Big J

It's a point aside, but having calculated the heating needs of our house in the UK and the one we're moving to in Sweden, our Swedish house uses 8 times less energy to heat it, per square metre. Extrapolating from the bills we've had so far, we'll be using about 7,000 KWH to heat 240 square metres in Sweden, whereas our normal annual usage of firewood here of 28 cubic metres to heat 94 square metres equates to 28,000KWH (or 21,000KWH accounting for 75% efficiency of the stove). So that's 29kwh/sqm in Sweden where the average night time temperature for the last 4 months has been about minus 6-7 and 298kwh/sqm here in the UK (or 223kwh, accounting for stove efficiency) where the average night time temperature has been 4.4c over the same period. Our house in Sweden is a totally normal 1957 built house with geothermal heating. Our house here is a totally normal little farmhouse, built in two stages in 1860 and 1930. I think that this is illustrative of the biggest issue we have in the UK. Our buildings are so thermally inefficient that we might as well be leaving the windows open. It's like driving a car with a hole in the fuel tank. 50 years of north sea oil means 50 years of becoming accustomed to cheap heat and not having to think about insulation. Norway treated their oil and gas bonanza very differently.

Her voice is like nails on a chalkboard to me. There are plenty of pleasant northern accents (I say that with grandparents from Rawtenstall and Sheffield) but hers is not one of them. It might be a tiny bit prejudiced of me to suggest that people with extreme regional accents make a bit of an effort to communicate in a flatter, more accessible manner, but given that the purpose of communication is to communicate clearly, her thick NW parlance inhibits her ability to reach people outside of her geographical area.

Almost any firewood cut and split now (to normal 10" log sizes) will be perfectly dry by September if stacked in a windy place outside. No need to even cover it. A Somerset summer is fairly hot and dry, and some species would take only 6-8 weeks to dry (poplar, larch, spruce etc). Try local tree surgeons. Otherwise forestry companies like myself can supply lorry loads, but you need the storage space and access.

The green technology initiative is one of efficiency for me. I don't believe that I can individually make much of a difference, but if my house has a 15kw solar array on it's roof, heat pump heating (both ground and air source) and we have a couple of electric vehicles, we're pretty much self sufficient in terms of energy use. Work lorry and forestry machine excepted. This is our plan for the next few years once we've moved to Sweden. Transporting energy (in any form) any distance is wasteful. Given that payback periods of solar are now so short, it makes perfect sense to install. Combine that with increased insulation and heat pumps and you'll laugh in the face of increases in the energy price cap

I don't, but I can look at it when we are there next month.

We just got our first electricity bill for the month of February for our house in Sweden. We've left the ground source heat pump system set to 18c, and it has used an average of 29.5 kwh/day to heat 240 square metres. That is (by my reckoning) incredibly efficient. When we were there last month, the house felt very warm and comfortable even at that temperature. No temperature gradients, draughts or cold spots. We're still planning to put in air source heating for two rooms, as much to give us cooling in summer as heat in winter. Installation costs are a fraction there of what they are here. And failing that, there is a stove and a fireplace and firewood is 1/3 price there compared to here. Too cheap to be worth considering producing it yourself.

He's beautiful, and not stupid if he's found the heat that quickly! What's the plan for him? Come to work dog or home dog?

Dear Gardeners Question Time, My wife keeps complaining that I can't find her clematis. Please advise. Sincerely

Surely, if you're offering an escort, a brothel would be a more suitable swap?

I am devasted to announce that today we had to put Katie to sleep. 9 months after developing endocarditis, she quite suddenly went downhill, developing arrhythmia to go with her heart failure. Letting her go was the very hardest thing I've had to do. I'm absolutely distraught. Those of you that knew her will know that she was truly a one in a million dog. The perfect balance of complete idiot and loyal and devoted companion. She would do anything, go anywhere and got on with everyone and everything. Apart from cats of course, of which she had a terrified fascination! We took her to the top of munros, swimming across lochs, on boat trips to seal watch and she was my constant companion at work for nearly 11 years. She was never a liability, always friendly to everyone and never barked or showed any aggression. She had an tireless fascination with small furry things on four legs. We had guinea pigs for a long time, and in all honesty they were her pets. She'd watch them (or their run) for hours without breaking concentration. Never any intent to harm them though - they broke out more than once and Katie didn't touch them. She's always been there as part of our family and adapted seamlessly when our older daughter arrived nearly 8 years ago. It was infact at Katie that Hanna first properly laughed. The girls have been really attentive through her illness and will no doubt miss her terribly. Katie was truly irreplaceable.

I've blocked them from my memory!

Hi all, I'm exploring all possibilities of how to close up my business in the UK before heading to Sweden in summer and selling the Vimek and Kranman is part of that plan. The processor is definitely for sale as I don't have further need for it. In short, it's a P25B, diesel 24hp Kubota, full lights, lots of spares, just over 800 hrs on the clock. An excellent little machine that doubles the output of a man when first or second thinning conifer (provided it's fairly clean) and increases the speed of the forwarding. Costs about the same as a chainsaw to run. It's £20k plus VAT, fully serviced and inspected. The Vimek is something I'm considering taking to Sweden. There is a dearth of used machines at the moment and I'm not quite in the price range for a new machine at the moment. I've bottomed out the customs status of it with both UK and Swedish Customs and due to the customs code it came into the country on, it can be exported without charge. It seems rather daft to take it back to it's country of origin, but needs maybe must. But in the mean time, I'll advertise it here. It's currently got 2760hrs on the clock, and it's in daily use. By the time I'm done with it on it's current job, it'll likely be 2900hrs. I'm presently on a job that is absolutely perfect for it. It's on a country park/caravan site, with small tracks and a need to be incredibly tidy. It's hardly marking the ground, being very productive (45-50t a day) and using very little diesel (about 35 litres a day - important to consider in these times). I can run through the financials of this machine, but it's got a niche that is fairly lucrative. The Woodland Trust especially love it and will pay extra to have it on site versus a tractor trailer combination. The machine is meticulously serviced and maintained and comes with a grab tank, a back up towable bowser (though it's a bit rough and ready), new band tracks, new wheel chains and cameras front and back. I can put you in touch with my mechanic who has been responsible for all the maintenance over the past year and a bit. The Vimek is £80k plus VAT. Please get in touch if you're serious and I can go into more detail of how to be profitable as a low impact set up in England with these machines. If no one wants the Vimek here, I'll just export it to Sweden and continue using it there

Well bugger that! 😬 I intend to spend our first midsommar there (which will be 2023) down at the beach with the kids. We'll walk the 5 minutes home and watch the sun set from one of the balconies overlooking the garden and forest. Though I'm not allowed to shoot the deer in the garden (of which there are many). My wife has forbidden it. Plus it's technically illegal!

Well I wouldn't say that I hate the place! 😁 There has been a widening of the gap between the richest and the poorest here in the UK over the past 30 years or so, accelerated in the past 10-15. It's much more apparent here in southern England than in Scotland (IMO). I think that the quality of life is dropping pretty quickly now too, with unprecedented pressures on personal finances, coupled with tax rises and public service cuts. I'm not sure what is going to be left in terms of government budget in a decade or so, if interest rates rise and public debt has to be serviced. I have no idea what the answer is really. Any notion that I think might affect reasonable change is too controversial or culturally incompatible I think. I just feel very lucky to be in a position to move to country where fundamentally everyone seems to be a lot less stressed and a lot healthier. That said, I've not yet been in Sweden for Midsommar, where reputedly several months worth of alcohol are drunk in one boozy, frog dancing evening!

Indeed. The joke (and it's always funnier when you explain it) is that no-one so visually impaired as to require Braille would ever need access to a Pilot's Lounge

Very true. Typo with a space instead of a B. I shall go and correct my error.

Bloody machine abuse if you ask me. That sort of thing never happened to me.... 😬😄

Is it not the case that the people of Ukraine have the right to self determination? This last month or so has done nothing but bolster the case that Ukraine wants to get as far away from Russia as is humanly possible. I fully acknowledge that all governments have their skeletons, all have their corruption, all have their agendas. However, sending columns of war machines into cities under the pretence of expunging nazis that don't exist puts Russia in a class of it's own at the moment.

This thread is pretty depressing. A whole load of keyboard warriors arguing about something that none of us really know anything about. Fundamentally, it comes down to one thing. Naive, misinformed young Russian men are being sent to invade a country under false pretence and a great many of them are paying with their lives. But worse than that, millions of civilians in Ukraine are being subjected to terror, displacement, injury and death for nothing more than the war games of men more powerful than them. This whole farce is so utterly without warrant, so totally pointless and such a stain on our civilisation that I struggle to see a way out. I cannot see Putin ever backing down, and given that Ukraine and Poland in 1939 seem to have many similarities, where next? With over 17 million square kilometres, you'd really think that Russia had enough bloody territory...

Sweet FA diesel available north of Exeter. What's it like in your 'hood? The bowser of red diesel is starting to look very appealing again....

The fire is running fairly cool. The flue thermometer is intended to be located on the flue, which should be cooler than the body of the stove. Resite the thermometer and try running it with the temp half way through the grey.