richy_B

This demonstrates my comment perfectly. Too much is left to interpretation.

I've got a 2007 Ranger king cab. Got it 2 months ago for £5250 with 70k on the clock. Mud terrains and a truckman top. I'd recommend them. Decent for light offroad, comfortable enough to drive about it, pull a decent trailer (3000kg on the plate but I'm not sure how it'd cope) and easy enough to work on maintenance wise.

When I read these threads it annoys me to no end why the govt/vosa cannot just put a clear, concise set of guidelines. IMHO these laws/regulations shouldn't be so open to interpretation/misunderstanding, it should be clear cut. Ignorance is not a defence but when the legislation is complex and often contradictory then what do they anticipate. The whole B+e, C1+e, O license, tacho, CPC area could do with being cleaned up.

I've built one based on the links above. Seeing good results.

Me too and I'd agree with the review. If it helps I just cut and paste this from the recent price list they sent me: Knitted Construction, all with a drawstring: 20) *20 x 27 cm golden yellow, orange or dark green knitted net £74 per 1000 £43 for 500 £11 for 100 1) *27 x 35 cm dark green, orange or yellow knitted net £74 per 1000 £43 for 500 £11 for 100 2) *32 x 48 cm yellow, green or orange knitted net £84 per 1000 £48 for 500 £13 for 100 3) 42 x 52 cm orange knitted net £100 per 1000 £56 for 500 £15 for 100 4) 46 x 57 cm orange (& many other colours) knitted net £104 per 1000 £58 for 500 £15 for 100 19) 46 x 59 cm dark green knitted net . £104 per 1000 £58 for 500 £15 for 100 11) 49 x 69 cm dark green knitted net £140 per 1000 £76 for 500 £20 for 100 7) 53 x 75 cm dark green knitted net £150 per 1000 £81 for 500 £21 for 100 Woven Construction, all with a braided drawstring: 24) 30 x 46 cm yellow woven net "yell daffs" label (can be turned inside-out) £57 per 1,000 £34 for 500 £9 for 100 16) 42 x 58 cm orange woven net £135 per 1000 £76 for 500 £20 for 100 5) 46 x 60 cm orange, red woven net £135 per 1000 £76 for 500 £20 for 100 21) 44 x 68 cm orange woven net 'G.Harvest 12.5kg' label No drawstring £65 per 1000 £38 for 500 £10 for 100 6) 46 x 65 cm dark green woven net £139 per 1000 £78 for 500 £21 for 100 15) 47 x 70 cm light green (W) woven net £150 per 1000 £81 for 500 £21 for 100 8) 48 x 78 cm orange or light green woven net £165 per 1000 £88 for 500 £23 for 100 22) 50 x 80 cm orange heavy duty woven net £215 per 1000 £113 for 500 £30 for 100 9) 52 x 85 cm orange, dark green or red woven net £175 per 1000 £93 for 500 £24 for 100 23) 52 x 85 cm dark green with UV (sunlight) protection £210 per 1000 £113 for 500 £29 for 100 10) 60 x 85 cm orange woven net £185 per 1000 £98 for 500 £26 for 100 Mono Fine Mesh Construction, all with a drawstring: 12) *27 x 35 cm orange, red or yellow mono net £85 per 1000 £48 for 500 £12 for 100 13) 40 x 50 cm red or green mono net £139 per 1000 £76 for 500 £20 for 100 14) 40 x 60 cm green mono net £153 per 1000 £82 for 500 £21 for 100 17) 46 x 63 cm green mono net £165 per 1000 £88 for 500 £23 for 100 All bags are manufactured to a tolerance of +/- 5% on sizes specified.

Hello, anyone got any IBC cages (standard size) they don't want/selling? I need 8 and will collect. Ideally not far from West London. Thanks, Rich B.

I really like these but they are pricey.

Hello, I need a 200 or so bags of kindling (smallish bags, 3kg-ish). Anyone able to supply a couple of pallets worth? PM me please. Thanks, Rich.

In my opinion you just need to get your t&c's straight from the beginning. On all my quotes I state my payment terms (I stick to 15 days terms) and that an invoice will be send/given on the final day of the works. I then write 'after 15 days a stop will be put on your account and no further products or services will be supplied. After 30 days the invoice will be passed to our debt collection agent. All outstanding invoices passed to our debt collection agent will no longer be dealt with by ourselves'. It might sound a bit heavy and can put people off but I think you need to be absolutely straight with customers from the moment you quote. Those are my payments terms, if you do not accept then you are not obligated to use me. Also if they are the type of customer who will mess me around for payment, I'd rather they didn't use me anyway. Debt collection will cost you about 8% of the invoice for commercial customers and a bit more for domestic and will almost certainly end your business relationship but by that point its most likely screwed anyway. If its your 'main' contract etc you obviously need to tread lightly but its an all too common story that small business go bankrupt because larger firms screw them over payment. Who would you rather upset: your main customer or the staff you can't afford to pay at the end of the month and all of your suppliers?

I use quickbooks online version and once I got the hang of it found it very useful. To me the main benefits are: You can access it on any computer provided you have internet access and your log in details - useful if you're office and home aren't the same thing. You can have several users working on the same account. Useful for small businesses with a few staff. You can give you accountant online access. There is the worry about having everything 'on the cloud' but I think everything will be that way within the next few years. I prefer desktop programs rather than 'apps' but I am certainly in the minority.

Hello, anyone got any ideas on the cost involved in getting 3phase electric set up? Moving into a new yard, mains electric supply goes to all the units on the site (some are 3ph already). I need to run cabling about 30 metres long a wall from the metering point and would want probably 4 sockets/points (although only two ever used at one time). Any ball parks on what this might cost? Never dealt with 3ph before.

Hello, my experience of start up funding for a start up business is that it is bloody difficult. I've started two enterprises (one recently) and found it incredibly hard to get funding. I tried all the high street banks and 7 out of the 9 I spoke to said they do not lend to start ups (LTD) without security. The requirement turned out to be whatever capital you need, they want you to put up 50% then you need to provide security for the 50% they lend (secured against a house for example). This is fair enough but can be quite a tall order. The two banks who would lend advised that for start up (or companies trading for under a year) the interest rates were much higher. We were quoted 18%. A crippling interest rate. Essentially all the stuff you hear in the press about banks not liking small businesses seemed to be true in my case. For me I opted for personal loans and put it into the business as a directors loan. Not how I wanted to do it but it go me going. If I could offer any advice (for what is it worth) it would be don't go for as cheap as possible though just to get going. This would seem like daft advice but in my first business I had bugger all money and bought the cheapest old van I could, bought older kit, bought the 'cheaper version' and tried to get by working out of my own home etc. Inevitably I had to repair things a lot, soon out grew my space & kit and needed to upgrade and realistically it ended up costing me a lot more. Fantasy talk but if I had £50K I could have got an excellent set up. Instead you buy then upgrade, then trade in, then replace, etc and to get to that £50k set up after a year or so you have spent £80k. How you get the £50k to start with is the hard bit of course but I hope the jist of what I am saying is clear. Good luck.

Cheers guys. I like to 'try' and understand a topic/process rather than just go on bits and pieces I've read so please excuse any assumptions I've made that are inaccurate. Openspaceman, in regards your reply - most of this info is based on my own reading up on the subject. I'n obviously no expert! In reply: 14m3 sounds more realistic. So assuming this would be a total weight of around 7 tons. Sound about right? Temperature. I read a US study that advised 82C was an optimum temperature and keeping below 100C was advisable as 'steam' was going to create issues with pressure and new h&s issues. About 80C is what I have from my heating source so I figured on losing 5-10C in the kiln. What do you suggest here? What's an ideal temp in your mind? I only considered a heat exchanger as I thought some heat could be captured. If, in practise, it is not worthwhile I would just vent it. I did consider a secondary chamber where the heat was sent to via a heat exchanger. Perhaps to heat a storage area where nets were kept etc. I don't know the best option here I just felt it would be better to try and use all the energy. Target time is just what I'd like to achieve. In regards your equation how do you arrive at 4500kg? I don't doubt it but I am not clear. Based on what you are saying though if you needed 5850KWH at 75C and you had a theoretical input of 50KW per hour from your heat source this would equate to around 117 hours or just under 5 days. Of courses losses would occur and this time scale would increase but it seems possible in the 7 day turnaround. Have I understood that correctly? Thanks for the input, this is exactly what I wanted. I've done quite a bit of searching on the forum as well as google but there is really contrasting information. I assume commercial operators keep this info to themselves.

Appreciate the info. I'll see if I can PM BigJ.

Hello all, is there any on here who knows their stuff in regards using/building firewood kilns? I want to run some thoughts by someone but its a bit of a niche subject. I know the use of kilns for firewood is a debated topic when compared to air drying because of energy use etc but I am hoping to focus on kilns rather than the bigger debate. What I am considering is the fairly common - insulated 20ft lorry container with several fans for air movement, a large vent and extractor/exhaust fan to remove/replace moist air. Track system for wheeling cages in and out. External heat source to produce hot water for heating. Moisture and temp meters for monitoring. -Target of around 24 cubes capacity of split, rough filled hardwood logs. -Temperature in mind of around 70-75C. Ideally keep it around that for the majority of the time. -Method of heating is via hot water pump around the kiln. Energy for the heater is waste from another industrial process. The KW output should be enough to maintain the target temp. -Use the exhaust fan to extract moist air and channel it via a heat exchanger to recapture of the energy. -Target time of 5-7 days. -Haven't included a dehumidifier. -Series of fans working continuously to keep air moving. My thoughts on the subject are that if we have 24 cubes of green firewood that equates to approximately 12t. Mix of hardwood but mainly ash, syc & oak. I am estimating a green moisture content of 50%. Our target MC is just under 20% so we need to reduce the moisture by 30%. This means we need to remove around 3.6t of water or 3600 litres. This is obviously a lot per day when look at over a 5-7 day cycle. Some reading from various sources suggest this is quite possible but I want to get some peoples opinions. Any thoughts?

PM sent.

That is a scary looking chipper.

I did mine at Land Based Training near Reading. -http://www.landbasedtraining.co.uk/

Thanks very much guys. I'm going to investigate a few of the links.

Hello, are there any chainsaw boots than either have or can have studs attached to the sole? I know you get the stud kits for wellies but these don't seem compatible with the regular boots. I find the wellies uncomfortable and hard to get on and off. I've tried all the regular sites and googling hasn't turn anything up. Any ideas?

I had a toiletry bag stolen off my back seat. Had fallen out of an overnight bag after a weekend away. I assume the tw*ts thought it might be a sat nav. Partially my fault, it shouldn't have been left on show. The bit that really got me though was they nicked a loose roll on deodorant that was sitting next to it. Who steals a used roll on deodorant???

Is that an angle grinder?

Thanks for the input, I was just trying to be cheap!

Hello all, I am going to be acquiring 4-5 20' shipping containers over the next few months for storage use. I was looking around at transporting them and obviously the general approach is lorry and hiab. Pricewise around £50-£60 an hour. Then I saw a company who said they could tow one on a 3.5t flatbed trailer behind a 4X4. I thought this sounded crazy at first but on reflection I guess a 20' container could sit on a say 16' flat bed (perhaps on a few sleepers). Weightwise an empty container is about 2ton so it would be inside the trailer capacity. Pulled by a defender or trooper guess this all seemsto add up. Distance would be around 50-70 miles. I have access to a 3.5t flatbed so I am curious. I feel sure you'd get some Traffic Police attention is you passed them! Any views?

Found this is an interesting thread as I am looking for an excavator with a grab. From my time in the USA, where 'thumbs' seem to be standard issue I know they are useful additions. For my particular applications, where I intend to use the excavator 99% of the time to handle logs I am planning on spending the extra and getting a grab and rotor. Something I am wondering about it how it all gets plumbed in? I assume you need two extra lines, one for the rotor movement, one for the grab closure. Of the excavators I've looked at they only seem to offer a single additional line. What's the best way of achieving this? or are there are particular machines that offer a particular advantage? I'm looking at the 5-7t range. Any thoughts?