Big J

Had a bit more time than I really needed to get down to Preston in the Navara yesterday so decided to go for an epic MPG marathon! Had to pick the missus up from Edinburgh city centre (bit of traffic), 40 miles on an A road followed by motorway. Did a steady 55 on the motorway, very careful not to brake, slip streamed the lorries a fair bit. Net result - 44mpg! Are there any other fellow geeks out there that do this kind of thing - what's your best?!

We are on a job at the moment clearing birch regen from a sitka stand. It's about 7-9 years old, the sitka is up to 20ft (more commonly 15ft) and the birch is up to 30ft. There is also regen larch that's even taller at about 35ft. Anyway, I should imagine that we would make quicker progress through this than you would completely thinning the stand, but we are clearing a hectare a day with two guys. Some of the denser patches of birch are very dense indeed too. Perhaps half that rate would apply for your job, so work it out from your day rate and go from there.

Been using standard vegetable cooking oil of late, including for milling and it's been fine.

There was quite a length thread about this just a few weeks ago - might be worth looking at. Welcome to the forum btw!

I don't pay less than £100 a day, but no one is ever going to pay £150 a day for cutters. That isn't to say they aren't worth it, but that simply it isn't economical as customers won't pay it. At the end of the day, a cutter is only worth as much as the customer will pay. They don't have to take the work - if no one will cut for £70 a day, then the rate will go up or the work won't get done.

Heat recovery is a very good idea and one of the main aspects of passive standard housing. It's applications are wide - it's my next upgrade for my timber kilning! All sources of heat in a house have an impact. One of the main challenges is to maximise the effect of solar gain (when you want it - obviously in the height of summer you want to minimise it) whilst maximising heat retention when solar energy isn't available. Thermal mass and well positioned windows and blinds are key. My wife's practice did Acharacle Primary school in Ardnamurchan in the Highlands: The new primary school for Acharacle and whilst it isn't certified passive, it's passive standard. As a consequence of this, it requires heating only on Monday mornings as the heat from the children, staff and equipment is sufficient to heat the building for the remainder of the week. Hence the term the media coined of 'Weetabix School' (heated by the kid's breakfast). Passive standard isn't difficult to achieve - you just need the right architect and the right builder. The folk who built the school were master carpenters from Austria so the quality of construction is flawless (air tightness of 38 times better than regs for instance). Let me know if there is anything my wife can help you with. Jonathan

Dean, rather than looking at the construction of your house from the point of view of environmental energy creation, why not approach it from the point of view of energy conservation? For the most part, there is little need for heating in a very well insulated building. Passive house specification limits the heating to 15kwh per square metre per year and there are thousands of passive spec houses on the continent and an increasing number here in the UK. My wife specialises in sustainable architecture, and through 30 years of research, it is the opinion of the practice for whom she works that the most effective way to reduce the enviromental impact of a building is energy conservation. Small scale energy production (PVs, wind turbines etc) are rarely self sustaining (financially) and are heavily reliant on government grant subsidy. Focus on insulation, air tightness, quality of materials (in terms of their embodied environmental impact and their effect on your indoor air quality) and quality of design and you'll most likely end up with a cracking house. Don't fall into the trap of splashing out on 'eco bling' (amusing term for products that are generally perceived to be environmentally friendly, but in actual fact aren't, like ground source heat pumps for example). Most importantly, get an architect! Too much is built in this country without any proper archtitectural imput

One week turnaround is going to be tricky without huge heat imput and huge airflow. Force dry timber too quickly and you can case harden it (outside dries rapidly, causing a barrier preventing effective moisture removal from inside) resulting in timber that is dry on the outside, but wet inside. Additionally, there is such a monstrous volume of water in a cubic metre of timber that again, a week is ambitious. Assume you have a kiln with a nominal 40 cube capacity. That's about 20 cubic metres solid volume once air space has been accounted for. Assume a rough average moisture content of 60-70% (allows for a mix of various hardwoods at various MC) and you have timber that is about 33% water and 67% wood. Now assuming you want to take you timber down to 15% MC, you need want to remove 80% of the water. That equates to 5280 litres of water. Now, put that on a 7 day cycle and you have to extract 754 litres a day, or 31.4 litres an hour. Assuming you have a fairly industrial extractor fan, you could extract 500 cubic metres an hour. Assuming an average outside temperature of 15 celcius and 70% relative humidity, your cubic metre of air will come in with 8.75ml of water in it. You need it to leave with 63ml (more at the start really) on average over the cycle to acheive you stated aim within your target time. This means you basically need a constant 45-50 celcius (closer to 50 is better as 45 might not be enough). Maintaining that kind of heat is going to be expensive. My kiln for drying furniture grade timber consumes almost 3kw in heating to maintain 28-29 celcius (at current ambient 10 celcius outside) on 200 cubic metres an hour extraction. You are going to need many times that to maintain close to 50 celcius. The only way to reduce the heating cost is with a heat recovery unit, but I've not found one that is rated over 35 celcius. Best just to get a poly tunnel me thinks!

Solar kilns are the way forward for drying firewood if you need it in a hurry. Using electricity to heat the kiln just seems daft given the tiny profit margins. Perhaps some sort of hybrid system where you use solar water heating panels to collect the heat, pump it into radiators inside and then circulate the air is possible.

The missus has just informed me that the k-value regs for Scotland are 0.25, which means that the thinnest wall construction with the thickest insulation is just passable, with the thicker wall constructions being fractionally better. However, they won't be compliant in 2013 as the regs are incrementally improving.

Now now lads - settle down! Otherwise he'll get his lawyer on us and we all know what sharks they can be!

I am a little dubious about log homes like that. Without significant amounts of insulation, they aren't going to be warm or comfortable. All the advertising shots show exposed timber internally, but the u-values for an uninsulated wall are poor. Even fully insulated it could be better. Interesting timber construction technique that is finally just starting to be used in the UK is Brettstapel: Brettstapel Construction My wife's practice have done the only two buildings so far in the UK, but it's widely used on the continent. Advantages are that it's U-values are superb (down to 0.13), air tightness is unrivalled (went up for the air tightness test on Acharacle Primary school and it was 38 times better than regs stipulate - building regs in this country set a very low standard) and it makes use of low grade timber that would otherwise not be suitable for construction (Sitka - 47% of Scotland's forests are Sitka). Just food for thought. We will certainly build our own house at some point (architect and sawmiller - it's inevitable!) and it will certainly be timber. I just don't think that log home style houses are the way forward because they don't put forward the idea that wood is a modern building material, something that I think is key to widescale timber construction. Jonathan

That is indeed a big lad! There is one close to th house that's perhaps a touch over 5ft but sound - I'll get a photo of it for the thread.

I won't pretend that I know much about what you two are on about, but it really was an exceptional tree from our point of view. As soon as I saw it in the distance, I could tell it was a monster. What was nice was that there was no indication that it was in decline - good, full crown with no die back, no visible to pockets and even some interesting fusing of secondary stems (over 3ft in diameter) a little higher up the tree. My guess on age is high 300s, early 400s of years old?

Came across this monster of an Oak near Hesket New Market whilst walking at the weekend: It stands alone in the middle of a field is possibly the largest Oak I've seen anywhere this far north. My wife is sat on it there, and I very roughly guessed it at about 9ft in diameter (though it's a little narrower when viewed from the side of the tree). Either way, had a little climb up to the crutch and marvelled at it for a good 10 minutes. It's well worth a trip out to as Hesket Newmarket has Britain's only co-op pub with it's own brewery and the ale is stunning! Old Crown Pub - Hesket Newmarket Cumbria - Britain's first co-operatively owned pub Jonathan

stihl 084 chainsaw in Midlothian | Other Collectibles & Crafts for Sale | Gumtree.com Might be of use to someone - needs a bit of tlc apparently, but cheap for a big saw.

If Rob can't help, I have lots of yew in the round that can be milled to order.

No, they are only a little over £5k plus VAT new.

Good to hear Mike! With you saying 36 inch wide boards, it just made me think to warn you to be careful not to clamp the mill onto the sprocket of the bar. I did that with a Stihl 36 incher once and it can easily impinge the sprocket and cause it to fail. Otherwise, happy milling! Keep your depth gauges just the right side of grabby (should occasionally grab and stall - if it's not, it won't pull itself through the cut and milling will be very slow). Especially on a new chain, do a cut, take the depth guages down a little, do another cut. If it's not a little grabby at times, take the depth gauges down a touch more and so on. I've found a properly sorted chain with respects to depth gauges will cut over twice as quickly as a ripping chain straight out the box. With regards to the MS880 struggling, the quickest milling is achieved when the revs are kept high. Avoid the temptation to push the mill too hard and the revs dropping. Quicker milling will occur when you hold back a bit. Would be great to see some photos if you get the chance! Jonathan

TimberKing 1220 band saw to mill timber upto 30" diameter and 12' lengths | eBay Very solid mills, by all accounts

I have a 12x6 ifor tipper with cage sides and it's superb. I had it horribly overloaded the other day with 8 large yew logs and it was fine. Managed to bend the rear axle (actually not my fault!) and it hydraulically pressed straight without any issue. Build like a tank!

I don't bother. Used to use ova from time to time but found it didn't make much difference. Best thing to do is just make sure that the timber is well stacked (with a sticker right on each end) out of any direct sunlight and somewhere fairly cool and ideally even a little damp, though with good air flow. Earthen floor barns are great, as are woodlands, funnily enough! Jonathan

Nice logs those

Hope the chap makes a speedy recovery. Keep us in the loop.

Mother nature has it in for Ford Focus' at the moment! At least it wasn't a nice Mercedes. Had it been a nice old W124 estate or W126 I would have been in tears!