Big J

The stove is only 20kw - it's the boiler that is 28kw. Our annual electricity bill is £950, but that's with daily use of the dryer and I have two large aquariums and a pond, which use a reasonable amount. Our oil cost annually is about £600. The wood is pretty much free. The estate have had our house surveyed for eaves insulation. The house is a traditional 1.5 story Scottish cottage, though the eaves section of the bedroom roof is only about 3ft or so. As I said, we really don't lose much heat from the house as this has been demonstrated with a £20,000 thermography camera. We keep a warm house. I never, ever wear a jumper in the house and I'm not even keen to wear trousers (excepting guests visiting, obviously!). I make no apology for this - I work outside in the crappy Scottish weather and wish to be warm and comfortable when at home. The climate around Edinburgh is almost uniquely pants. We have more cloudy days than almost anywhere in the UK (the famous haar that skulks up and down the Firth of Forth means every third nice day in summer is ruined by low lying cloud and mist). We have a lot of wind, rain and very little sun. I don't think that 3-4 cube a month is excessive for heating the whole house. Even if I was paying for it it would only be £220-240 a month. I had a Rayburn at the old house - no interest in boiler stoves. Without an accumulator tank to smooth out the peaks and troughs in heat output, they're a PITA to operate and I'd never have one again.

Every house up in the hills there has 10-50 cube stacked by it. It's mostly beech forest and easily 75% forest cover, so processor grade timber as far as the eye can see. Going back to the issue of insulation - the house we rented in Aviemore for a couple of years was near enough unheatable. Traditional stone built croft, minimal insulation in the roof, though it did have secondary glazing. A 15kw stove on full chat would just about get the living room to 18c (when minus 5 outside) but you'd struggle to get the bedrooms above to double digits. Even with the electric heater in the bedroom, 15c was impossible. Contrast that with a friends house in Kincraig built two years ago. 200mm Kingspan in the walls, 250mm in the roof. Three logs on the fire every two days and the house stayed at 25c. Best thing we could do is demolish these dreadful old buildings and start again.

Not to my taste personally, but such things are changeable. The only country in which I find almost all interior design to be lovely is Sweden. In the UK, we seem to have developed this awful habit of putting up massively loud flowery (and often rather shiny) wallpaper. I'm certain that in 10 years we'll hold such decorative choices in the same contempt as we do avocado bathroom suites now.

They just reduced the price too. Was 175k until earlier this week. They have lovely weather up there too (it's about 450 metres above sea level). For almost the entire month of January the temperature did not exceed 0c.

It's a rented estate house, so there are no economical grounds for doing so. Well remembered about the missus too. Internal insulation is indeed the best way to sort these old buildings out, but again, the estate aren't interested. The issue up here is that generally speaking, the nice houses outside of cities are owned by the big estates or are stupidly expensive. Given that we'll be emigrating in 2 years, there is no point thinking long term about this house. At the risk of a serious thread derail, this is the present favourite property on the house hunt in Germany: https://www.immowelt.de/expose/2CUKG4R

Takes very little time. I don't have to split the firewood small at all (45-50cm long, and about 4 times the cross section of an average log) so three or four cube an hour through the processor. 45 minutes for my wife and I to stack a 4 cube load at home in lines outside (initial drying) and then 6 months later when it goes into the store (which holds 21 cube but is still too small!!) it took three of us 90 minutes to chuck 20 cube into the store. Having a big stove that takes big logs really cuts down on handling. Not sure what else we could do to increase the thermal efficiency of the house. The loft is insulated, most of the windows are double glazed and there are no noticeable draft. Additionally, a friend of ours who took a pHd in Thermography (thermal imaging of buildings) did a quick survey of our house and said for it's age, it's quite well insulated. It's just the incredibly rubbish climate here!

Well that sounds very promising. 16 stacked cube translates to about 24 loose cube and I'd imagine it would be at least that each year, knowing how much he burns at home near Kilsyth. I just need to get the stores built and up there. What sort of price for 24 cube?

Not something I've come across before. Practical in a domestic setting? I'm not that bothered about how much we use. We burn about 15 tonnes a year, which out of a turnover of over 1000 tonnes a year through the yard is inconsequential. I was just curious to see what sort of heat output we were getting. Sat in the living room at present, doors open to the rest of the house. Thermometer at far side of the room to the stove (and 2ft above the ground) is reading 22.5c. It's 3.3c outside with a stiff breeze and intermittent sleet and hail. Flue thermometer is reading exactly half way through the safe zone of operation (with vents nearly fully closed) and we'll have burned two barrows in two days on account of it being the weekend and us being here all day.

Your climate is distinctly different in Devon. Winter is much longer here, a fair bit colder and we burn through the summer months too. We've friends in Uffculme and my brother's in Exeter. It's like a different country down there! That being said, you should try keeping an old house warm in Aviemore - that's another level again. We do like a warm house, but it's fairly well insulated (usual loft insulation) and warm for it's age. Our previous cottage was far harder to heat. Thanks for all of the info Openspaceman - very interesting. We burn a mixture of probably 75% softwood, 25% hardwood. The burn is always kept in the efficient zone of operation courtesy of a flue thermometer. 140 litres a week would seem about right, which would be about 600 litres a month for 6 months (Oct-March inclusive) plus about 300 litres a month for the rest of the year. 5400 litres a year - ouch!

Either or. A bit of hardwood would be nice, but softwood is fine provided it's well dried (ie sub 25%).

I don't know of any others. There was one in Northern Scotland for sale a couple of years back, and I know that Willie at Abbey Timber speaks highly of his.

Needing to find a good firewood supplier for a friend who has a couple of cabins up on the west shore of Loch Awe at Dalavich. The plan is to construct a couple of decent sized woodstores that would each hold about 10 cubic metres (loose) so each delivery would be worth the trek. The firewood needs to be reasonably dry (at least initially, until we're through this winter and there is time to dry it further over summer). Anyone?

Just out of curiosity, I was wondering was percentage of the stated output a woodburner will average in continuous operation. Our stove is a Champion Stove Company Dominator (named after the classic motorbike) and is somewhere in the region of 20kw. Don't know exactly as I had it made to order. It is huge though, at 700mm deep, 425mm wide and 600mm high. You can get about a third of a barrow of firewood into it in one go. The reason I ask is that we have a modern oil fired central heating system too. It's rated to 28kw but will not heat the house up anywhere near as quickly as the stove. So I'm wondering, if the stove is in the region of 20kw, what will it actually be producing? For reference, we burn about 0.8 cubic metres a week, and the heating doesn't ever come on unless the average day and night temperature is below 0. The house is 127 square metres, and the living room is usually 20-24c, the rest of the house 17-19 with a small oil filled radiator in my daughter's room just in case. Just curious as I was trying to work out how much oil we'd use if we didn't have the stove and could not come up with a figure as the average oil consumption varies so massively depending on where you are in the country and what your preferred house temperature. Given that our house is over 200 years old, I'd think we'd be using over 4000 litres a year (on the basis that we use about 1200 litres just for hot water and those occasional times the heating comes on or if we're on holiday).

Assuming it's oversized and ugly timber, and also not a complete load (increases haulage costs) then it's worth at most £150 to £200.

That's a shame. I won't pretend to have understood half of what he said, but he always appeared to be a top bloke.

I never did get the story - why did he leave?

Well then give me a shout next time you have some decent oak!

I hate larch. Very rarely cut it. Much rather use douglas and western red cedar. £48 a tonne for larch max. Oak about double that.

Saw that earlier this evening. Truly hilarious!

It's not great quality, but not bad either. I'd pay about £5/hf

Hi John, My mum's in Ripley, so I'm down quite often. We've a lot of 2.5m 40mm and 54mm ash freshly milled. Any use?

And there we have it ladies and gentleman, the Arbtalk chapter of the Blackshirts.

Already signed. Given the number of signatures it's going to attract, I don't seriously see how they can refuse to debate it in parliament. Added to that Trump's (lack of) popularity over here, I could honestly see his state visit cancelled!

I particularly enjoyed the bit in his CIA speech about how America should have kept the oil when they were last in Iraq. Oh, and that they might get another chance.

That as it may be, is there anyone here who honestly doesn't believe that Trump is a lunatic?