Big J

I bloody hate the wind!

Your best production with a sawmill is with 40-80cm diameter logs. I'd steer clear of the biggest stuff and I'd just buy by the lorry load rather than single logs. It works out more economically in the end.

My brother usually works away three nights a week, so being at home all the time, he said that he and my sister in law are working on creating one of these: I would have thought that seeing my loony daughters (2 and 5) all the time would have been enough of a contraceptive, but I was wrong!

Pretty good, but you need consistent power and heat to the container so can't just be when there is power generated by the panels. I could pop by tomorrow to run you through what to do if you want? I've got not much else to do at the moment!

I think we must have run about 20 kiln loads through it over the years, so about £120k worth of wood (at least) for a £1200 set up cost and about £10k in running costs.

I did a DIY kiln build thread on Arbtalk many years ago:

Kiln drying hardwoods is a doddle. Can be done inexpensively and is very cheap to set up. Happy to talk you through it if you drop me a line

For many people in forestry and agriculture, the brutally wet winter has cost them a fortune, and the first chance at getting out and trying to make amends, the country shuts down with covid 19. It's hard to pinpoint exactly, but I'm sure that the ground conditions cost us about £20k off our bottom line compared to a normal winter.

30/03 - 180 31/03 - 381 01/04 - 563 It's climbing more quickly here than in just about any other country. May I ask, why did you have a bee in your bonnet with me and my numbers yesterday? It seemed a little odd.

I don't think he's bragging. He's just illustrating the differences between different countries. I do agree that the situation here is terrible though. We'll keep going for as long as we can, which will likely be when we stop being able to get parts for machines when they break.

I'm just casting the bait out there and waiting for a bite! ?

Man I love Germany ? Those cats know how to fight a pandemic!

No I didn't: The terms "I reckon" and "speculation" are anything but unequivocal. It's just a guess, based on the upward trajectory of the numbers.

I don't know as regards China. Transparency isn't their strong suit, but they did implement containment on a level not really possible in western society.

You are: A) missing the point B) not understanding how exponential growth rates work We are in the early stages of a pandemic. There isn't anywhere that has experienced those death rates yet, but it's coming. The fundamental factor is that once people are put into ventilators, their survival rate is poor. The US will experience the worst of it I feel owing to Trump's cavalier attitude, the brutally unequal healthcare system and the late stage at which any form of lockdown or social distancing was implemented.

I don't know why you are so fixated on this? A prediction is nothing more than speculation, even in the best of circumstances. Given that we are 10-14 days behind Italy and Spain, and given that both of their death rates are close to 1000 already, I don't think that's it's much of a leap to suggest that our death rate may be higher as we have very few ICU beds, inadequate NHS funding, the most densely populated country in Europe and a population that can't help congregating at the local beauty spots when it's sunny! To counter, why do you not think it will reach that level?

It's pure speculation, but based on the trajectory of the exponential growth rate we're already experiencing, coupled with our chronically underfunded health service. Then add densest population in Europe and a general distaste for government directives and 1500/day doesn't seem that excessive. We're already 25% the way there by today's figures.

The majority of the early cases were in the sub-40 demographic, with the infected principally comprising of returning skiers coming back from Italy. Extensive testing and contact tracing, as well as 4.5 times as many ICU beds as the UK and a better funded health service have certainly helped. They are seeing an increasing number of cases in more vulnerable groups now though.

Coronavirus Update (Live): 854,608 Cases and 42,043 Deaths from COVID-19 Virus Outbreak - Worldometer WWW.WORLDOMETERS.INFO Live statistics and coronavirus news tracking the number of confirmed cases, recovered patients, and death toll by country due to the COVID 19 coronavirus from Wuhan, China... For tracking the numbers. It's morbid I know, but anyone that knows me knows I'm fascinated by numbers.

I'm not sure I quite follow. Not in this country no. The issue is that the once a patient is put onto a ventilator in the ICU, they have a greater than 50% chance of dying, and it takes weeks. So the lag time between peak infection and peak deaths is 2-4 weeks at least. The infection rate in the UK is also artificially low due to inadequate testing and contact tracing.

For context, Spain had the same number of infections 10 days ago and a lower daily and total death rate. They are a much more geographically dispersed population and have implemented a more stringent lockdown too, as well as having 50% more ICU beds than us. It could be worse. We could be in the States with Donald 'I'm a lying, incompetent fuckwit with not a clue how to manage a kindergarten let alone a country with a pandemic' Trump.

We're the most densely populated country in Europe and were the least able to adhere to advisory social distancing measures until they were mandatory 7 days ago. It'll peak in 14-20 days I think, and given that today was the worst day for deaths by almost 50% (at 381), 1500 plus is sadly not unrealistic.

I agree. We aren't testing enough, so it therefore looks as though the mortality rate is artificially high and the infection rate low. The reality is that a great many more people are infected that the stats suggest, but the death toll will increase substantially for at least another 2 weeks in the UK. I reckon it'll top out at 1500-2000 a day and then come down again, but that's just speculation.

Quintupled. No, but then people rarely die of just one thing. It is for many, the straw that breaks the camel's back. The one commonality in the elevated mortality rate that the West is presently experiencing is the presence of a positive covid 19 diagnosis. That cannot be ignored.

I watched the video. I agree with a few of the points, but I do think he is largely wrong. He's underplaying the severity of Covid 19 in the hardest hit countries. For instance, the typical death rate in Italy is 10.65 deaths per 1000 population. That extrapolates to 1765 deaths per day in the country. When you consider that the covid 19 positive deaths have averaged about 750/day for the last 11 days, it's hardly insginificant. And this is in a country that is in total lockdown. I agree that the care of the elderly is fantastically expensive, but I don't think that there is some elaborate scheme to off the octogenarians with a killer infection. He talks about the infection as being overblown in it's seriousness if we're not at 50-100k deaths by mid April. Well, we're presently at 42k, and the total dead has increased 7 fold in the last 2 weeks. It may well increase 7 fold again by mid April due to the largely uncontrolled spread in Africa, as well as the clusterfuck that has been the US approach to containing it and limiting it's spread. So quite possibly 300,000 dead by then. In the scheme of things, and compared to many other afflictions, it's not exceptional, but consider the fact that even though we have massively disruptive social distancing and national quarantining, the death rate where the deceased tests positive for Covid 19 is in some countries almost 50% of the normal daily death rate. I think that the national responses have been too severe, in the main. More should be done to protect the elderly and vulnerable, but equally, more effort should have been made to protect the economies of the world as recession and eventual depression will kill many more people than Coronavirus. Tough times, and I'm glad it's not me having to make the big decisions.