Alycidon

This has to be signed off as being safe to use. The key question is what happens if you have a power cut and no pumped water just as you have refuelled the stove !!. If the water in the stove boils you have a very dangerous situation as it may explode. Woodburning/multifuel boiler stoves require plumbing to a cold water tank, when plumbed using an Esse centraliser or similar ( Dunsley?) then excess heat is allowed to escape into the cold water tank. http://www.esse.com/pdfs/Centraliser.pdf The problem is that Combi boilers do not usually have a cold water tank. Broseley have a system called SCWS that solves this problem, they will however only supply SCWS products to companies who have installers who have been on and passed the Brosely training course. This is a free course but is only available to trained and qualified plumbers. Innovation In stove design | Broseley Fires Hope this helps. A

Agreed, its what I currently do, but if their is someone else steering customers your way as your product is proven to be constantly up to a specified standard is that worth the subs ?. Not currently but maybe once it is more recognised and used. A

Reserch I have done since I posted points to the scheme being helpfull to promote the wood fuel product to new stove owners IF they manage to find details of the scheme. Cost wise first year looks like £550 plus VAT, ongoing £250 plus VAT for the basic membership. This includes annual on site inspections of processing plant, paperwork etc and end user audits. So you would want to be shifting more than a few tons to make it pay. Me thinks its a bit like BS5750 a few years ago, if you were not approved you would be out of buisness, well that was wrong for sure. None the less to have a user who is satisfied with his stove he needs dry fuel, anything that promotes the benifits of good dry fuel is a good thing. I am going into the Hetas approved retailer scheme, my firewood sales this year were around 50 cu meters, next winter I am looking to move around 150 cu m so if I charged another £5 a cu meter for the HETAS assurance would it make any difference?. Just put Firewood Quality into Google, nothing aboyut the scheme is on page one. Maybe let this one develope a bit more first. A

Tell them you dont charge extra for the bark !!, most like that for the garden. A

Does anyone have any experiance of the above and are suppling logs under it?. It is part of this HETAS Recommended retailer package I am in the process of probably joining http://www.biomassenergycentre.org.uk/pls/portal/docs/PAGE/PRACTICAL/FUEL_SUPPLY/STANDARDS/HETAS%20STANDARDS/SUPPLY%20CHAIN%20COVER%20FOR%20SBAS.PDF Seems pretty simple, they assess what you are doing, how you are keeping records etc and id acceptable away you go. I guess the issue is the cost of the compliance audit !!. A

Prices from Tilhill were £60 PLUS VAT delivered. Cord is charged at 20% when buying for resale. If you are buying as the end user ie burning it yourself then 5% applies. Dont forget that you would have to be able to justify this to a VAT inspector at some point in the future. Buy at 5% for resale and the VAT will be looking to your supplier for more tax and will levy a fine of at least the value of tax undercharged having audited his books for the last 7 years. If anyone can get me hardwood delivered on a crane trailer to Northampton area at £45 plus VAT per ton in 25 ton loads then I will have some. A

I use a shed closed on three sides OK. A

ALL woods when burnt give off gases, these gases contain creosote. At normal stove operating temps the creosote gets burnt off in the firebox. Slumbering a stove overnight on a low oxygen setting will cause a fall in temperature in the firebox so that in around an hours time the temp will not be hot enough to ignite the crerosote. As a result it gets into the flue/chimney in gas form and condenses there coating the flue with crerosote. This is the major cause of chimney fires. Burning wet wood has the same effect as the energy in the wood is used to evaporate the water rather than creating heat. I suspect your sweep has found evidence of tars/crerosote in the flue hence his advice. Resin in wood has nothing to do with it, the problem is burning too wet or with to little oxygen. Another reason people are put off soft is sparking, stoves run with the doors closed ( well 98% of them do) so a few sparks are no issue as the fire is enclosed fully. A

Wet/rotton maybe, certainly not as dry as they could be. I am processing softwood logs felled 2 years ago, still in the round. MC on processing is about 25%. Stuff felled last autumn was about 30%, down to 27% after a week. I am processing and storing in bulk in a barn, loading with a 2 cu meter loading shovel. use a wall of filled arb bags to seperate soft from hard. A

Eductaion is the key. I am a stove retailer with a live stove in my showroom, and I sell both soft and hard wood. Last night I delivered a trailer of logs to a house where the towns largest stove retailer had installed a stove. The ladies were given no advice on how to use the stove and none on wood, mositure content, etc, They went down to a major DIY chain and bought some softwood that I measured at 42%, covered in white mould. I got involved following a personal reference. I spent half an hour educating them, showing them how to use a moisture meeter, showing them how to use the stove they had spent several thousand pounds buying from a competitor and telling them the ins and outs of the importance of using dry wood. The question of hard v soft did not arise. Soft if dry with more or less burst into flame, hard is slower to ignite. Temp outputs from soft usually higher than hard but the burn time is less, overall I think it represents good value for the customer. The is a LOT of poor stove retailers out there, most are looking to make a quick buck from the stove and thats it. ( There are also some very good ones who encompass the whole project from initial discussion to ongoing fuel supplies). HETAS are now introducing an approved retailer scheme in an attempt to improve standards. In order to qualify there must be at least one showroom staff member who has attanded and passed a relevent HETAS training course. These also cover fuel and the importance of moisture in wood, tars and sulpher gases from smokeless fuels etc. Companies like mine that also sell wood will be required to label each consignment detailing source, hard/soft/ mositure/ fuel assurance scheme etc. That will be a good excercise for me. A

Commercial shoot then yes you may well be right, those boys can shoot 200-400 a day, 3 or 4 days a week at £35 a bird + VAT. I was thinking of a private shoot or maybe a syndicate. A

Size of finished log looks a bit big, aim for no more than 4 inch (100mm) square. A decent double acting hydraulic ram would do, the problem is making a strong enough anchor bracket. My brother tried to build a simple one using a 4 inch double acting ram he had about but it just kept bending anchor brackets. If you have an enginnering bent then get stuck in but without CE marking it would not be legal to sell them I suspect. CE testing is far from cheap. If you use such a tool as part of a business your insurer may be asking questions about make/model and then maintainence records etc. Air compressors need a 12 month safety check for example and a 2 year full check inside and out. Just thinking aloud of possable problems once you get one into use assumeing you want to use it as a log supplier. A

Suspect it would want CE marking as well, that is not cheap. Plus VAT and carriage although I appreciate you can reclaim the VAT and also get 100% allowance against tax as a limited company. So the tax man pays for 22% of it as well !!. But what happens if it goes wrong?. Tempest web site seems to consist of that video and thats it. Nice tool though. A

Delivered to Northants., Speak to your local Tilhill harvesting manager for quote for your area. But if Highland Forestry has supplies near you at £36 + carr + VAT then that will probably be a better deal. A

At £60 a ton fresh felled from Tilhill etc it needs to be £100 a cube out + VAT. A

I got my brother to make one from scrap steel tube, took about an hour, cost me a bottle of falling down water !!. Take a design of what you want to your local steel tube specialist, they will make you one up. A

Last Sept my logs kept in a barn with 3 closed sides were soft 3% hard 9%. By December the hard had all gone and the remaining soft was 18% or so. Now we have had a long dry spell the remaining odds and ends were 5-7% when I checked a load out this week. This is only surface moisture though, a more accurate figure could be gained by splitting it and checking the newly exposed surfaces. Sofwood at 25% will burn reasonably but Ash wont, it will burn yes but far from well. A A

Breech of building regualtions. A

Alycidon- You been or going to hearth and homes? Heading down tomorrow morning with my mate from Aston Chimneys if your about? Going tomorrow ( Tues), had a day with the JAPA 700 yesterday. Forecast for Tues is showers, the JAPA is on a resored MF 135 so dont want to get it wet !!. Last winter I refused to sell a lady a 11kw stove that she wanted to put into a 4kw room. She would have been happy with it for about 30 minutes, would have been a 13m liner job as well + scaffolding so not a cheap install. She bought a Jotul from elswhere according to her neighbor who I had sold a stove a few weeks before. A

Anyone can install the stoves BUT they MUST be installed to Approved Document J of the building regs AND singed off by someone competent to do so. This will either be a HETAS registered installer or your local building inspector. To fail to have them signed off WILL invalidate house insurance and you will be prosectuted when it comes to light. Recently a guy in Loughborough installed his own stove, had a flue pipe touching a rafter. His house caught fire and burnt down, as the stove was not signed off his insurers would not pay out and he got fined nearly £5k for not having it signed off. Check the output of the stoves, go onto my website Wood burning multi fuel stoves Northants and Rugby go to installations and use the size chart there. That assumes average insulation and has been created by Morso who are world leaders in stove design. It is far better to have a small stove and drive it hard than a big one idling. Burns with better flames, no tar and little soot given dry fuel. A final thought is that if your man has bought cheapo chinese stoves that may be why a good installer is walking away, just dont want the aggro of a poorly designed and operating stove. Its far better to buy this product locally and get it installer by the supplier or his subcontractor. PM me if unclear. A

Without signage saying keep off etc you would probably be laible if something falls on them or even if they fall off. No win no fee legal sharks make life hard for small business. A

I had some kiln dried beech offcuts from a furnature factory a few years ago. They bought whole untrimmed but dried planks so had quite a bit of waste. One year I noticed rapidly increasing number of woodworn holes in a picture frame about a meter above the wood basket. When I checked the basket it was riddled with woodworm. Had to replace the frame and basket but it was so long ago that I cant remember what time of year it was hence my concearn and need for advice. Hole numbers in the frame were increaseing at one per hour so it was bad. These days I use steel wood buckets and one ex MOD steel coal bucket. If someone can expand or confirm the above post on the life cycle of these insects it would be handy. Thanks A

As a newcomer to the firewood industry how do you handle the issue of woodworm or other infestations of wood borers in firewood. Seen a few holes in soft thinnings I am currently processing including some 4 or 5 mm in dia. Thanks for your thoughts and guidance A

I have also found NFU putting up prices alarmingly, and as for paying out things are far from what they used to be. They now employ loss adjusters to wriggle out of claims if they can. Came accross a flood case recently, NFU would not replace a range cooker ruined in the flood because the cost exceeded a 3k max limit per item. As a new cooker was about 4.5k that would not pay anything. The fact that the cooker had been insured with NFU since 1960 was academic. NFU blamed the loss adjusters. A