Big J

I'm looking for a groan emoji but can't find one! ?

That's what I'm hoping to get. Just want to pick their brains about their plan for the block. Thanks for your imput. Most helpful

It's owned by Highways England, but access to the site is through tunnels under one of the main roads and then via a farm field. I wouldn't have to come onto any of the roads bordering the site. The site itself is completely flat and unchallenging, but for the river separating off one of the lines of poplar. My thoughts with those would be to winch into the stand and over the river.

Probably not worth the effort if all of that is required. There is theoretically no need to access the site through any Highways Agency land, no any need to shut any roads. Possibly viable doing it for the timber, depending on method. We all the normal forestry tickets and insurances but no CSCS, CPCS or site management tickets.

That would be the start point of negotiating the method statement. Just have to see how to balance out risk versus cost.

Definitely Highways England, yes. I spoke to the Land Registry to ascertain ownership.

Has anyone much experience of working with Highways England? There is a small, local forestry block of about 250 tonnes with crap access that belongs to Highways England. The trees are at the stage of potentially presenting a risk to a couple of major roads and I was going to propose clearing and replanting with natives. I have a plan formulating in my head, but hoped some of you guys might have experience with them that you wanted to share? The job can be done without road closures (I think), but I'd feel happiest stripping the outside trees with a MEWP and then winching into the stand. All the trees are pencil straight (nothing hanging out) so would under normal circumstances not require winching, but given the proximity of the roads would require it. Or, strip all to poles, close the road for 5 minutes at a time which several trees were dropped without winching and then let traffic through and repeat. About 100 trees, of which about 30 are within striking range of the roads. Hybrid poplars, 85-90ft tall, 60cm DBH average. Any advice appreciated, as ever.

Just under 2 tonnes there Jim. £55/t for the timber, plus something for cutting to unusually short lengths and something for delivery. £150 all in? Would produce around 4 cube of split material (loose, not stacked).

Well they no longer supply that model. The issues were as follows: No fence. So when dealing with on side straight edge, your wastage was higher as you had to guess where the straight edge would be and allow wastage for that. Laser guides with dodgy mounts. You'd calibrate the lasers and they'd move and your lineup would go out. Poor quality spindle width adjustment. The width is adjusted with a metal spindle rotating with a nylon sleeve on it. The nylon sleeve broke away from it's mount so we lost width adjustment. Very stiff width adjustment. The motors didn't travel freely along the rails when propelled by the spindle resulting in a shattered bearing block. This and the above issue meant complete replacement of the spindle, nylon sleeve and bearing block. Not a quick job. Poor quality blade mounts on motors. Too easy for the blades to splay, resulting in stalled cutting and much frustration. Free standing infeed and outfeed tables, which would have been much better mounted to the edger with a fence. We put over a hundred tonnes through the edger in the couple of years I had it, but it was always a poorer machine than our other (1970's, Finnish) edger. I hope that their new one is better.

Sounds pretty typical. Glad there weren't more serious consequences. You can have snow tyres on, but you can't account for the person sliding towards you on summer tyres.

My experience of my father buying wood in France and my uncle was that it's generally bought green and then seasoned. Doesn't take long to dry on a continental summer.

There will be some that that would appeal to, but I think that's a limited market. Most customers have got the space to store and dry split logs, but few have the facilities to process it themselves.

True enough, but what I'm proposing isn't actually creating any extra work for the customers. As a former supplier of firewood, all I was asking is that they take delivery of logs as they would normally, stack them as they would normally, but do so a little earlier and perhaps accommodate a little more than they would have done previously. The benefit of that is that they save a significant chunk of cash, they have total security of firewood supply in the coldest months, they get logs cut to the specification that they want and when putting them away, they can do so on a pleasant spring evening as opposed to the pissing rain in the middle of winter. From the firewood retailers point of view, they save loads of handling and storage, get to deliver logs when inclement weather is a non-issue, don't have to worry about logs getting wet when delivering and demand is spread out across the year. You also completely eliminate any issues with regards to specifying moisture content. It's just fresh, you season it yourself. Simple. I don't think that unseasoned timber sales would ever exceed dry log sales, but I can't understand why it's such a small market segment.

Agreed. Additionally, who wants to be dealing with a log delivery in the dark months of winter, hurrying to try to get it put away before it starts raining. I much prefer doing all that in spring.

For most customers, that would make too much sense. I for one like to sit in my garden over summer and admire my log stacks, thinking "I'll be toasty come winter". Nothing uglier than an empty woodstore! ?

Even if they only had space for a single year's storage, just buy the logs in April/May and they'll be ready by October. Just not on sodding Christmas eve! ?

The point is that in Europe I think we're alone in that dried log sales dominate. Elsewhere, it's cut and delivered fresh, and then stacked to dry where it will be used. It doesn't really make sense to cut it, store it, rehandle it to deliver it to then stack and store again. I don't hate storing firewood (I quite enjoy stacking to be honest), I just hated the inefficiency of it. I would guess that more than half of customers have the space to store enough to be able to buy green. A 3m wide, 1.5m deep and 2m high store will accommodate 9 stack cube (about 13.5 loose cube) which is the size of a garden shed and I reckon as much as 90% of domestic log customers use over two seasons. Have one full of timber you're drying, the other timber you're using. I have firewood stacked at home to take me to 2021 now, which makes me happy

I'm starting this thread as someone who's always had an interest in firewood production, used to do it on a hobby-esque commercial basis (ie, had the equipment, with the processor, forklifts and space, but always hated selling logs) and no produce the raw material with the forestry operations. I've had loads of discussions over the years with more serious producers about the details of firewood production and the area where I always differ with most is that I feel a lot of people who purchase logs have the capacity (albeit not the inclination) to dry their own. I feel that most of the costs associated with supplying logs relate to the drying stage and the storage and multiple handling issues. For instance the specialised equipment to produce logs is the same whether you are supplying green or dried, which include: Firewood processor, forklift or forestry tractor, delivery vehicle and other associated tools. This isn't something that you typical customer is going to have access to and the actual production of logs isn't something that most can do. However, most have space for a modest wood store (a compartmentalised 4x2x2 metre store is within the realms of of what most people can accommodate) and require nothing more than a woodstore and time to dry their logs. To illustrate the labour saving, the process for delivering unseasoned logs would be: Cordwood loaded to log deck, processed to the specification of the customer and conveyed directly into a tipping trailer and immediately delivered. No further equipment required. And seasoning firewood: Cordwood loaded to log deck, processed to most likely specification required in 12-24 months time, conveyed into log storage containers that must be accommodated for 12-24 months, attempting to keep them dry, paying for the storage space. Box rotators required, or method of loading builders bags, or just manual labour. Also worth considering that seasoning timber requires the investment of capital that is tied up for the duration of the drying cycle. I enjoy producing firewood so long as it's on a decent firewood processor and the wood being processed is fairly straight. What I always detested was the effort required to season and store the bloody stuff. Given that logs seem to average about £100/cube for hardwood presently, would you make less money selling unseasoned at £70/cube? I just love the simplicity of processing straight into the trailer. No handling, no storage no fuss. Maybe the customers would get on board if offered a 25-30% discount for unseasoned, especially if they can specify the size (and possibly species) of the logs. There doesn't seem to be much of a market on the continent for ready dried logs, so why is it so different here? If I was buying my logs, I'd much prefer to save the money, buy early and know that I'll have enough when the weather gets harsh and when delivery is potentially impaired. I'm criticising anyone's business model I should stress, I'm just genuinely interested in log retailers making more money and logs being more affordable for those that buy them.

Came across a corker of a holly today in Ashclyst Forest. About 32 inches in diameter at chest height and 60ft tall. In a copse with lots of other oversized hollies and cherries too.

I've always loved the idea of micro hydro, but finding enough flow and head is always going to be an issue. Given that power output doubles every time you double the head, it's much more important than flow rate. That being said, a friend of ours has a river running through their land which I reckon does 750 litres a second (no specific data on that particular river, but I found the discharge rate for a little river I used to fish as a kid and I reckon our friend's river is a touch larger). He's already got an weir on it, so it wouldn't take much of a change to the river's course to install something like an archimedes screw. 750 litres/second at 1m is a potential output of 7.3kw.

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.