County4x4

Always seems funnier somehow when it's the likes of Radio4 presenters coming unstuck! Charlotte Green off the Today programme has done it a few times: [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDojYyIWZ7A&feature=related]YouTube - BBC Radio 4 Charlotte Green[/ame] There's also one I've not found yet where she had to mention a chap called Jack Tuat - pronounced "****" - that got her going as well! Another favourite from cricket commentary: [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRDTh9t51KA&feature=related]YouTube - Brian Johnston descending into giggles during a Test Match Priceless[/ame] Andy

Slow here too - and has been for a few days. None of the other forums or websites I use seem to be affected. I get the message immediately down in the status bar saying "waiting for arbtalk" but it can be 20 seconds or so before anything happens. Only other site I've noticed it on is youtube, generally in an evening, but I guess that could be due to traffic. It's been hard to watch some stuff as it plays faster than it downloads and so keeps stopping - usually it's the other way round. Andy

Not wanting to rain on anyone's parade, but personally I'd be very wary of buying a dirt cheap woodburner. Some of the Chinese stuff is absolute rubbish and you'll get an uncontrollable stove that will be the bane of your life as well as going through your log pile like a dose of salts. I've had one myself in the past and you could see daylight through the joints in the castings - replaced it with a decent stove and use probably half as much fuel to keep twice as warm! The Chinese are fully capable of making a good quality stove, but if overseas buyers only want to pay £30 or so per unit, why should they bother about QC? I don't sell stoves so no personal interest here - but work with them all the time and hear a lot of stories from customers. My advice would be to spend a little more and buy a decent one - even a second hand quality brand on ebay. A good stove will be one of the best things you ever buy - a poor one will leave you disappointed and disillusioned. Andy

Cheers for that Steve - understand completely, and I actually said to him that his user name may have sounded a little strange and that could be the reason. It obviously means something to him - I'll have to find out what! I know the Navitron forum do exactly the same thing and reject the odd sounding ones due to the amount of spam they were getting hit with. So no need for apologies, and I'll pass your message on now. Thanks for that mate, Andy

If one of the moderators could get back to me on this I'd appreciate it! One of the regular contributors to the Green Living forum has tried to register as a member here and been rejected - though he's not sure why. Here's a copy of his post on GLF this morning: Dave's user name on GLF is ballibeg and he's always come across as a pleasant sort of bloke, so he was wondering how or why he'd failed the registration process, and if he could be "let in" as it were? If one of the mods could have a look and let me ko#now that would be great! Cheers for now, Andy

Yes the email I received was unsolicited. However, I could also point out that the email I received back in the summer from the Olivebars operation was unsolicited too, and their representative showed up here armed with a load of free samples and happy to answer any questions, as well as leaving full contact details and so on, so it's not really fair to assume that any unsolicited contact is dodgy. Personally, I contact quite a few businesses out of the blue to ask if they would be interested in stocking briquettes, and I'm guessing that the ones who end up ordering with me don't think I'm dodgy! Half the time I end up sending them the goods in advance of payment anyway, so I don't think I could get much fairer! Yes I know that there are plenty of scams about, but the internet has made prospecting for new business so much easier than it once was, and so I wouldn't say my first thought when I get emails like the one from Russia would be "dodgy", though obviously I'd want to build up more of a relationship with any foreign operation before spending money with them. I've dealt with a lot of companies in India and the USA in the past, and often sent a lot of money for stuff, and I've never been let down yet, so they're not all bad! Andy Andy

Roughly 30 kilos John mate - can't advertise as such though as the weight would have to be exact to keep trading standards happy. Some packs are a little over and some a little under, but that wouldn't be near enough so they are sold by the pack instead, and each pack contains 10 briquettes. Cheers, Andy

Hi Steve, Ours are made almost exclusively from oak mate - sometimes a little bit of cedar in as well but only a bit. If you'd like a sample, I can get three packs to you for £20.22 in total. The carriage price is the same (£8.22) whether I send one two or three packs - that's why I recommend three to make the most of it. Just drop me a line if you'd like to give them a go! Cheers for now, Andy

Emails sent guys - cheers, Andy

Probably genuine on the face of it - not asking for payment up front or anything like that - and there's plenty of wood coming out of that part of the world - several ebay sellers offering east European stuff as well. Never imported anything by the truck load but used to deal with a lot of gear from the States, and customs/import charges could add a fair chunk to the total price. Andy

Can you send me an email addy please mate - reply is too long for private message. Cheers, Andy

@Derek will fire off the details to you in a tick mate. Out of interest, what make were the ones you've tried, and were they quite small ones? I have a manufacturer in mind but there are quite a few outfits getting into the game now, so not bound to be the same one! If they are small ones, they do tend to go rather fast - what I call garden centre specials. A couple of my regular customers have tried them and not wanted to go back for another crack. Often cheaper than ours on paper, but if they only last half as long they generally work out dearer! Ours are probably more "coal like" than most of the others as they form proper embers rather than collapsing and expanding etc. @greengrafter will email you through here mate as I don't have an email addy for you. Cheers, Andy

I got it too... Wonder if you'd get lumbered with a bunch of customs charges on top of that once it landed? Andy

Oak briquettes - not round ones!! Dead easy, dead convenient, dead hot, dead dry, and three to five will do us all evening! Andy

Email sent Andy. Cheers, Andy

Just going back to the stoves for a minute - and the KP link - they guy who runs Windy Smithy, and who designed and makes the stoves that KP totally ripped off by the looks of it, "wishes they made a better job of them" as many people assume they're his stoves instead. He also says they can also be a tad sketchy on installation advice! The originals can be purcahsed from Jon at Windy Smithy Cheers, Andy

Hello again mate, Just checked up for you and it will be £25 extra to get to IV30 - so just add that to the prices in the email I sent. Cheers for now, Andy

Hi Michael, These briquettes are manufactured in the UK - I'd make more money with imported stuff, but I'm not comfy with importing them from eastern Europe and then promoting them here as a "green" fuel. They are made almost exclusively of oak waste, with a very small percentage of cedar as well from time to time. There are no other "ingredients" of any description at all. The briquettes are produced in a screw extruder - this is why they don't do what most briquettes do and expand when burrning and collapse if disturbed. Instead they form proper embers exactly the same shape as the briquettes which continue to give out good levels of heat for quite a long time after the flames have died down. Hope that helps! Cheers, Andy

Hi Gibby, Thanks for your interest mate - I've just emailed you the "stock reply" which everyone else has had - would take me forever to repy to everyone if I typed each email separately! In your case though I'll need to chase up some carriage rates as like you said, it may well cost more to get deliveries up there to you. The prices in the email are for most of the UK - but I'll get back to you as soon as I can if it's going to be extra. Cheers for now, Andy

Email sent Bob, Cheers, Andy

@ bingoben and treesnake - should be emails waiting for you guys. Cheers, Andy

I wouldn't touch Country Kiln with a very long pole! Quite a few HETAS fitters have refused to fit them for people. They are not made in Scotland at all as they make it sound on their website - neither are they HETAS registered. The stoves are Chinese imports and according to someone in the know, will cost them about 30 quid apiece. If you can find it on the Moneysavingexpert forum, there's a very enlightening thread on there about one guys experience with them, which he said that he would never have believed if he'd heard the same story from someone else! Here you go: Country Kiln woodburning stoves? - MoneySavingExpert.com Forums Andy

I've had a lot of stuff from engelbert strauss Ltd. and always been very pleased with it. Their trousers are very hardwearing and well made. They do embroidery as well and will do small runs. Andy

Yes you do Skyhuck - I'm not personally a fan of overnighting stoves due to the mess it leaves for me to remove from peoples chimneys - but quite a few of our boat customers like to keep their stoves in as they have no other form of heating on the boat. Bearing in mind that these are pretty small stoves, usually 5kW tops, with small fireboxes, they can keep briquettes in overnight without much of a problem. I generally advise land based customers against slumbering their stoves - boats are different in that their chimneys are only about six feet long so no problem to knock out all the rubbish fairly regularly. The difference with our briquettes is that they form an ember exactly the same size and shape as the briquette, and they still have a lot of heat to give out once the flames die down. With almost all the other briquettes on the market, this doesn't happen, and while they offer good output in the early stages, once the flames die down this output falls away quite rapidly Having said all that though - on the basis that free is always better - I don't know if I'd expect you to pay for briquettes if you have hundreds of tons of frewood lying around! Personally I think I'd probably just light the boiler in the morning and run it hard for a while! Cheers, Andy

Hi Pete, The biggest problem we have is getting people to try them in the first place. I'd be the first to hold my hand up and say "they don't look like much for the money" - 'cos they don't. It's all about perception though. A full 100 packs of our briquettes will occupy less than a cubic metre. At the same time, those 100 packs will provide the same energy as up to four tonnes of average air dried logs. It's a bit like putting a housebrick sized lump of reactor fuel next to a pile of twigs - a poor comparison perhaps but you get my gist. A single pallet of briquettes will see most people through the winter - how many cubes of logs would you need to do the same? If you look at them in terms of energy they will probably work out a fair bit cheaper than logs in real terms. I know nets of logs are more expensive usually - but I can't really compare with logs in bulk as we don't buy them - briquettes are just too simple and convenient! But on a camping trip in the summer, the rest of the site were using nets from the farmer at £4 a net. Those that could get them to burn on their camp fires were going through about three nets over the evening, and most of them were sitting in a cloud of smoke all night. We took our own briquettes and used less than a single pack in the same time, and had a much hotter and smokeless fire. In a stove where you can control the air supply, they are even more efficient. We have plenty of customers who have gone to briquettes exclusively now, including many on boats who were using coal previously. Many of them report using two or three briquettes for a whole evening in a stove at home, and with the best will in the world, you couldn't do the same with logs. Anyway mate, I'll email you the information that I've sent to everyone else, and if you'd like some samples, please see my post above. I'm sorry I can't afford to send free stuff out to every enquiry, but if I did I probably wouldn't be here! Cheers for now, Andy