Big J

I don't have that kind of controllability. The control panel is quite basic and there are no instructions for it in the manual. I'll look into a diesel burner though. It's usually sat at about 25c after a night without heat.

Nothing I can do about it. The boiler has a short burn time and will only last about an hour after stoking. Had it up to 67c today at the doors, so probably 80 odd in the middle.

Might well do that with the next batch 'Huck. That said, I am able to reach some of the drier offcuts now. It is taking longer than I would have liked. It's had a total of about 60hrs of heat over 6 days with the rests overnight inbetween. The potato boxes aren't helping. They are half rotten anyway, so they will be scrapped and crates built next week that are effectively just wire mesh and a frame. No restriction to air flow. We are getting the kiln to temp (64c recorded at the coolest point today, circa 80 middle) but only on quite dry fuel. The wetter offcuts aren't much good. Learning, learning, learning....

I'm just about to get rid of mine. Had it from new (11 plate). It was into the garage 29 times in it's 3 year warranty period, having had huge amounts of work done. The irony is that since it came out of warranty, it's been fine! So, if anyone wants an 11 plate Navara with 79500 on the clock, good condition, Truckman back, nearly new BF Goodrich ATs, tow bar, load liner and reversing sensors for £7500 plus the VAT, I'm your man!

Had more difficulty getting the boiler to temperature today as was using exclusively sawmill offcuts that were a bit wet. Seemed to make quite a difference and it was hovering at 35-50c (though I honestly wasn't stoking it as often as I was busy). I need to dig back through my offcuts stack for the dry stuff.

2 to 3ft is ideal for Woodmizer sized mills, but the best quality boards come from larger trees and there are plenty of mills up and down the country that can take 4-5ft. Lovely carving by the way

I like to keep the number of customers that I speak to to a minimum! It does work with the milling. From various felling ops, I've sold over 200 tonnes of sawing butts to my main competitor in the area. If they are going to make money, I might as well make some money off them! Regarding mould, it won't be an issue with cedar as it won't mould at all. Spruce, if it's well dried enough before going into the kiln will be close enough to 25% for it not to matter.

Well sort of a bit of both. I'd planned to simply retail it wholesale, but having a gardener based out of my yard with a good customer base, it makes sense for him to sell some too. Either way, I avoid having to deal with customers, which is fine by me. Cedar is hard to come by up here - it sadly won't be processed very often. Most likely to be sitka, but that would be priced lower than cedar.

The pound is too strong at the moment really. Great for us if we are importing equipment, but that is about it. The larger softwood mills have apparently cut back production up here which has pushed up the price of chipwood around here. Was £32 a tonne delivered last year, more like £35-36 now.

I have got a chap who is happy to do all the delivery for me, deal with the customers etc. We were thinking around the £50-55 a cubic metre mark delivered. The cedar that I have in at the moment won't have any issues with the bark falling off, and future spruce will already be dry so most bark should fall off before going into the kiln.

It just doesn't add up figures wise. With the drier spruce I spoke of, my production cost is £18.50 a cubic metre. I can't see it being anything less than double on hardwoods. Presumably double the drying time on sycamore/beech etc?

Yes, there is a fairly strong fan on the intake, hence the rapid burn. As regards sub 20% fuel, well at the moment the offcuts I have to hand are above that, but I'm not having any issues keeping the boiler in the 60-80c zone. They might not be that far over 20%. What do you reckon? I'm thinking in the ball park of 3-4 days with this wetter softwood, perhaps half that with dry spruce.

Can't run it for 24hrs. More like 9hrs. The boiler is rated to 233kw, but I doubt it really produces that and some of it is lost from the external casing as it's sited outside of the kiln. Softwood on this cycle, reasonably freshly felled, reasonably dry softwood thereafter. Fans are thermostically controlled and come on and off at 33c.

Fans are thermostatically controlled. Once the boiler reaches a temperature (as indicated on the display, though not exactly sure what it corresponds to) of 33c, the fans kick on. Over 90c is too hot and it beeps at you to tell you so. Air flow is 4 cubic metres per second, and with a boiler temperture of 80c, air being pumped out about 100-120c. The boiler is supposed to burn about 47kg of wood per hour, which is probably about right.

2 minutes, max. The firebox is 0.84 cubic metres. Offcuts are cut with the chainsaw to 70 cm, or thereabouts. It just burns quite quickly due to the forced airflow.

Second day running the boiler and it seems to be going well. We finished off insulating the bottom 19 inches of the container and cladding it today, which seemed to make a difference. All that is left is to insulate the back of the container and construct an insulated panel to hang over the doors. Boiler was running sweetly today and internal temperature in the kiln at the far end (the doors) from the hot air inflow was around 50-56 celcius for most of the day. This is the coldest part of the kiln, as far as I can tell, and the middle is about 15 celcius warmer. Arriving at the yard this morning (the kiln was off overnight - it's not possible to run it as the longest you can leave it without restoking it is about an hour) there was water pouring out the bottom of the container and much condensation inside. This strikes me as good, as the firewood has had the night to sweat as it cools and then the heat is very quickly restored (it was 18c on arrival to the yard, and 45c within 25 minutes) and the water evaporates. How do these temperatures compare to other kilns used here? I reckon it's averaging 60-65c across the kiln for 9 hours. With reasonably freshly felled softwood, how long would you reckon it would need? This is all quite different to the sawn timber drying!

Hoppus foot measurement is your friend here. Measure the girth (circumference at mid point) in inches. In this case, it's 113.11 inches. Divide this by four, which is 28.28. Multiply this by itself (28.28 x 28.28) - the answer is 799.96. Finally, multiply this by the length in inches (which is 120) - so 799.96 x 120 = 95995.2, which is the volume in cubic inches. Convert this to cubic feet by dividing by 1728, and your answer is 55.55 hoppus foot. In brief, to work out the volume of a log, it's quarter girth squared, multiplied by length (all in inches) and then divided by 1728. To convert to tonnes (roughly) divide by 27 (the number of hoppus foot in a tonne of the heavier hardwoods), which a smidge over 2 tonnes.

Nice oak. Curious to find out what it goes for as a comparison to prices up here.

Patience man! I'm only just getting started with it! Generally all good, but badly set up bands letting the cutting down a bit at the moment. Will be resetting them next week so should be good to go then. Got everything up and running today and did a test burn for a couple of hours. Still have the door and back to insulate as well as cladding it, which should improve thermal efficiency a bit. Anyway, on a 2hr burn (one partial restoking) I got the internal air temperature up to about 62 celcius - no firewood in it though (empty box). I reckon with the addition of the final insulation and crates of firewood taking up airspace and slowing airflow, we shouldn't have any issues getting up to 80 celcius. Pictures will follow....

It blew over, and yes, no idea!

It did yes, Innes House Estate.

I shall be sending a lump of it to Steve this week, so hopefully yes!

It's not like it takes any effort. You just have your store divided so that you can have a rotation. You have fresh firewood delivered and put it in the section for next year. You then to proceed to use last year's timber for burning this year. Not complicated. Most firewood customers are idiots though, so I see your point.

I don't dispute this, and I infact agree. I'm just saying that strictly speaking, and objectively speaking, using heat from burning wood to dry wood for burning (speeding up a process that would occur naturally given time) is silly. It's the fact that people need to make money that causes it to make sense sometimes. For me (about to embark on kiln drying logs) it makes sense because I produce a lot of sawmill offcuts that people don't want as firewood. It makes sense for me to burn those offcuts to dry commercially viable firewood. This of course makes no sense, but it is dictated by market forces. In an ideal world, we would have a customer base where the majority of them actually understood the process of drying timber and would elect to do it themselves (like they do elsewhere around the world), instead of us having to take on the burden of sitting on tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of pounds of stock for months (if not years).

Kiln drying firewood is of course ridiculous. It does however make economic sense for many, and even more so now that the government has decided to throw so much money at it. It's an inescapable truth in life that things that make no sense often do make sense when the concept of money is introduced. Burning wood to dry wood for burning is one of these occasions.