muldonach

Well things vary greatly from area to area - but around here you would be looking at £17-22 per hour plus diesel for the tractor and any implement it is driving. Cheers mac

+1 The other possibility after that is a split or hole in the fuel pickup pipe - if the test above does not indicate a vacuum then have a good look at the hose inside the tank. After it cuts out will it start again without filling up the fuel tank? Cheers mac

I uses it quite frequently - mainly when I slip or trip on it!

No - the sacks allow air to circulate through the stack better than a large loose pile. You can use various stratagems to stack bulk logs and several have been illustrated on here - heras fence panels or pallet walls spring to mind. Cheers mac

You won't like the answer You can accurately measure each stem - length, and bottom diameter before you ring it and do one section at a time until your trailer is full. The accurate way to do it needs a known volume tank filled - preferably to the brim with water- put the wood in and press it down until level with the top of the tank. remove the wood and measure the amount of water left in the tank - the difference between start and final volume of water is the volume of the wood. More practically you can put a load over a weighbridge and convert the weight to volume - your problem is to establish a realistic standard density Cheers mac

When our hot water is satisfied or when we feel the need we switch on a water circulation fan which circulates the hot water from the stove around the house and through a set of heat exchangers. Its really good, it is also small and quiet and we can adjust how much heat goes through each heat exchanger so that each room gets the proportion of heat we think it needs. It all seems to work pretty well to me and I have never noticed that the woodburner is way overkill to heat the room, in fact so much heat goes to the water that we eventually added a radiator in the lounge. Its been there for nearly 20 years and when it dies - which it will pretty soon - it will be replaced by another similar unit. I may even line the chimney this time. Cheers mac

How well insulated / draftproofed is your barn conversion? We heat a similar sized - and not dissimilar construction- house with a Hunter 20 multifuel, its not a name you hear much of nowadays but it has lasted well and provided adequate heat. Alicydons figures above look ok to me - if your insulation is good then you can probably get away with a bit less particularly if you use the valves to control the radiators as necessary. My feeling is that 20Kw would be more than enough as long as insulation is good. I would not worry about heat loss in the pipes unless they are run so as to lose the heat to the loft, ours are run under floorboards and their heat loss is fed into the house. I would put a radiatior in the lounge as well as the fire, we found that too low a proportion of the stove heat was fed to the room and eventually retrofitted a radiator. If you are fitting a new system then I would seriously look at including a thermal store to allow the heating to be used early mornings etc. Cheers mac

I have a few hedges that have not been flailed or treated in any way for around 50 years. We have brought almost all of them back into some kind of management - mainly by cutting to a low stump with a slope and allowing it to start again. The firewood content was minimal and certainly a lot more bother than it was worth. As regards forestry grants we spent the best part of a year developing a long term forest plan as required in Scotland - went through all the consultations etc and ended up binning it because at the end of the day it is the FC way or no way. There is grant assistance for new planting but it is heavily weighed towards the central belt of scotland. Farming subsidies - the stuff of dreams - they are there, the basis varies from country to country but as a generality they are under some pressure at the moment, here in Scotland most farmers are looking at reductions of 25-50% under present proposals. Going back to the OP good stove sales have to be a plus point for firewood producers but there is point (which we may have partially reached) at which market forces take over and foreign imports will put a top on the market. Firewood is not and is unlikely to become a mainstream fuel in the UK nor do we have the resources for it to do so I would suggest, which is not to say that there does not remain plenty of opportunity for further market developement, but generally on a local scale - how many of us can deliver more than a few miles away without having to increase price to maintain margin? I certainly hope so - if anyone would like some bulk softwood we may well be able to assist in the medium term. Cheers mac

The last time I flew over shetland there was an almost total lack of trees. Since buying cordwood would mean shipping it out of Aberdeen I would be inclined to agree that there is a cheese chewing rodent in the woodpile

As long as he did not follow it up with a recommendation for full mitigation measures - including a licenced "newt mover" on site - which is what our ecologist did you are in good shape!

Not at all sure that is correct Wet basis moisture content for timber is absolute - 10% moisture content means exactly that - 1kg of timber at 10% will contain 100g of water. Humidity in air is quoted as relative humidity or the percentage of the maximum quantity of moisture per unit volume which the air is carrying - 10% humidity means that the atmosphere can actually carry 10 times as much moisture as it is holding at present. The ability of air to carry moisture is a function of temperature - the higher the temperature the more water the air can carry. There are several ways that moisture can be deposited on "dry" timber 1. immerse it in water 2. leave it out in the rain 3. In circumstances where the surface temperature of the timber is below the dewpoint of the surrounding atmosphere (the point at which relative humidity = 100%) the timber (or anything else) will "sweat" and moisture will be deposited on the surface and absorbed into the timber. Such circumstances can easily arise when a warm front passes over the UK following a cold or cool spell of weather. The same mechanism explains condersation on a window in a house. It is perfectly correct to say that dry timber can re-absorb moisture and its mc may rise - but it is over simplistic to say that it will only be as dry as its surrounding humidity. I have seen this adage trotted out several times, timber will dry as long as the relative humidity is below 100% and the surface temp of the timber is above dewpoint. Cheers mac

I have a vision of being stood beside that lot and asking my oppo how much petrol he has with him...........?

http://arbtalk.co.uk/forum/business-management/66040-advice-newly-v-t-registered-company.html http://arbtalk.co.uk/forum/business-management/39645-vat-not-vat-3.html http://arbtalk.co.uk/forum/business-management/39319-tips-business-owners-5.html#post614535 http://arbtalk.co.uk/forum/firewood-forum/35474-vat-firewood-2.html Happy reading Cheers mac

Registering for VAT allows you to reclaim your VAT on all inputs, e.g equipment, vehicles, fuel etc etc. It is not necessary to add 20% VAT to quotes, it is however necessary to provide a VAT invoice once payment is recieved. This has been discussed at some length previously. It does not result in a 20% increase in cost to the customer. If the OP does not wish to register his tree surgery business for VAT all he has to do is to register a company Joe Bloggs wood fuel and keep separate accounts for that company - possibly more hassle than he wants but as already stated by paying VAT on inputs he is putting himself at a considerable financial disadvantage. Cheers Mac

Even at 100-150mm girth he will struggle to keep them in the ground, I would suggest planting the smallest trees he can find which come close to the required spec and stake them very well. then interplant with normal plants tubed and staked, by the time the big ones blow over the secondary planting should be established. Cheers mac

It is probably worth becoming registered - if you are paying 20% VAT on all your inputs and not able to charge on outputs then you are starting with one hand tied behind your back in my view. We registered as soon as we started and it makes a big difference Cheers mac

I will second the advice previously give regarding use of wedges and also the above. Also cut as many sections as you can roll or break off before you risk blunting your chain in the ground. It sounds like a chunky stem which we would roll either with a digger or shove with the butt plate on the winch - neither of which you are likely to have. You mentioned that there are fencers on site - they will have a set or two of monkey strainers and you should be able to roll a decent chunk over if you can get a suitable anchor point Cheers mac

Its artwork mate - cannot you see - its cultural like that there pickled sheep (or was it a shark?) Got a shed full of them and could clean up if I had not gone and split them all into quarters

There is in my experience no way to kill a willow tree by cutting it - nor indeed is it necessary to go to the trouble of sticking cuttings into the ground - if you just throw them on a damp patch they will grow fine. In short - it won't matter a toss Cheers mac

Used one on a 35 years ago for a couple of small jobs, the winch was good, as you say no choker chain grooves but we had 3 chokers and were pulling out full tree lengths so plenty for both winch and tractor to work with. If you want or need the grooves a decent welder should be able to sort you out without problem. Cheers mac

You can dredge the rivers until they match the bottom of the Atlantic ocean and it will not alter the effect of the tide one iota, nor cause any more tidal flooding than you get today. Flood plains are a naturally occuring class of land that tends to be both fertile and easily cultivated, hence the enthusiasm in many parts of the world for controlling water levels on it and using it as farmland. While sympathetic to your reasoning to an extent if you hold water back then you are in effect merely shifting the flooding upstream. Similarly in order to "let the water that has been held back into the river" it may be necessary to ensure that the river is actually flowing - allowing silt to build up until the river is only capable of transporting 50-60% of its previous flow rate is hardly helping to mitigate flooding. it is perfectly correct to argue that if you slow down water flow by poor drainage then spate effects will be lower in magnitude but longer in duration - as we are seeing. Yes dredging rivers will not stop flooding but it is another tool in the shed to mitigate flooding and needs to be used when appropriate - which in the case of the Somerset Levels and the Fens would appear to be the case. Cheers mac

Without wishing to be contentious are you felling with crosscuts and axes, snedding with axes and using horses for extractions? Digging ditches around fields does not stop run-off it - it concentrates and accelerates and accelerates it. The problem on the somerset levels is that most of them are actually below the level of the "rivers" Cheers mac

A load of old tosh written by an extremist and carefully slanted so as to miss the point and push his own agenda forward. Nobody has ever so far as I know claimed that dredging would have prevented the present flooding, what they have said is that dredging would have mitigated both duration and extent of the fllooding. The somerset levels are an artificial environment - the watercourses have been deliberately altered and engineered to turn what would naturally be a swamp into a large area of productive farmland. In recent years the EA has prevented ongoing maintenance from taking place as a matter of deliberate policy - if that is the policy then fair enough - however to see that policy through they will need to relocate most if not all of the population in the affected area. Cheers mac

To the best of my knowledge nobody does blam the government for the rain, many people have an issue with the EA refusing to maintain - or allow others to maintain - a managed environment.

It would be a brave person indeed that put a cargo of roundwood on a barge in Barcelona for towage to the UK. Barges are intended for use in inland and sheltered wateways, which Biscay and the Western Approaches are not. Cheers Mac