County4x4

One or two there who I wouldn't be surprised if they'd paid for the inclusion. B&Q of course are noted for their years of experience in the quality stove market - surprised that Machine Mart weren't in there too!! Andy

I reckon that would be a Dark Giant Horsefly - Tabanus sudeticus - I've seen seen a few about this year. Heaviest two winged fly in Europe, and biggest fly in the UK! They don't suck blood - they chew lumps off you and fly off with them by all accounts!! Andy

Well I'd be very happy to have several of those in frames on my wall mate - very impressive. While I'm here, not having been schooled in Latin, I put your sig line into an online translator to see what it said. The translation it returned was......are you ready for this....... "Always inexcretiar to be ollum to pour forth veriat" ......so now I know! Andy

Opinions are varied on these products. An American manufacturer of a similar product was fined heavily and forced to change it's advertising as it was making claims that didn't stand up. The main thing to remember is that none of these type of products are intended to be a replacement for chimney sweeping - they are just supposed to make it easier. What sort of brush are you using with your rods? A proper chimney sweep should be able to sort you out without going up on the roof. Andy Edited to ask if your Esse heats the water as well? If you're having problems with the stove tarring up it might be worth looking at the temperature the return stat is set at - upping it by a few degrees could make a huge difference

Their website is working fine for me. Haven't heard any stories about them going under - they're only a couple of miles from here. Andy

I heard repairs can be pretty uncomfortable on the wallet as very little in the way of parts is available from anyone except dealers. Transit parts are ten a penny by comparison and usually available for peanuts on ebay. The only other thing I've heard about them is "It Vibrates Everything Comes Off", but then I've also heard "F**kin Out Right Disaster"!! Andy

Tom2020 - just wondering if you know my old man actually?! Just come back from his place at Old Bilsthorpe this afternoon and he has a G scale garden railway - our two kids have been running American F7A's with sound systems round it most of the day! Apparently the company who made them went bust in the States and transferred manufacturing to China and the F7's are over £600 each now, with the sound chips about another £200 on top! He's also the secretary of the Narrow Gauge Society and has written quite a few books on steam railways and engine builders etc. I wouldn't be at all surprised if you'd met him somewhere! Andy

5 grand? For a domain in the multi million pound kindling market? Sounds like cobblers to me - and of course - don't know about anyone else, but I've never searched for "kindling wood" as a phrase. Kindling maybe - kindling sticks maybe - but kindling wood? You can do well with Google places if you have a local business - and that won't cost you a bean. Their results are always right near the top of the page too. If you want a kindling related domain - kindlingsticks.co.uk is available for a grand total of £5.38 for two years! Andy

I raced a Scag for many years! Top machine! Andy

Don't know if there are any arb guys on the Transit forum - but there are loads on there who have had their vans re-mapped by Martyn who runs Van Tuner - Transit Van Tuning and I've never heard anything but praise for his work. Don't go for the ebay "tuning boxes" which are basically an overpriced resistor in a box that fools the system into constant over-fuelling. Martyn will do you a proper re-map which is a whole different ball game. Not sure what chaffey meant by a gross weight of 5 tonnes incidentally? All the tippers are 3.5 tonne gross AFAIK. A couple of the bigger van models are plated at 4.6 tonne. If he meant gross train weight - that's a different matter - a 5 tonne train weight doesn't mean you can load the vehicle up to 5 tonnes! Andy

Mate of mine has a County Transit tipper for sale in Ireland at the minute - thats the 4x4 version. It's a '98 I think but can check. Belting motor and I'd have had his arm off for it if I'd not bought a Mk6 van a week ago as I'm taking my County van off the road for a while - off the road as in parking it up, not going offroad! I've had nothing but Transits for years including two 4x4's and honestly can't see myself ever buying anything else. Andy

Don't think you can change your user name through the control panel - just stuff like passwords and contact details etc. If you don't want to have to type it in every time, you can set the forum to log you in automatically each time you visit. Andy

Hope you used different computers! "If a participant's computer is believed to be being used to circumvent this term by, for example, the use of 'script' or 'brute force', that person's application will be disqualified and the person will also be banned from any future participation in similar activities by the promoter." It won't take a lot of doing to check IP addresses and so on - or their system may even flag up cases where a single IP has submitted more than one application. Having said that it also says one application per household - so you may be okay! Andy

An outfit called Mycorrhizal Systems who produce saplings inoculated to produce truffles have a programme providing free trees to schools (not inoculated ones though) I had them send some trees to our kids school as they've been doing a lot of stuff about woodlands and growing vegetables and have a Woodland Trust Green Tree Schools gold award, and a RHS Benchmark Scheme Level 4 award. It's only a small local primary school, so they're pretty chuffed with their results! Anyway, they were very pleased with the trees from the truffle people, and have planted them in their expanding woodland area. They also got their pics in the Mycorrhizal newsletter - fame at last! If you have young kids and their school does this sort of stuff I'd recommend looking them up! Here you go - http://www.mycorrhizalsystems.com/trees-schools-update Our daughter is in charge by the looks of the pic! Andy

Fine words butter no parsnips It's allus the quiet bull as gets ya! Andy

I've started trialling these already as it happens. There's no wood in them - they're produced from waste from the olive oil industry plus peanut shell. The calorific value is much higher than wood briquettes per kilo according to lab tests. I can see the argument about importers getting rich - however, another way of looking at it is that these guys are making use of a product that has historically been difficult to get rid of and is polluting in landfill. The price is actually much lower than that of some similar non-wood based briquettes made in the UK, which may still be great products, but the price is always going to put them out of most people's budgets. I've had quotes of around £400/ton at trade for some of these. At that level they are only ever going to be a rich persons talking point over dinner, and never a mainstream energy source. As far as their ethics go - I know they've already refused to deal with one MAJOR outfit in the UK because of their trading policies, in spite of being offered a huge commitment to order volume. That didn't strike me as indicating an outfit driven purely by profit to be honest. I also think I'm a pretty good judge of character and not easily taken in by sales patter, and having met these people they seem like a pretty genuine bunch to me. They are also looking at setting up their production in Spain to cut the distance to market. I totally agree with lindisfarnecharcoal's comments about imported charcoal by the way. I sell locally produced charcoal from a couple of guys, and it's streets apart in terms of quality, and produced as a by product of woodland management and ancient coppice restoration. That puts it in a whole different ball park to most of the imported stuff both in terms of background and quality. Personally I won't use briquettes at all, and especially not imported ones due to all the other crap they throw in to make them stick together. I also know for a fact that a fair bit of nasty imported stuff gets re-packaged and re-branded once it's in the UK! The difference with these olivebars is that they're produced from a waste material rather than from destroying anything. They are also diverting waste from landfill in just the same way that our home grown wood based briquettes are. Having said that though - most of the wood briquettes on sale in the UK are imported - mostly from eastern Europe. There are a couple of UK manufacturers - I sell briquettes from one of them - but quite a lot of small outfits too who briquette their own waste wood, often in machines not designed specifically for the job. These briquettes tend to be small and soft and give pretty poor performance in comparison. I also have to say that I think one of the big attractions of properly made briquettes is their consistent performance. Joe Public is generally pretty ignorant when it comes to solid fuels, and there's no getting away from the fact that there's an awful lot of rubbish being sold as firewood these days - though hopefully not by anyone on here. I've tested no end of loads of "seasoned firewood" which has proved to be anything but. As a result - Joe ends up disappointed with his stove, and disillusioned about wood generally. With briquettes, he'll get good results every time due to their very nature - if the feedstock isn't right they just won't work. Also of course, many briquettes offer significantly higher energy values than natural wood. Anyway - just my two penneth. I don't actually work for the olivebars outfit in spite of how it sounds, but I think we need to look at the whole picture here instead of making our minds up and then looking at the full story. Cheers, Andy

I bought a B&Q "Champion" brand rotary mower about seven years ago, and despite my expectations it's been an absolute belter. It never gets the fuel drained in winter and still starts first pull after being stood for months. During that time it's cost me exactly £1 for a new diaphragm for the carb! It mostly gets used in the garden - but also does some rough patches behind the workshop, and used to do the rough round a local model aircraft flying field too. Reckon I paid less than £100 for it, and it doesn't owe me a penny! Andy

Mate of mine does a lot of warranty work for Esse and says the build quality is often questionable at best. Also, plenty of high end stoves using steel rather than cast these days. Andy

Also slightly dubious about the statement that What's the other 30% then - I'm guessing that if this is one of those "just light the bag" products it's likely to be some form of paraffin wax - so perhaps not as "green" as it's being made out to be? Andy

I like the idea, but like many of these products, price is definitely going to be an issue as most of them are a lot more expensive than "traditional" firewood briquettes, if I can call them that! Other companies are producing briquettes in the UK from waste cardboard and rape meal - "proper" briquettes I mean - not the sort of thing you'd be able to produce in your shed - but both of them are a lot pricier than the equivalent made from wood waste. Until the price comes down, I can only see these things having a niche market to be honest. Andy

I'm not sure that the manufacturers come up with their own efficiency figures to be honest. A friend of mine is in the process of prototyping a new stove to compete with the likes of Clearview at the "top of the pile" end of the market, and he was talking about having to take the stove off somewhere to be tested (as part of the CE marking process I believe) The test facility operate the stove in various scenarios - like "accidentally" leaving the bottom door open to overfire it, and also conduct tests to come up with efficiency figures. I guess these tests are in the equivalent of laboratory conditions, so results can be replicated, and standard tests applied to different stoves to give a meaningful comparison. Andy

I'd emailed him too, and my gut feeling is that he's probably genuine going by his other feedback. I reckon once you have 100% positive feedback of several hundred on ebay, then the bigger your score, the more you want to keep a clean sheet, and the less likely you are to jeopardise it by knowingly selling dodgy gear. Andy

John - not sure if you missed my post before. Can you post details and pics of your briquettes please. Depending on price and specs I may be interested in some for resale. Cheers, Andy

John - I hadn't realised that you were actually in production now. Could you post some details and pics of your briquettes as I may be interetsed in some for re-sale. Cheers, Andy

Interestingly - if you click on the "wood stove" bit on the link you gave - the form you get to fill in is entitled "Automated wood pellet stove enquiry form" - so whether the grants are available for "normal" stoves isn't clear. Also, my recent experience of these grant schemes is that basically that they're a bit of a backhand operation. We had a new gas boiler fitted under a grant scheme, and it had to be an approved boiler fitted by an approved installer etc - who may come from miles and miles away. The installers and appliance people pay to be approved, then the gummint pay them to do the installs. And funnily enough - when they come round to price the job up, it always seems to work out at just about the full cost of the grant! I know what a new boiler costs at trade price - and the estimate for our installation was way way above that for a case of basically removing one boiler from the wall and fitting a new one in it's place. So while we did get the grant from the gummint - the costs suggested to me that they could have got an awful lot more for their money - or done three times as more energy saving boiler changes with the same money in other words. People on other forums have mentioned that the price for a particular job in the renewables area has always been a lot higher with the grant than without - which basically ensures that the approved installers can make as much as possible out of it, while the government can coo about what a good job they're doing of saving the planet. The customer has ended up paying a very similar amount either way. It just all seems a bit of a scam to me. Regarding the moisture levels - many modern stoves and particularly those that are heating water as well extract so much heat from the fire that flue condensation can be a problem and this is obviously worse if wet wood is being used. Friends of ours with an Esse wood fired range cooker had major problems with tar build up recently and they were burning very dry wood - around 11-14%. In their case it was the boiler return stat being set too low, which meant that the boiler was always full of coolish water. This was cooling the flue gases to the extent where the flue was almost blocking completely with tar and crud within a week or two. Had they been using wood at 25% or so - it would have been even worse. Andy