djbobbins

I kind of wish “Ready to Burn” was a joke but I think it’s yet another example of government trying to regulate something it doesn’t understand. Selling wood that is guaranteed to be below 20% MC it a bit like selling empty pint glasses and guaranteeing they will stay empty - basically f’ing useless as soon as the customer leaves them outside in the wet... https://apple.news/ArEuwPV2zTKm83tI-IGlEDg

I think that as well as potential impact on the watercourse, there are at least three additional challenges of micro-hydro: 1) moving parts = maintenance (compared to solar) 2) sites all likely to be non-standard = bespoke design for each site 3) civil engineering / build costs I do think as a country if we are going to reduce our reliance on large fossil generation we need to have a more diverse set of generation than just solar and wind though.

“some surface corrosion” = I don’t know how it managed to stay in one piece last time there was a stiff breeze “good project” = it needs a huge amount of time and effort, which I can’t be bothered with and back on the jobs front: “Uniform and meals provided” = would you like fries with that?

Got to agree with the comment about the clutch and trip to church... where I grew up there was an old Doris who couldn’t do a hill start at the junction up the road from the church. I kid you not, every week she used to get to the junction, park the car, wait for someone else to come up behind her and get them to drive her car out of the junction onto the larger road! People used to deliberately make sure they left before she did to avoid this dubious pleasure!! Anyway, back on topic: “dealing with stakeholders” = being the poor sod who gets it in the neck from joe public for everything that goes wrong / has to go to the neighbour and explain how sorry you are that you just put a chunk of timber through their garage roof “looking for a self-starter” = pretty soon, if not on day 1, you will be lobbed in at the deep end with no-one to give you instructions

Sorry to say but unless you want to get up close and personal with the contents of the drain, you are probably in for laying out some cash. If you want to DIY, you will need to shovel the contents of the inspection hatch (manhole) into buckets, in order to get access to the drain runs. Then a set of draining rods with pigtail fitting to get to the blockage and break it up into chunks. The other option is to get someone in with a jetter...

My employer runs two biomass power stations, one of which burns mainly virgin wood (oversized or undersized, twisted etc) which does not go to one of the two adjacent sawmills. The other burns grad waste wood - ply, MDF etc, about 200,000 tonnes per year in total. As such there is no need for this type of waste to go to China. What's the difference between this and burning the same fuel on a stove? In the power station the emissions are recirculated in the boiler, flame temperature is closely controlled by forced and induced draft fans (air blown into and sucked out of the boiler), plus the flue gases are put through various scrubbing systems (particle filters, charcoal scrubber and bicarbonate of soda scrubber). Flame temperature manages dioxin, NOx etc, the post-combustion cleaning takes out other nasties like heavy metals (cadmium, lead etc).

Hope he's got a good splitter or a very sharp x27 at home...

Fine, PM me if you have some arisings - I am actually in Hatton Station. I have had some stuff off Timon in the past but that was when I had a trailer and could fetch it from Arley. I’m probably alright for wood until about February time, by which time we will have burned some and made space in the logstore ready for filling again!

I am happy to declare myself as a goblin but only if stuff is stacked by the roadside e.g. by teams that have been doing DNO line work. Otherwise I have bought stuff (softwood mainly) or collected free from people who have had free work done. Early this year I paid £23 (if I recall correctly) for a pile of leylandii stems which did three full loads in an MPV, with the back seats folded down - this will probably do me for the winter, plus gave me some exercise to shift, ring, split and stack, so I reckon everyone is a winner. But... if any of you pro guys are in the Warwick area and want to get rid of some arisings, I’ll be happy to bung you a few quid (£20 for a decent sized load?) - clearly some nice straight ash, oak or alder would be lovely, but in reality I am happy with softwood. I will even take euc if it is green; I do my splitting by hand though so I’d rather not go near the f£&@ing stuff if it has seasoned in the round...

My other half and I set ourselves the challenge many years ago of going to see every European capital city. Up to now we have done most of the western side of Europe and are starting on the east. Of all the places we have been (Madrid, Lisbon, Paris, Brussels, Luxembourg, Amsterdam, London, Dublin, Berlin, Rome, Copenhagen, Warsaw, Moscow, Bern, Monaco, Valletta) I would say: Lisbon for a winter break Rome for sightseeing (again, also good to go in autumn or spring) Warsaw for interestingness (contrast between old Poland, WW2 stuff, communist era then more modern, also good value for money) Berlin v. good overall including excellent German science and technology museum Baltic capitals are on the to do list; in a few weeks we are off to Montenegro to do Podgorica. We like it - hunt for cheap flights, find accommodation and get it booked, then the challenge of actually making your way to the accommodation. This part has got much simpler since the advent of smart phones and international roaming!

The end is coming then, the former log burner shop in Shipston on Stour closed a couple of years or so back...

Genius or insanity? I am thinking that the head will be out of balance and it’s only a matter of time before one of the links lets go, leading to a fast-flying chunk of chain. Also, as put together, the chain appears to be cutting on one side of the head using the bar guides?? I guess it is speed rather than sharpness which matters? https://youtu.be/QNxGD9yCc2Y

I have still got my Florabest sharpener, it doesn't get huge amounts of use but it still going after about 7 years so I reckon it has paid back the £20 or so it set me back.

I saw them in my local store (well, I say them, actually there was only one on the shelf) - £129 with an Oregon bar and chain, 40v battery - I was wondering if anyone had chanced one and could give an opinion on the power and battery life?

Thanks for that. For what it’s worth, that part of the line is on quite a sharp (for a railway) curve and at a station, so the trains are typically only doing about 10mph tops. Might be easier to get it done that I had feared.

This is the Google maps satellite image from last Spring. The trees in question are at the northern end of the close and effectively form the main boundary between the residential close and the station (the original timber fence being generally, to use a scientific term, knackered. The station has three platforms, the third of which you see the running tracks of in the shadow immediately north of the trees. As an indication of scale, the red car on the drive at the house on the left is a Nissan Micra, so probably about 9-10 feet long. It's clear they won't be able to be straight felled because of being close to the line, your insight into the rules much appreciated. I just wasn't sure if the LA would need to get a track possession even to bring in a MEWP and give them a severe topping / siding back (which would be the residents' preference, rather than felling outright, since it would maintain some visual / sound barrier.

So... at the end of my street is the local railway station and a footpath which is bordered by some leylandii, planted in about 1975 and now about 60’ tall, about 15’ away from the nearest house. The trees are about 10’ away from the nearest railway track. The homeowner has raised a concern because the trees are blowing around significantly when the wind gets up. The trees are on county council land but the CC are denying all knowledge / trying to do all they can to foist the work onto someone else. I am guessing this is because they think the work will involve a track possession order. Your thoughts welcome on whether this will indeed be the case, since if it is I suspect it’ll be years before anything gets done!

Personally I'm equally worried about them hiking the tax on kero for domestic heating. I am sure it will be popular with those that think only rich folk with AGAs use oil but conveniently forget about all the poor sods that live in old, cold, hard to insulate houses off the gas grid and which won't be suitable for installing air source heat pumps.

1) Sawing and splitting by hand some green oak, log-goblinned courtesy of the stack by the roadside left a couple of weeks ago by whichever crew was doing WPD line clearance work in Hatton. 2) Sitting typing this thread in the evening shade, birds singing, me looking out over the garden which looks a lot better than it did at 10am this morning when I started on it. 3) Travelling to Germany and staying in a nice hotel with a spa where they do the whole German sauna thing...

Cheers. They've not specified exactly what; I would have thought a couple of spades, forks, rakes and hoes would be the main things but I remain hopeful that parents and grandparents will have these lurking in sheds and garages!

My youngest's school has got a garden area where they get kids involved in seeing how stuff is grown. They've put an appeal out (so I'm seeing if anyone on here can help) for bark / chip to cover paths and the suchlike. They also want tools but I'm not going to be so cheeky as to ask on here for those ;-) The school is in Hatton, about three miles west of Warwick. If anyone is doing a job in the area and needs to get rid of a cube or so of clean chip, that would be great. If anyone needs more info, please feel free to ask.

Market economy and all that... M6 toll is no quicker / only minutes different than going on the M6 other than at peak times. Whereas if I was in Essex and wanted to get to Kent, the next toll-free alternative would be the Blackwall tunnel, which is going to take a while to get to and from. Therefore there's not a huge reason for people to use the M6 Toll much of the time, but plenty of reason to use Dartford bridge / tunnels. A former colleague of mine used to commute every day from Telford to Coventry and said that although using the toll road would have made his journey quicker, it would have cost him about £200 per month - about 10% of his take home pay at the time. (I accept this is a generalisation and specific people's circumstances may differ!).

I always found these trials amazing, however having had 2 eucs (not sure which genus) in my garden when I moved into my current house, I wasn't completely shocked. We felled ours in about 2008, at which point I remember being up in the crown and looking out above the pitch of the roof on our two storey 1970s house. I thought the trees must have been planted around when the house was built but no, my wife bumped into a previous owner of the house who admitted they'd planted the eucs in the early 1990s. Anyway, back to the trials: http://www.primabio.co.uk/Biomass/srftrials_enitensinKent

Not altogether surprised to hear that but it sounds like a bulls**t decision IMO - it's not like there are Countrywide Stores and MVF generally close to each and which would cause the market to be distorted.

Popped in at my local Countrywide store today to see if there were any bargains to be had, most stuff with 10-20% off (including mowers, blowers, strimmers and hedgetrimmers all 10% off). However I did pick up two 600mm pieces of heavy gauge matt black 6" single wall flue, had been £41 each, reduced down to £12 each according to the ticket, but were on a special code at the till and came up less than £4 each. Bargain if anyone needs stuff like that. Rough time for plenty of folk working in retail though - Toys R Us, Carpetright, Countrywide Stores, hear Claire's Accessories is in trouble too.