
djbobbins
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Everything posted by djbobbins
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Not got much space in the garden so needed to be fairly small - cost me about £70 in timber, plus time and a bit of left over felt & plywood. I was amazed to see 3' x 2'6" x 18", not very sturdy looking "log stores" in a local branch of a national DIY chain for the (reduced) price of £59.99 over the weekend - couldn't believe someone would spend that much on something so, well, naff. Not least 'cos you could buy a 6 x 4 shed for not a great deal more money. Goes to show that you can make something a lot better for your money if prepared to stick a bit of work in.
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... it'll probably be cold and will definitely be dark by now! As they say on Blue Peter, here's some I made earlier. No specific reason, just an interested amateur! Taked over the last year or so at home (during the building of the new log store) and at a local piece of woodland I've luckily been offered the chance to tinker on.
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I work in an office but have an arrangement to fetch as much firewood as I can use from a local piece of woodland, mainly felled and ringed with a chainsaw then split with a maul. Never really saw the point in sweating on a treadmill when I can be doing something more useful instead... have been thinking about trying to blag my neighbour into helping me do some carrying instead of his current foolish behaviour of going out jogging!! Going back on-topic, splitting with a maul is fine for a couple of hours providing it is ash, oak, or anything else reasonable and knot free. I tried - and eventually succeeded - in doing some eucalyptus, but it was a complete pig!!
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Got to love the agricultural approach to life! Not related to cleaning a flue but I do remember lighting a garden incinerator with a splash of unleaded. Worked fine a few times; then I tried it once after the fire had gone out but the incinerator was still warm. It "lit" well, as I'd half expected it to, seeing as I was aware enough to be stood about five feet away and throw the match in. Problem was that it lit with an effing loud crump, blew half the materials all over the yard and left me half deaf and a bit dazed for the next few minutes!
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I am guessing this has been posted on here many times before but just saw it and was a bit astonished / shocked / scared / filled with laughter (can't decide which): Weekend Woodcutter’s Ultimate V8 Chainsaw You might need to click on the link to the file to get the wmv to play...
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Can't be long until someone knocks one up in a shed somewhere... the problem is how to get sufficient pressure of steam to drive a microturbine or a sterling engine from wood I suppose. I've got a welder in the garage; I might have to look into it!
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And another thing to bear in mind is that the follow on from the new feed in tariffs on electric generation at home is going to be a "renewable heat incentive" so you might - and I say might 'cos I don't want to end up getting in trouble for telling someone a porky - get paid a bit for producing your own domestic heating from woodchips. It's due to get announced over the summer I think... Renewable Heat Incentive - Department of Energy and Climate Change Watch how the market for woodchip and pellets opens up a year from now!
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Heating oil is about 40MJ per litre, so 1000 litres = 40GJ, or 11,100 kWh. I'm on oil myself and haven't bought gas for about three years but I'm guessing it's about 3p / kWh, plus CCL at about 0.16p or so, plus 5% VAT. Based on those prices, the 8m3 of wood is replacing £368 worth of gas. As a sanity check, dry ash weighs about 675kg per m3, and is meant to have a calorific value of 4.1 kWh per kilo. Softwood is about 400kg per m3 and has a CV of 2.6 kWh per kilo. The 8m3 of woodchip if dry softwood, would therefore work out at 8,500 kWh. So in effect, the sanity check rings true and the numbers sound about right.
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Myself and a local landowner have come to an arrangement - there is a load of alder needing felling and something done with it. We have both got open fires / woodburners, but the quantity of wood is too much - fires could be kept lit for years on end with all the standing timber in the area that needs to be cleared, let alone the 12 acres of mature woodland. Some of the standing stuff needing to be cleared is about 16"+ diameter at the base and 40-odd foot or so of straight(ish) trunk. I'm not into the idea of making / selling charcoal (although might think about that as a way to make good use of the brash), and know that the alder will need to dry thoroughly before it can be used as firewood. What I was wondering is - apart from firewood and charcoal, is there any market for green alder? If so, what? Any indications on the what the wood might be worth at farm gate (central Warwickshire) would be appreciated, as otherwise it's going to be getting cut into 9" lengths and stacked for logs!
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Still can't believe you've not had a line of people waiting to take this off your hands!
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Out of interest, since I'm guessing you've got more experience of US purchase taxes than I have (!) can you confirm an assumption of mine? I'm guessing that the price shown here: STIHL USA - Online Dealer Website of $299.95 for the saw with 16" bar is the price I'd pay to leave the store with saw in my hand. Is that correct or are there additional purchase taxes to pay? If the prices on the web are "real" then even including UK import tax, VAT and an estimated $40 to ship the item to the UK, it is still (no pun intended) £80 / nearly $130 dollars to source the saw in the US and have it shipped. Out of interest the duty and VAT applies even if the item is a gift shipped into the UK, but not if it is bought into the UK in person by someone as a gift.
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The point I was trying to make is that I can't go on the web and buy a Stihl saw from a US seller and have it shipped to the UK. Controlling distribution in this way is one of the key features of maintaining price discrimination. "- The firm must be able to prevent or limit the resale of the goods or services in question by consumers paying the lower price to those who pay the higher price. In some cases, resale is impossible due to transaction costs (e.g., transport costs from high to low price areas), while in others firms adopt contractual or other measures to prevent arbitrage between consumers (e.g., prohibition of resale as part of terms of sale)." Basically I'm peeved 'cos I feel like I'm getting overcharged for something, even though a commonsense part of me is still telling me it should be better value for money than two cheap saws. Could be worse though, I checked the prices of a couple of places in France (am going on hol in a few weeks and wondered whether it'd be better to buy over there) and they are even more expensive than in the UK. Sacre bleu!
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For what it's worth - my cynical interpretation of the situation would be that it is the company explioting the way it has set up its distributor network: - Stihl knows that it is a premium product and that dealer's don't want to not be able to sell Stihl. - The company therefore demands that sales have to be made in person by a dealer (also helps Stihl look good from a H&S point of view; like they are ensuring a thorough handover of product) - This means that remote selling is impossible, since as soon as Stihl find out someone is doing it that seller will get "excommunicated" - Therefore Stihl can set a higher price in any market which it thinks will pay that price. I can't believe the products are that much different - if at all - in quality or cost of manufacture. Sure, there will be a difference in purchase taxes, which might make up say 20% of shelf price, but would not explain the difference between UK and US prices. Put it this way - if I was running Stihl and saw that the same product I had to charge £350 for in the UK, but under £200 in the US, I'd be wondering how much it cost to ship a containerload of saws across the Atlantic. (Answer = a hell of a lot less than £150 per saw!)
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I've just sent an email asking why the prices are so different to the Stihl UK contact address on their website. Will post on here if I get a reply!
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... Stihl chainsaws are so much more expensive in the UK than the USA? I have just found a site near where a pal of mine's family live (Pennsylvania) where a Stihl authorised dealer is selling an MS250 with 16" bar for $319.95. At current exchange rates that's less than £200, yet the Stihl UK recommended price for the same model is £505 and my local dealer (who appears to offer a good discount on Stihl gear) is £348. Is this like the whole thing with Levi jeans years ago where they operated separate prices for different markets?
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Called in to a local "outdoors" shop today to have a visual at the saws. They've got a few different Stihls in, top of the line they stock appeared to be the MS230 16" bar. But I nearly fell over when I saw the price - this is less than 10 miles away from the local specialist equipment dealer. Same saw, same bar, £410 at the outdoors shop, £306 at the equipment shop, £440 Stihl RRP. More than £100 difference for two places, both authorised Stihl dealers, so close together! Clearly pays to shop around.
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Planting a small woodland for fuel
djbobbins replied to gibbon's topic in Forestry and Woodland management
I can't comment on the impact of Eucalyptus on soil, other than the fact that the two I've cut down (in my front and back garden) both had wide-ranging networks of roots just under the grass. Made a real bu*&er of my lawn! What I can say is that both trees were, I believe, planted in the early 90s, and both were about 40" tall - they had both been subject to at least one pollarding in the past too. I felled the first one in the summer of 2007 and the second in 2008. Both have been cut into 9 - 12 inch sections and stacked to dry / season. Things I've learned: The amount of greenery and unusable branches (stuff less than about 1.5" where the effort to cut it up for the fire seemed greater than the benefit of burning it) was higher than for e.g. alder. The wood dries and cracks more than anything else I've seen. No photos but there are sections of trunk in my yard that look more like pacman than a circle. Any sections without knots in will split - particularly if cracks have appeared during drying. Anything with knots in or at a fork you have got no hope of splitting. At 2 and a half years after felling, the wood burns well in an open fire - good heat and holds together well without being too hard. Not far behind some seasoned ash as a firewood, I'd say. You might want to take a look at this: Prima Bio - eucalyptus specialists - promoting new uses for eucalypts and this: AIE - Firewood - information In summary - if I had some land that I wanted to yield firewood from, and didn't have to think too hard about the future usability of the ground, I'd plant eucalyptus without a second thought. Good luck! -
Also did someone just try to send me a private message? I got some kind of acceptance box on my screen which I accepted but the security software is set to reject pop-ups and so the message didn't appear... I've allowed pop-ups for now if you want to get back in touch!
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There is a dealer just up the road from here (DC Burgoyne, just east of Knowle i.e. half way between Warwick and Solihull) that is doing an MS230 with 16" bar for £306. My plan is to go round there for a bit of a look and to discuss relative merits of the 230 vs a Husky 435.
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Will definitely be getting the trousers as well; I have got a contact today for one of our PPE suppliers at work (I work for a major utility) so will have a bit of a fish to see if I can get a decent price! I'm not certificated but have been felling trees and doing logging for 25 years, using chainsaws, felling axes and even a two man cross-cut saw. If the Jonsered 2138 is out (and from what I've seen of reviews of Poulan equipment, if it's a rebadged Poulan then it is out), what about a Husky 435, 15" bar? I have found somewhere doing them for £255.
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At risk of asking the same question 50 other people have asked on here... I've got about £200 to spend on a new saw. I'm got some experience of using chainsaws and have equipped myself with boots, helmet, gloves (trousers next on the list). I was given a cheap (from Aldi) 38cc, 16" saw which I have used for the last couple of years, during which time I've felled a couple of decent sized eucalyptus (40 foot), done a fair bit of logging and most recently felled about 30 alder. The saw is now difficult / impossible to start and I'm a bit concerned about its safety - it seems to be prone to bouts of over-revving and I'm not convinced that the chain brake would have any effect if anything happened. I've now got the opportunity to manage a piece of woodland, basically just thinning out to allow me to take as much firewood as I want. It's mainly alder (not necessarily the best for burning, I know) so the bulk of it is only 10" or so but there are a few bigger bits in there. I will probably do about 10-15 sessions a year down at the wood, so don't want to splash out £500 on a saw, but what I do want is: something which will start and run from cold, warm or hot 16-18" bar conventional chain tensioner will provide 5 years plus of service on the workload I want from it Having looked around I was very tempted by a Mcculloch ProMac 10-46 (I've had good experience with Mcculloch garden gear before) but see that in most places it is out of stock so I'm guessing its discontinued. I'm now thinking about a Jonsered CS2138, which seem to be going for about £170 - but the question in my mind is whether it's worth the extra 100 sheets and a slight compromise on bar length to go for a Husky 435 instead?? (Or - I've got no particular hang-up on brand, so if anyone has a different suggestion I am happy to consider all options!) Thoughts / views / opinions appreciated.