Alycidon

Talk to your customers about mositure content. Buy a mositure meter and demonstrate your point. The Morso one I and other Morso distributers sell has a green ( OK) yellow ( if you have to ) and red ( on) guide oin the back. All the cheaper end suppliers will be ( with all due respect lads) arb boys looking to offload what they have aquired over the summer, that will by and large be far to wet for immediate optimum results. None that I have spoken to have any idea of mositure contents of their products or what the idea moisture contents should be. If they kept it another year then it would be far more valuable but I would guess that lack of space precludes that. Storage space can be expensive hence higher prices are needed. I have gone into the market from scratch last winter with a very dry product at a mid market price. I wanted to establish a presence in the local market and a reputation for high quality ready to burn wood. That done I can now move the price up and make some money as the customers realise that they get far more heat, better flame patterns and far less soot and tars from dry wood than seasoned. Have a look at the Certainly Wood web site, some of their 'kiln dried' hardwood that was sold last winter I tested at 20-22%. Maybe it got damper once the customer got hold of it though. I have heard of one old lady who complained that her stove would not burn well, the stove retailer ( not me !!) called in the manufacturer whose engineer went to investigate. Turned out the lady kept her wood in a pond in the garden, said it burnt to fast otherwise !!. Tied each bit to a bit of string and tossed them in !!. A A

Govt are committed longterm to ROCs hence the desirability of CHP plants ( combined heat and power) next door to a large pellet plant. What gets sold in the market gets sold, what does not gets burnt and provides energy fed into the national grid for payment per kw and DOUBLE rocs as the power is produced using renewable products. Balcas do in fact control the UK market owing to their size. Demand for firewood will continue to rise significantly year on year, the energy companies have been given permission to increase their prices by 50% over the next 5 years on top of inflation to cover their development costs of green alternative energy. So gas and electric prices will be double what they are today in 5 years, thats why people are changing. And here is another thought !!, the Germans are switching off the nuclear programme in 2022, the UK will have a large energy gap after 2015, ie we use more that we can make. So how are we going to fuel our power stations etc to produce electricity, our gas supplies are in decline. By using renewable fuels of course, wood, miscanthus, hedge trimmings is one that has yet to be considered but that will come. This next winter a cubic meter of wood needs to rise dramatically. The buy is cost is around £60 a ton for hard + VAT, we process, season, store, deliver + reasonable profit means £120 a cu meter out + VAT in my book this winter. Soft maybe £90 + VAT. A

Seems you have to register to access the page. Balcas are the major suppleir of wood pellets into the UK market, pellet prices have risen from £130 to over £200 a ton since late 2008. A

Hard at 25% wont burn well at all, soft will though but not cleanly unless you get a real good fire going first. I have been into detail about the wet wood issue on a couple of occasions recently here so I wont repeat. What others have stated is correct. No stove manufacturer recommends slumbering a stove overnight, on wood the low temps cause tars and several times the amount of soot. Another thing to be aware of is smokeless fuel and slumbering, almost all smokeless fuel is imported and has a very high sulpher content. Slumber that overnight on a low oxygen setting and the sulpher gas does not get combusted, it is very corrosive so when it gets into the flue it quickly corrodes a flue liner. No liner manufacturer warrants their liner for slumbering smokeless fuel. The best advise you can give a stove owner is to fill it before bed and let it burn out on its usual setting, if its a half decent stove it will continue to radiate heat for some hours once the fire has died. WF wales, pm sent, A A

Education is the key. The importance of a low moisture content is critical if no tars and little soot are to be produced. Wood is acknowledged at being more or less carbon neutral, fact. It is also relatively fast to replace unlike oil, gas etc. So it does tick all the right boxes, yes customers are become better equipped to spot poor quality wood. I always advise my customers to check the moisture content of any wood they buy be it from me or elsewhere, I always demonstrate my moisture contents using several samples that they select off a load before emptying. Soft wood if dry ignites in a stove almost instantly and produces a big temperature spike, hardwood takes longer to ignite and longer to burn and produces a much steadier and usually somewhat lower temperature given the same air settings. A

Forestry Journal - Contact us Depends really on the diameter of the product being processed and how it is being loaded. A

Good video but you would want some serious hydraulic power to pick it up and run it. No good putting that onto a 2 ton teleporter, just not the hydraulic capacity. Looks a good tool though. A

I am charging £5 for a 15kg dog food bag of very dry softwood. Also £5 for kindling and 3.00 for scented starter sticks ( from La Hacienda). Only selling it in store at present. A

It was awful, problem was no one could find the problem. One occasion the dealer had it for four weeks, it was recovered back there. They played around with it and reconed they had fixed it, it broke down again 100 yards from their premises. In the end it was a bad earth, hence the problem was intermittent. I was also disappointed with the fuel consumption, no where near what VW and their dealer told me I would get prior to order. The Fords and Vauxhalls returned 50/52 mpg even after 300,000 miles, the VW on the same work with the same driver 45-46mpg. I was promised 60mpg. Glad to see the back of it. A

Fame at last, good for you. I had a single VW in a fleet of 9 small Ford and Vauxhall vans ( 8/10 cwt size) that I ran for over 20 years. it broke down pretty well every month after about 80,000 miles, engine just stopped, dealer had it for up to 4 weeks a time looking for the fault and no replacement van from them !. The other two makes went to 300,000 miles with no issues at all. Had to beg the insurance to write it off when it had a repairable prange at 180,000. Never again. A

Deal done, A

Never done one otherwise, TI is a tough pipe but single wall off the stove is only 1.5mm usually. I just show the female side of the partnership how it looks and she always goes twin wall all the way. It just looks far better. A

Dont really know but I would think that is correct. I just buy a few tonnes as I need them, they are all softwood as well. A

Use Poujoulat TI, it wants a MINIMUM 50mm from the outer wall to combustibles, you will need a 400mm fixed length through the wall, we dont usually use the TI sleeve but always use an eliptical cover plate over the pipe entry point, This plate is about 400mm square and makes the job nice and neat. Poujoulat do a stainless steel sleeve for the job, cant see why you would want a concrete sleeve but your installer has the last say as he is the one that has to sign it off as being safe to use. Recommend that you talk to Specflue who are one of the largest trade suppliers of flue pipe in the UK. A

Another alternative is Balcas, they have a plant in eastern Scotland at the old Alcoa aluminium plant. They ship by sea to Felixstowe for onward distribution. Cant think they would be interested in anything under 20 tonnes though. A

I am one small retailer selling around 3 or 4 stoves a week, most of these are replacing gas appliances or bringing a disused fireplace back into use. Demand for burning wood is growing at around 30% per annum, this includes chip and pellets. Forest owners will finally be getting a sensible return on their investement. The days of cheap firweood have I am afraid gone, in 3 years prices of pellets has doubled, this is guided by Balcas who have most of the market and the rest follow suit. The biggest demand should be for good quality products, as customers wake up to what is good and what is less good they will channel their orders accordingly. A

Sorry did not mean to be dramatic !!. Stainless steel guard is available from Specflue, usually used in lofts to prevent clothes etc falling against it. Not sure if it fits all types of flue pipe as diameters vary. Your local Specflue distributer should be able to advise/supply, comes in two pre cut lengths, 1.7 and 2.4m from memory but might be wrong. Building regs state that flue pipe in upper rooms should be boxed in with non combustible materials, ply is combustible and therefore should not have been used or signed off. I suppose if the ply was a fair way from the pipe ( this would vary depending on the combustible clearance of the pipe used) then use of ply might have been accepted, even so its bad practise. None the less you have had it signed off so keep that certificate safe as it arguably lets you off one area but your insurance may still refuse to pay out in the event of a fire. Cases are passed to loss adjusters whose task is to wriggle out of paying a claim. Don't give them any grounds at all to refuse to pay. When you are able to afford it get it boxed in properly with a non combustible board, I would normally say plasterboard but I am not a builder so am unsure on its suitability for a bathroom. No doubt others will advise. A

This is illegal under the building regulations, did you get it signed off as being safe?, that is another legal requirement. I cant see anyone signing that off as being safe. A towel or clothes coming into contact with the exposed pipe will ignite, if as a result the house burns down you will, if not signed off be in major trouble. You will be fined for the failure to sign off, ( one guy in Loughboro was fined 4,300 recently), your insurance company will also refuse to pay out. The guy from Loughboro lost his house and all his posessions and was fined on top. A

But the join from a 125mm stove pipe to a 235mm od 150mm TI twin wall pipe is pretty ugly, ask any woman, it's they who usually have the last say on how things look!. If you need that bit of extra heat from the pipe the stove is too small. A

wood ash is good for the garden but if you have been burning pallets the preservative used on the pallets is harmful to health. Put it on the veg garden, then eat the veg and it gets into your body, it is harmfull to you. Burn pallets which is not recommended then dispose of the ash in your bin not on your garden. A

I am 24 miles from Buckingham and could use my Disco and trailer to help shift it, that wil take about 2 tonnes ( 2 cum ish), any use?. Will call later when I get a minute. A

I have a Euc about half that size that I have letting dry out having ringed it, I assume it should split OK using a decent splitting axe maybe aided by wedges but have not actually got that far with it. A

Agreed 100%. Recommend you get an independant HETAS registered installer in to look at and quote the install and sign off. Poujoulat TI is excellent, its all I use as well. You might consider bringing the twin wall all the way down to the appliance ( stove) and having it powder coated to match the stove. TI as it comes is shiny stainless steel, not what most want in their front rooms. Just use a powder coater who knows what he is about. Make sure the stove is the right size for the room, if you are unsure about this I have a calculator in my web site, pm me for details. Are you in a smoke control area, if so you will need a DEFRA approved stove, most manufacturers have DEFRA models. Just dont buy cheap chinese crap !!, you will be replacing it in 3 or 4 years. A

This site is excellent for giving you costs per kw and CO2 emissions per KW of all the fuels. Energy Costs Comparison - Nottingham Energy Partnership As you will see burning seasoned logs bought at about £100 for a builders bag by the looks of it stacks up well against most other forms of heating and is very much a winner in the CO2 stakes when compared to Gas etc. A

Customer service is everything in any business. Dead right, build a relationship with the customer, word of mouth is the best and cheapest advertising there is. A