. There's a lot of dfferent options - http://www.multione.it

If you want the convenience of oil with the price of wood, you need to look at wood pellets. We are talking with a manufacturer that makes a pellet burner head that fits into your aga.

Sunshine here

Richard, Raise your arms to max, and take off the plastic cover . between the front 'axle' is the hyd. tank, with the filler a large red cap.