djbobbins

second...

Won't let me upload all the pics for some reason, I'll try one at a time...

I found these two blokes in a local piece of woodland today, having a bit of a rest after a hard day's work. One of them has even got his preference for saw clearly showing. I thought someone might like them!

I think more like "crater" and "WWII film set" would be more like it. 2500lb is a lot of explosives! We found a WWII anti-vehicle land mine in a dried-up lake bed about 20 years ago. Bomb squad came out and dealt with that one; it was a "dud" so no loud bang. The area where I work now (Dusseldorf) is often affected by UXB clearance work on a pretty regular basis though. I don't know if the civils contractors get danger money though!

My permanent home is just west of Warwick, but working in Germany at the moment. Not an arb pro though, just grown up with this type of work and interested in logging / bioenergy side of things.

I'm in Germany, not France, so probably can't help - however I have seen one of these on sale at my local "OBI", which I was quite tempted by. Anyone know what they're like? Dolmar Benzin-Kettensäge PS-45/40 cm im OBI Online-Shop I think the choice of arb / firewood products is better over here than in a UK DIY shed. As a couple of examples, the local OBI sells 10 ton splitters and 4.5kW saws for logging! Einhell Brennholzwippsäge BT-LC700D im OBI Online-Shop Einhell Holzspalter BT-LS 1014D im OBI Online-Shop

My mother used to chuck all manner of stuff in their rayburn but I don't think nappies (at least, not those with solids in them) were included. I'm hoping not anyway, 'cos the main time me and my father used to notice she'd stoked the fire up with something was when we were working on the roof, or up the (sloped) yard sawing wood, where in either situation you got a faceful of whatever was coming up the chimney!

I was wondering where this one was going... I was expecting it to turn out that he / they were waiting for either (1) the undertaker, or (2) a male escort!!

To be fair, I've actually done that (filled the cheque in completely, then forgot to sign it) as an honest mistake when I was paying a plumber. Mind you, he'd done a half-arsed job of fitting my bathroom so I can't say I was too gutted about it. Taught me the lesson that the bitterness of poor quality lingers long after the sweetness of saving a few quid has gone away.

This is at risk of getting very surreal... what about if I batter my potato before I cook it in the better way in the stove then have some butter with it? And a pint of bitter to wash it down??

I think the original post was missing a line somewhere; based on nearly every cat we ever owned as a family you'd need to put a good sized log on top of the seat to hold it down! Our cats (in succession, not some kind of cat-gangland mob) managed to see the better of a fully grown Staffy, numerous rabbits and many other cats. The crowning glory came after we had sadly lost the nicest cat we ever had (bear in mind I'm a dog fan, this cat still won me over) to foxes. We went to the rescue place and got the biggest tomcat we could find, which just happened to be a ginger thing. A few weeks later, all hell broke loose outside the house one night. We went outside and found no cat, but traces of blood and lots of ginger fur, therefore assumed the end of that cat too. Lo and behold, the next afternoon the cat strolls into the house, missing a few bits of fur and with bite marks around its neck where the fox had been trying to shake it, but most definitely still cock of the walk. Never saw the foxes again mind... nails, them Staffordshire cats... best make it two good sized logs on the lid just in case!!

New house is super well insulated, no heating on yet. Just put the winter tyres on the car though, just in case...

At risk of stating the obvious, I think you can sell it as firewood, and there will be a market for it. It just depends on finding a few of the right customers. My folks run a solid fuel, 1940's vintage Rayburn, an open fire and a stove. They believe themselves to be lucky because they have found a furniture-making place which lets them collect exactly this sort of wood waste free of charge, by arrangement. My parents are sufficiently happy with this arrangement that they are prepared to do a nearly 40 mile round trip to collect a 1 cube trailer full, and to do the loading themselves. Plenty of the other members of the family, who run both open fires and closed appliances, are desperate to find out where the source is. I've had some of the wood myself and it is great for coming home from work and getting some heat up quickly. I think if you can find the right customer base you will have no problem at all shifting this "as is" in dumpy bags without processing it in any way. At the right price I'd consider buying some myself to augment my own personal log supply but distances are prohibitive!

I can't guess they will get too many bulk buyers... ALDI - Sunday Special Buys 6th November 2011

At risk of stating the bleeding obvious, it's worth to you and value on the market aren't necessarily the same thing. With road access I would expect a small package of flat land to fetch at least 10 grand per acre if there is any likelihood of it being put to some form of commercial or "more money than sense" use by horse owners. If there is even the tiniest of chances of ever getting planning on it, or if it backs onto gardens / land of someone that particularly wants to preserve their landscape, rational valuation goes out of the window.

This is my brother-in-law's eldest getting on the scoresheet twice and doing his media bit at the end! [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSvOa5Y-n24&feature=player_embedded]Saints Academy 30-0 Sale: Highlights - YouTube[/ame]

For what it's worth - if you have already got some big curtains up and as quoted the problem is with cold air coming up through the floorboards, have you thought about getting a job lot of clear silicon and sealing the gaps between the boards? My sister bought a Victorian house which had been done up as a "builder's refurb", having viewed it during the summer. Come the first winter, she found the nice shiny polished sawn edged floorboards (no T&G) meant huge draughts. Think about it - if you've got a 12 by 12 room, that's 144 square feet. If for each 4 inch board there is a 2.5mm gap, that is three and a half square feet of "air leak" space. You can get a dozen tubes of clear silicon from Screwfix for £18-odd.

If you've got an Ipod you can download podcasts of language lessons for free, the ones I got for German are from "Deutsche Welle". Deutsche Welle has also got a website which might be worth a look. Along with everyone else, my suggestions would be to find some native speakers who want to learn English, then try to hold conversations where both sides speak in the language which is "foreign" to them. Oh, and do it sooner rather than later - certainly based on my experience of learning German these last six or seven months is that it's a damned sight harder than learning French ten years ago!!

All the stuff at the site I visited was being chipped and burned on site for electricity / heat generation.

Quick query - my other half, bless her, is in the mood for spending some more of my hard-earned. I'm trying to weigh up the merits of doing the kitchen (her first choice) and the fireplace (mine). The fireplace as is is limestone, extends about 8 foot along the wall and around a corner, and has the best part of a couple of foot of hearth. It's an 18" grate, with (allegedly) fully lined dedicated chimney. (The house was built in 1976 so according to the building regs then, it should as a minimum have been built with interlocking pipes). So really my question is - anyone got an idea of what it would be likely to set me back for getting rid of the existing fireplace / hearth, building something new and fitting a decent quality stove (the room is pretty well insulated so it doesn't need to be huge, I'd guess 5-7kW)? I was guessing about £600-700 for the stove, a similar amount (ie a couple of days work plus materials) to change the hearth?? If the flue needs to be lined, what would that set me back though? The ceilings are not very high, so I would guess the height from stove to chimney pot is about 22-24 feet. Any info / thoughts appreciated!

In the first post, I think I might get in there with a question about the origins of the logs, because I'm of course only interested in logs from native British tree species, not any of this foreign nonsense. And for the Euc - I'm surprised he didn't just write in the listing "I got a quote from a professional and decided I didn't want to pay a couple of hundred quid to get rid of an unsuitable tree grown in an unsuitable location between two potentially fatal power cables, so I thought I'd let some amateur with a B&Q saw come and have a go."

I'm living just north of Dusseldorf at the moment. I'd also recommend you get yourself onto a website called Toytown Germany - English language news and chat which is basically a forum for English speaking ex-pats. There is a part of the site for small ads and life in NRW, so you should be able to stick a post on there offering English-speaking tree / gardening work. Have you also thought about contacting the English speaking schools in the area? There is an International School in Kaiserswerth with about 600 pupils, 60-70% of which are American or Brits (and hence tend not to speak much German and consequently be wary about getting ripped off). There are also international schools in Neuss, Essen (I think) and Duisburg. The school in Duisburg, called St. George's, is just moving to a new site which is being built / redeveloped. Last time I drove past it looked like there might be scope for some work. (But generally on the schools point, I was thinking more about using them as a place where you could advertise). I suspect if you could get over the initial hurdle of getting a good reputation, you wouldn't be short of work around here, although a lower proportion of the housing stock is houses with gardens, much more oriented towards flats. Hope this helps!

So, according to that first advert, the kind of person that would want to use a Stihl is a b***ard that'd ignore the wishes of a man on his death bed??? I'll have a Husky then...! <<where's the emoticon for ducking out of the way and waiting for Stihl - Husky arguments to settle?>>

Nah, it's not crap firewood - in fact I'd say it is very good, personally, having burned about 6 or 7 cubes of it over recent years. The caveat on that is that it has got to be really well seasoned - it is crap firewood if you try to burn it any less than two years old. Give it three full summers, or more, and it is great stuff though - lights well, burns hot and when poked breaks down into a good solid bed of red ember which lasts for hours. I'm not sure about the woodturning, I gave some of my euc to an old lad at work who does some turning but have never got around to asking him what it was like, and I've now moved office.

Well done for protecting your assets from this "bargain". Sadly I guess he's got the nous not to go back to the same dealer again, and assuming he got the wedge in cash (or cash-like) then it's probably going to be hard to trace for the plod. Got to agree with some of the sentiment in the comments about the dealer though, if they laid out close to six figures without seeing documents, it does make me wonder whether it wasn't the first time. Still, I guess they'll learn their lesson out of it too. Out of interest, assuming the worst had happened and you'd lost the machine, would you have been insured? You mention insurance against theft but not necessarily for items that were on hire; I'm just curious how the insurers look at that kind of thing.