djbobbins

I went through the cable to one of my burglar alarm sensors when trying to get it off the wall before decorating. Does that count? It's just taken me about three hours to finally get it working again - patched in a new piece of cable, lifted the floorboards upstairs and jointed it under the floor (so hidden), then had to remove a door to get the carpet back down. All working again in the end but would have been better not to have borked it in the first place...

They have got loppers in again at the moment but I don't know if they're the same type as previously or not.

I'm curious, a spark plug will still work even when it is fouled up. But a laser is light based, so what happens when a few carbon deposits build up? Will the light be able to get through?

Is that the hospital appointment for your back surgery though?!

Just picked one up and will be seeing how I get on sharpening a chain that I last used to slice up some waste kitchen worktop... I was tempted by one of the 43cc twin handle brush cutters at a penny off a hundred sheets but had the wife with me to keep me in check!

Getting ready for 5th November?

So... my 93 reg 3.2v6 Trooper passed its MOT first time at the start of June... but has developed a clattering noise from under the RHS cambelt cover which I am told is likely to be the hydraulic tensioner. I reckon it is worth five or six hundred quid with the 10 and a half months MOT, but have been quoted 350 to get the cambelts and pulleys done - and that a new tensioner is another 200 on top. It is as reliable as reliable can be, starts literally on the turn of the key even after standing for six weeks, but only stands there as a backup and does maybe a thousand miles a year. Its a toy as much as anything else. So, do I: (a) sell it spares or repairs (b) get it fixed and keep it © drive it until the cambelt snaps and then get it towed to a scrappy. (d) weigh it in now Other??

I used one quite a bit in my youth; being near a hosepipe is a good idea! I went into one of our sheds about half an hour after "gunning" some weeds and found it full of smoke where one corner was just taking hold! Definitely agree with the comment about sticking to paraffin, that is what they are designed for. Mind you, I never had much joy getting it lit on paraffin; we used to keep a bottle of meths to hand.

Yes, alder. And it will go pale again as it dries out properly. If you want rid it'll make good firewood once seasoned, which will be pretty much done by the end of this year if my experience is anything to go by.

Maybe he was just bragging...

No boiler option (AFAIK) but the big DRU stoves will burn logs up to 60cm and handily have a side door as well as the front door for direct loading of long logs. I can understand the preference for seeing a fire in the room, however have you considered that with a stove and backboiler you won't get any RHI, whereas if you had a stove for "top-up" heat and focal point, plus a chip or big log boiler outside, you should be able to qualify for RHI payments on the output from the boiler (and maybe even a grant towards the install, at the moment).

Anyone had a 338XPT nicked in East Anglia? Looks like the police are selling a stolen / recovered one in Ipswich: Bumblebee Auctions

Here you go... Heating oil is about 40MJ per litre, so 1000 litres = 40GJ, or 11,100 kWh. Your 5000 litres per year is therefore 55,500 kWh. Dry softwood is about 400kg per m3 and has a CV of 18.5 MJ per kilo (5.1 kWh per kilo). i.e. each cubic metre is just over 2000kWh. To replace the oil you will therefore need about 28 cubic metres of chip, if my calculations are correct!

Ouch, I'm glad I haven't got your oil bill... I have done some calcs in the past on the calorific value of wood, oil, gas etc -I am pretty sure I've posted them on here in the past.

I guess if you wanted to be really secure, you could sit the container on a concrete pad with a could of looped pieces of re-bar sticking up, then loop into them through the floor?? I would have thought the main issues would be some good quality locks for the doors, fire prevention and making sure no-one could get near the doors with a gas axe.

I don't (I've thought about it) but a guy I used to work for had a couple of containers for storage and they did tend to get damp inside. Incidentally from what I remember most of the condensation formed on the ceiling; I don't know if this was because there might have been standing water on the roof?? It would be interesting to hear of anyone that has put a pitched roof on one as to whether this reduces the condensation.

8 til 6 today with 70 miles each way before and after, didn't see much of the kids :-(

Given time commitments, something like the first one was along my lines of thinking - does this need to be licensed? And what sort of demand might there be in mid-Warwickshire? Likewise the pigs had also crossed my mind - something like Tamworths or Old Spots, i.e. tasty, but also pretty hardy so could be kept year-round without the need for artificial heating. But then with pigs comes the admin, registration, property holding etc etc...

I've seen some woodland for sale near me (it's a piece that the owner used to let me fell and retrieve wood from for my own use) in central Warwickshire. It is mainly alder, all mature, with 4wd vehicle access to the edge but not throughout (there is a fair sized brook in the way). There is about 12 acres of woodland and 6 acres of pasture, auctioneers guide price is £75k. To make buying it feasible, I would need to find some sources of revenue - I could either let the land out (for cattle or sheep grazing, it is under a SSSI management agreement so cannot be used for horses) or rear something of my own. However I was wondering more about what uses anyone could suggest for the woodland. By not needing to buy wood in, I will save myself maybe £200 per year, and of course have something to do of a weekend. I don't plan to go into firewood, there are others around here doing that already and I don't really have the time to get into it (day job, wife, two kids, DIY etc). So what other ways are there that it might make a few quid?

Well, it's now done and in. We went for a DRU44 multifuel 4.9kW stove, it seems to be good - throws out plents of heat for the amount of logs it consumes anyway, and the installer said he was impressed with the build quality of it. The install and building work totalled a shade over £1500 including VAT, which given that there was seven man-days of labour involved I thought was reasonable.

Try Deutsche Welle: Podcasting | DW.DE Also worth a look if you are thinking about going to Germany and trying to drum up work, ask general questions about life, banking, German admin & form filling etc is Toytown Germany - English language news and chat There are discussion boards for loads of things, including region-specific for adverts.

Lots of questions... Can't answer them all but the big biomass stations can definitely burn waste wood (e.g. from demolition). They even have to take into account the amount of paint / varnish on it and slightly reduce the amount of ROCs (green electricity certificates) that are claimed as a result.

I came back earlier this year from a stint working in an office in Germany (I'm a desk jockey by day). Clearly my experience won't be completely relevant, but things I did note are: - H&S culture is very different - in particular, I noticed that in any environment where work is going on around roads, traffic isolation and possessions are used much less than in the UK - I have seen road workers standing in the middle of two streams of 40mph traffic. - beer is cheap in the supermarket - culturally, Germany is much more similar to the UK than e.g. France (where I lived a few years back) - if you live in the Rhein / Ruhr area (Dusseldorf, Cologne, Duisburg, Essen etc) it is within four hours from Dunkerque, and a return ferry Dover - Dunkerque is only about sixty quid - they are much more set up for wood fuel - once you get away from the populated areas, you will see large woodpiles stacked up, and in the DIY sheds you can buy proper saws, 10t splitters etc. - infrastructure is good (public transport etc) Good place to live though, I enjoyed it.

Just to be clear, I meant it's the client's risk of ending up with a butchered tree, this particular example being a good one!

Eh? If a client picks a stupidly cheap price from someone because they want bottom drawer prices, rather than work from a recommendation, then that is the client's risk. However I don't see that it is the private client's role to check whether PPE is being worn, checking that safe systems of work are in place and risk assessments have been done. What next, client responsible for maintaining equipment? Note - for e.g. utility and trackside work, I think the burden of responsibility is different. But for private customers, who the law would not expect to know what was going on, the arborist doing the contracting must lead the responsibility.