Big J

Any of the low output stoves from Martin Champion at The Champion Stove Company will do you. Not suitable for a smokeless zone, but great little stoves for the money and you'd get two for your budget. Between myself and friends, we had about 7 of them.

The whole hunting/land management quandary is the reason I stopped being vegan about 7 years ago. Working in forestry I couldn't resolve the fact that good forestry management required the control of deer and (grey) squirrel and being vegan. I regarded the importance of maintaining woodland in the UK as being more significant than the individual rights of game. So I started eating game and wild caught fish. That was many years ago and now I'm just a hypocrite and eat near enough anything. Anyway, I support the control of wild deer (and possibly sheep - not something I know anything about) but trophy hunting is always tasteless (IMO). Shoot an animal because the local environment requires it, or it's required for food, but don't celebrate taking a life. That's the stuff of serial killers!

That would have been interesting! From researching grants for forestry, there seems to be quite a separation with regards to Scotland and England. Possibly the same with woodfuel. If I was to stay with wood fuel, I would only consider going for a a district heating type affair with large boiler, even larger accumulator and heating to the house, machinery workshop and possibly something else (in the longer term). I much prefer the idea of a large, hot burn every few days rather than constant feeding. That being said, a big 50-70kw boiler (enough to heat a well insulated house and a not so well insulated workshop when required) will easily do a tonne a week through winter, if not more. You then get into the economy of using wood as a fuel when your cheapest delivered in tonne is presently about £50 (if you are lucky). With timber prices only going up, it doesn't seem like a sensible plan.

That's a fair point and you are correct that I haven't looked at the grants. If at all possible, I like to try to assess the merit of something without grant funding, as the best ideas usually stand up by themselves. That being said, I don't object to free money!

If it's large enough to extract, it's large enough to sell. I don't get waste wood in the same way that tree surgeons do. It's all 3m and marketable.

That would be really useful, thanks

I agree. Obviously conserving energy is the simplest and most logical way of keeping your house warm, but on it's own that's not quite enough. Maybe some sort of hybrid system with a ground source heat pump and biomass boiler on the same system with a large accumulator. Solar water heating too for good measure!

That had been my plan with our prospective build. Biomass boiler in the machinery barn to keep all the mess out there, but it doesn't address the issue that it's usually more economical to just sell the timber.

What I always found nasty during winter on the east coast of Scotland was the inevitable strong easterlies in February, March and early April. Those weeks on end of strong wind, driving rain and 2-3c. Nothing strips the heat from a house quite like that. I imagine it's pretty similar in Northumberland

MVHR has been fairly widespread on the Continent for years now and whilst there is a large market for the new installations, there isn't one for the replacement filters. This means people are living in houses with air that is being filtered through old, potentially mouldy filters creating more health issues than they solve. I just don't think that passive standard is worth the extra outlay in our climate (mild, wet) and a passive standard house won't stay warm enough in winter to be comfortable for me (17c is the average on the passive standard house Kathryn's practice did). Heating it beyond 17c is fraught with difficulty as you'll easily overheat yourself.

In the various iterations of our future house build (it gets discussed a lot. My wife is an architect and I've always had a keen interest) the heating has evolved from a centrally located wood stove to external biomass boiler and underfloor heating to "I can't be bothered with woodfuel, what are the alternatives!?!" We don't want to do a passive house. It's Kathryn's area of expertise and there are a multitude of issues with passive standard houses and indoor air quality. I'd rather have something that's a step or two down in terms of insulation, requiring some heating and with better internal air quality. I do like the idea of a GSHP, but I imagine they aren't cheap to install?

Most of us here heat our houses with wood fuel, or at least partially so. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm sick of the sight of the stuff, and I've often reflected on the fact that it would be better to simply sell the wood and use that to fund alternate, less labour intensive methods of house heating. For instance, I'm most of the way through cutting and splitting 15 tonnes of ash for the house and I'm struggling, motivationally. It will end up as best part of 45 cube (it was quite dry coming in) and it will last us almost 2 years, but it'll have taken three days to process and I could have sold it at roadside for £800. So when factoring in my time (3 days at £400/day if I'm on the forwarder) and the haulage (£200), I'm £2200 down. And then factor in the labour involved in barrowing in the wood and feeding the fire and you're probably at about £3k for 2 years heating. That buys a lot of heating oil. Anyway, my question is, if you had to heat your house (off grid, so gas isn't an option) without wood, what would you choose? We're trying to find land to build at the moment, so it's a consideration for us. I like a warm house (22-23c living spaces, 18c bedrooms) too.

Sounds about right! ?

In the New Years Honours list, I for one am very happy for Sir Michael Palin. Someone who I've always admired and in that rose tinted alternate reality where Sir David Attenborough was World President, Palin would probably make an ideal deputy

Very true! The difference for us is that our woodstore would usually last until the end of January in Scotland before needing to be refilled. It will be the end of February down here (same woodstore). That's 22 cubic metres. March is a funny month. We've had the most brutal winter weather in March and other years 20 centigrade plus. So yes, how long is a piece of string! ?

If we were still in Scotland, I'd say not quite half way yet. Hoping that we get out of winter a little earlier in Devon as my log store is more depleted then I would like (we've burned about 13 cube so far, at a guess). I have loads more wood, but it's not dry yet and would be better for next winter. Mid point of winter in any given location depends on seasonal lag. That is to say when the hottest point of summer and the coldest point of winter is in relation to midsummer and midwinter. I believe that the further north you are, the less seasonal lag there is, but there any many other factors that influence that.

I have a Bott system in the back of my Sprinter. It came with the van. It's tremendously swish, and apparently rather expensive. It's very useful and I'd recommend it.

I said to everyone this year that I don't want anything that I can't eat, drink, wear or ride. I'm still waiting for my trained velociraptor ?

I leveled out some of the ground at the back of the house (scrub land really) and found an awful lot of rubble once I scratched the surface. Apparently there was once a piggery there. It's why when we build I just want a green field. Any brownfield site hides a plethora of underground horrors.

We've got an old farm house that's been in my landlord's family 150 odd years. Knowing how farmers like to over do drives and paths, I wouldn't be surprised if it was a foot of concrete over rubble! I'll definitely get some rods in the new year though.

There should! That was the first thing my (engineer) brother said.

Ardbeg Uigeadail ?

Success! Got the blockage cleared, which as it turns out was only 3ft away from the inspection cover. Had to ladle out about 20 buckets of shitty fluid, which took a couple of hours. I have a robust and quite rigid 18mm hosepipe, which I used as a rod to reach the blockage and shift it. Seems like there is a badly designed bend there and it would be prone to blocking I think. Anyway, hot shower and cup of tea later and we're all good. Thanks for the imput lads. One thing that did make the whole experience much more reasonable was the addition of the washing powder last night. It seemed to neutralise the odour for the most part.

Not the planet, just my septic tank!

I think so. We've only been in for 5 months, so the layout of the waste system isn't something I'm very familiar with. Amusingly, the landlord had guys out earlier in the week as he thought that there was something not quite right with the system. They didn't pick up on any blockage. I'm not a fan of the flushable wipes, but they are a lot easier for young kids learning to be self sufficient with toileting. A new approach may be required.