Justme

Kiln dried from Latvia will still need keeping dry. Can you use the waste heat from kiln via a heat exchanger to remove moisture to warm shed?

Water in fuel. Oil would be blue.

Thanks for that lead. They look quite cheap but give limited specs especially re rotation. Will be a phone them job. I have been looking at:- Kramp, costly but give good details & options Gwaza Genfitt Have you done a spread sheet with your gearbox ratios for each gear & the 90 box ratio if its not 1-1 to see what gear / engine speeds will work for you? Have you found your hp / torque curve to see at what revs it will have enough power? I have & its interesting to see just what will work & what wont. There are bigger gaps than you would think in the gears when you only have 100 pto rpm's to play with. I was aiming for 1100-1200rpm but would be ok with up to about 1600rpm ish re fuel & noise. From playing with the tractor 400 pto rpm is just too low for high production, it works but slightly struggles on big stuff so aiming for 450-550 PTO speeds. For personal use I would run at 400 pto. But for my work production is king. My gears are:- 1st 6.19 2nd 3.38 3rd 2.26 4th 1.42 5th 1.00 With a 1-1 box 3rd gear at 1050rpm = 464 pto, 1200rpm = 530 pto 2nd gear comes in at 1550rpm & 458 pto, 1650rpm is 488 pto But if 3rd does not work its a big rpm jump to second Other gears are not usable with a 1-1 box. With a 1-1.5 up box 2nd gear 1050 rpm - 469 pto 1200rpm - 532 pto No other gears work till 1st at 2000 rpm so risky but also best rpm speed if it works. The 1-1.9 down gear box give the best guarantee of having enough power. 4th gear 1250 rpm - 463 pto to 1450 rpm - 537 pto. 5th gear tickover/ 900 rpm - 473 pto to 1050 rpm - 552 pto If you know your gear ratios I can drop them in my sheet for you.

Battery, wire, switch about sums it up. Nice & old school. I will add low fuel & oil shutdown.

I have mounted the engine, need to service it & cambelt then fit rad & intercooler. Currently trying to source 90 deg box. New are about £280+vat. Or back to using the rear dif off doner vehicle. Third beam welds Third beam added to the kelfri log deck that has also been lifted at one end. Work platform down Work platform up as a trailer side Crane reach to the rear. Should give me a good 6 to 7 meters of stack I can load before needing to move trailer. Engine cradle

Not started yet, too busy working on the trailer/processor/crane/engine combo.

Exemption from having the correct licence? Do tell....

A 750kg trailer / chipper would still be cat C1. You would only need C1E for bigger trailers. Unlike BE you dont get the option to share the 7500kg between trailer & vehicle.

Just quoting someone from Bideford lol.

We travel lol. Has to be viable for both parties.

Glad I am not the only one that gets jobs like that.

Have you made any progress on this yet? My job this week (rain permitting) is to set this 2.8 iveco up as a PTO unit.

What tonnage is your ram? How does it cope with the 12 way on difficult stuff?

Unless the 5ah was at a higher voltage as well. The better term to use is watt hour as that combines the ah & the volts.

300s

For comparison this is what one battery on the msa220 does.

Point 1, True & production would be faster not slower. Thats all short bits, rings & thin stuff that all had to be man handled / loaded into the processor. Cord even crappy cord on a deck should be faster. Having watched a few other people process on lots of different machines I would say its the team that affects the production the most not the machine. I hire out with just me or with a second team member. We always produce more when its my worker even when I have had two supplied workers helping. Point 2a, Thats how every day should start. Or you are loosing money before you even start. 2b, shit happens, but by having spares onsite ready you minimise down time. I normally care enough spares (got caught out on one job recently re chains as the wood was eating them due to dirt & we used up 3 days worth in one day) Point 3, I guess thats why people hire me in. We are not doing all the other business bits that they need to do. So freeing them up to run the business while we handle the production. We process / move the cut logs, thats it. We can & do produce 25m3 per day on average day in day out. (hoping for more when we start using processor mk2) Maintenance is done at the end of the day when on site or on days we dont process. Its rare we get a shut down during the day & so far have always been able to fix it in short order. We are looking at this from different positions. You have a firewood production & delivery business. I supply a service to your industry. Your down time looses you production. My down time does not affect how much we produce as its outside of your billable hours. When at base we never get 25m3 done per day. Like you say too much other stuff to do & interruptions. But then I am running the business too when at base. If you have enough staff they should be working onsite like I do on jobs. Concentrating on one aspect of the job. I think a few have said it well. Either be small or very big. In the middle its harder to make it pay. Would be interesting to see just how much Pentland produce per processor per day. I bet its well over 25m3 every day.

You cant average 25m3 per day? On the job I did for them we peaked at 30m3 on one day and averaged 25m3 per day. We did two 3 day sessions. On substandard heavily manual input timber.

I would agree if its just the production of the raw split / cut logs you are quantifying on. However with all the pre & post split / cut & delivery work as well thats needed its more realistic. I think I know this company & have done work for them. They have a good set up for the high quality feed stock (firewood factory, if I remember right) which produces volume quickly but needs good graded feed stock. However what I saw of the lower end set up it is very slow & this is where they are loosing what the are gaining from the faster processing. To just produce 1400m3 from average feed stock is less than 60 working days production for two people on a small wp30. With a bigger static set up with deck etc you could reduce that further. They also suffer from having to move the wood stacks a distance to the machines which eats up time.

In the UK you could go higher trailer weight IF you have a BE licence pre 19-01-2013 as the trailer allowed was unlimited.

5% is not worth the risk. Might as well gamble in stocks ect Your 2500m3 in only making your wages plus about £10k. I would make that on about 200m3 after costs and wages. If I sold that much. I far less.

If you dont loose 10% of customers you did not put prices up enough. Yes fixed cost will be split over less units but still more total bottom line profits. Locally an m3 costs around £100. We too have cheap sellers doing it on the side. Never be the cheapest bloke. You get all the crap clients.

Like the "free" delivery that has a real cost to the business in cash & time.

Are the £150 & £310 inc or plus vat? If plus vat then surely the delivery alone on 4m3 is worth more than £7.50 per m3 over the trade collect price? Either way your prices look very cheap. Putting it up £10 to £15 per m3 & sell half your volume for about the same bottom line profit.

Do you retail it all or is some trade sales? Whats your retail / trade prices per m3?