Big J

Not good agricultural though. Cabin was like they were trying to be upmarket whilst all the time having the running gear from a Massey Ferguson.

I drove a Shogun a few years ago and didn't like it at all. Almost the most agricultural vehicle I've ever driven. I'd obviously put a shout out for a 4x4 Sprinter, and I do love mine. I will probably replace it with an Iveco 4x4 later in the year when I need to tow the full 3.5t. With the serious slopes in Devon and the clay soils, a more off road focused tow truck is probably justified. For you in Richmond, something like a Landcruiser would be a good fit. Second hand vehicles are nearly always money pits, regardless of what you get. It's luck more than anything. The one thing I would say is don't buy a Navara. They are made of swiss cheese, made for builders and not for proper work. I know many more people who've been let down by them than have been happy with them.

I wouldn't worry too much about fuel economy. My sprinter 4x4, fully loaded with tools and fuel, towing for some of the tank, off road for some of the tank and zipping through back roads to and from site on mud terrains has done 16mpg on this last tank. Given that it's a short commute, it's working out at less than a tenner a day, so you have to think that reliability and functionality are more important. Fuel is a a tiny cost compared to lost production.

Ben Sutton, Sutton Timber, just on the Suffolk/Norfolk border. If it's good, I expect he'd take it.

A friend in Aviemore built his own house a few years ago, and has my old Bullerjan stove to heat it. Three logs every other day and it's toasty!

I just like a warm house. I spend my whole working life outside in all weathers, and my preference is to shed my outer layers as soon as I step through the door and grab some shorts and a t-shirt for indoors. To get a house to passive standard from an economic point of view doesn't make sense (or at least, not quite). It's cheaper in the long run to build a very well insulated house with minimal heat imput than go that extra mile for passive standard. The issue with MVHR is that it's commonly installed, especially in Europe but there is very little market for the filters that need to be replaced at regular intervals. As such, people are living in enviroments where all the air is filtered through filthy filters, which is bad for indoor air quality. Very interesting post though, and thanks for taking the time.

I second that recommendation.

Now then. You can be a professional outfit and still be a cowboy. Like on Monday when climbing a very steep slope with a tractor that's a little bit too small for the winch it's carrying and you need someone to saddle up and ride the bonnet for nose weight! Thankfully, the we get the (heavier) alpine back tomorrow so no more forestry bucking bronco! ?

Hi Mike - sorry for not getting back to you sooner. It's been a busy week!

Not yet. A week or two. Don't need it for three weeks so not in a huge hurry.

True, but I don't have the larger tractor yet. The upgrade course is much cheaper, and we need the tickets for the little tractor for the next block we're working on. Useful thing to have.

We have a winch course and assessment on Tuesday with Mike Crutchley. Sub 2.5t tractor, 3.2t winch, 4 of us, £250 a man. He travels around the country and there are other NPTC assessors around the UK. Dick Bradshaw would be closer to you I think.

Well I got an email back from them. They want to hear my proposals for the block. I must say that I wasn't sure I'd hear back from them. I replied with a fairly long proposal, outlining a couple of different approaches and explaining that with my machinery and skillset, we were well suited to undertaking the job. The unknown for me is what kind of traffic management they'd insist on. The trees are 15-20 metres back from a motorway sliproad on one side and a touch closer on the other to a main road. I'd proposed 60-90 second stoppages of traffic in both directions only whilst the back cut was being done and the tree was being winched over. Gob cut and winch set up done with traffic flowing. Having not worked with Highways England, it's an unknown for me, but I'm keen to do the job. That said, I'm not pretty much booked up for 4-5 months, so I need to stop looking for work and get what's in my diary completed!

I did a day tidying windblow after a recent thinning job. Each one of the 6 trees that came over was ivy clad, and ivy clad trees were only about half of the trees in there. They catch the wind in winter and blow over. The ivy eventually outcompetes the canapy too, killing the tree. I hate the stuff. It's bloody ugly too.

I would advise caution. The door would have to have a very tight fit to be functional. With all the stoves I've had, once up to temperature, the amount of air they require is minute. A badly sealed door on an open fire would most likely cause overheating with intense, directed air flow. Best just to take the open fire out and replace with a stove.

I am inclined to agree! Love mechanical tree harvesting if whatever form it takes. Just makes chainsaw work seem so obsolete!

I can imagine it's a tricky one this year as the inevitable price rise will have pushed end user prices up. I was chatting about this with my old business regarding sawn timber. You just can't do a typical 2-4% inflationary rise when raw materials have gone up 30 odd percent.

The glass blackening was down to it not having an airwash system. It certainly had an effective secondary burn as it always burned cleanly, with little to no smoke emitted from the chimney. Interesting point on the comparison of heat loss through the flue on oil versus wood burning. Hadn't thought of that before. I look at the stack of firewood at the back of the house and think for the value in it (even just collected, so not having to deliver it myself), I could buy about 6000 litres of kerosene.

Hope you do get sorted with a new build sometime j. Few pals have build nice wooden well insulated houses, was round there new years day and it was still cosy as owt at 2 in the afternoon, no fire been lit since the night before and no other heating. I couldn't believe it. In out draft stone small houses it's the first thing to do every morning! We'd be far better off in the UK funding much improved building than RHI or FITS. The founder of the architecture practice my wife used to work with in Edinburgh said that many of the methods of producing sustainable power on a small scale were not actually sustainable as the payback period exceeded the effective working life of the device. That was nearly 10 years ago though. It has changed a bit since then. However, an airtight and well insulated house is 10 times better than a house of typical insulation and micro power generation (or Eco-bling, as my wife's boss used to call it).

They are much simpler stoves and the glass won't stay clear in the same way, but the heat output was always superb. The way that the fire seemed to burn (front to back) meant that it was very easy to overnight on softwood (without slumbering the fire). You'd get 16 hours plus out of it on the denser hardwoods. It wouldn't smoke in normal operation and I have a couple of friends that put a lot of wood through theirs in smoke controlled zones without anyone noticing. When we took the stove out when we moved, there was minimal ash from the chimney and we didn't sweep it for the duration of our stay in that house. 5 years and some 180 odd cubic metres burned. I just prefer big stoves with a front to back log loading construction. 2ft logs all day long, minimal processing and maximal heat. I do appreciate that for a properly insulated house that it's total overkill, but we've not living in a house with modern insulation thus far.

It only takes a tiny bit in the wrong place and you'd swear you had a log lodged there. Glad the bit worked itself free

I actually rated the Champion Stove Company stove higher than the one that we have at the moment. We have a Woodwarm 20kw double sided stove which would have been over £2k. We've still burned about 14 cube on it so far this winter. And that's with me letting it go out on the milder days. Living room and downstairs is 20-22c and the upstairs is 16-18c. Not excessive, and just the nature of heating these crappy old buildings.

I'm not sure that a stove is really that efficient. We've had a few stoves over the years, and for the past 5 years we've had two different 20kw stoves. Over that time we've averaged about 37 cubic metres (loose) per 12 month period. I deliberately don't use the term winter as where we were in Scotland you'd rarely have a month pass without the fire being lit at some point. 20kw might seem like a lot, but the boiler for the last house was 28kw. I'm efficient at burning wood - I religiously use a flue thermometer and never run it too hot or cool. A friend of ours has a doctorate in thermography and thermal imaged our old house and he said for it's age that it's quite heat efficient. New house isn't quite as cool but the climate is milder here in Devon. With all that in mind, we're reliably a barrow a day with winter weather. Not a small barrow at that. If the temperature is below 10c, we're doing about 3.5 cube a month and when you see two years worth stacked up at the back of the house you start thinking you're a bit mad for not just filling up the oil tank.

The daft thing is that I always have two pairs in the van with the angle grinder!

Really sorry to hear that Ken. I've had a very brief window into partial sightedness over the past few days and it's awful.