Squaredy

The brake lights on my Kia are activated by regenerative braking. I checked as this is something I was concerned about.

I did in the early days. Fairly simple really - plug it in and it is 7kw. So in one hour it eats 7 units of electricity. Even after 10 hours it has only used 70 units - about £10 when we bought it. About £15 now.

Yes. More in summer less in winter. We use ours on max regeneration always. It means you effectively do the majority of the braking by just easing off the accelerator, You only really use the brake pedal in emergency or if you fail to anticipate conditions ahead,

With electric cars, fuel economy is measured in miles per kilowatt-hour. My Kia gives around 4 miles per Kwh.

Once again we had a terrible experience when trying to charge our electric car in London. We went in to town for a musical last night and stayed in a hotel at Royal Oak. The first charge point we tried was in a closed garage, but still showing as available on the web. Second one needed a subscription. Then I tried the Tesla garage and they were very helpful but told me their 16 charge points were only for Teslas sorry. By this time we were out of time and had to go see our show. Next morning was better as we found a charge point at Tesco which not only worked but was free to use. Still had to download a pesky app but at least it worked. We need to get to a situation where any electric car can use any charge point, as long as the driver has means to pay. If an app is available to make it easy for those people who want an app then fine, but no petrol station in the country will refuse to sell you petrol or diesel without an app. Even the all night ones simply take card payments and have done for decades.

They may be the same batch of logs but that doesn't mean they are similar. I bet the fire that was so disappointing was with mainly oak that is not properly seasoned, and the earlier logs were other species which dry more easily. Oak logs you see take a very long time to dry, and if not properly dried will be worse than useless. You need to split a log and see what it looks like inside. If you have an accurate set of scales split a log, and split it again so you get a sliver from the middle of the log. Weigh it, put it in a hot oven for an hour or two and then weigh it again. Really wet timber will drop dramatically in weight. Fairly dry timber will not change much.

Agreed: wood is probably not really dry and chunky. If you want to prove this get some really dry wood maybe briquettes with kindling and your stove will work fine.

Well of course that is another option. I think my mill will take a debarker, I haven't looked into the cost of that.

Well, my little 6CFM compressor does it reasonably, but I think I can probably improve with a bit more power and maybe a different gun.

Mmmm thank you for the suggestion, might be a little overkill!

Lime is certainly the best carving timber in the uk. Known as basswood in the us.

For years I have wanted to get a better system for cleaning logs ready for milling. I like the idea of using an airblow gun fed from a compressor, but I have really no idea what type of gun and nozzle to get. We already have a simple PCL one which is OK, but can anyone make a better suggestion? There are loads on the market but what type is going to work best for removing mud and stones from bark? I know a water pressure washer would probably be more effective but I really don't want all that muddy water sloshing around. Thank you in advance to my fellow Arbtalker's!

Many many people have private water supply. My work site is fed from a spring and a series of collection chambers built decades ago. Council test the water yearly and each user has filters and ultraviolet treatment system. Improvements have been made over the years. When I say user there are three houses and my business and a tea room all fed off the same supply. My filters and UV system are serviced yearly and so far so good. Only problem we had was a few years ago when I inadvertently switched of the UV system and made myself Ill!

It depends what you call firewood prices. I buy decent Alder sawlogs for about £75 per ton delivered.

It’s rather nice, that’s what it is.

Well it is relatively quiet here in Newport South Wales, despite the red warning for wind. Any major wind further west yet or have we all been taken for a ride with the warnings of the worst storm since 1987?

I used to sell bundles of such off cuts but not so much now. I also used to cross cut them and dry them and sell as firewood but that takes way too much space and time. If I were bigger I would sell them for biomass but I don’t produce enough for this to be viable. I may simply give them away but even this takes time.

Always good demand for lime as timber. I have struggled for logs recently and am turning customers away.

My wife and I are woken up most Sundays about half six by leaf blowers on the golf course by me. Actually I don’t get woken by the blowers but by my wife ranting. I sometimes wonder if we should ask the council to intervene. For some reason during the week it is much later.

In the UK Hobbies used to produce a very similar machine - my dad had one in the forties and I used to use it as a kid. I still have it stored away - they are not at all rare and sadly not valuable. This is what they look like.

In my house we use a tumble drier only for all the small stuff which is a pain to hang out. Our washing line gets plenty of use. We use wooden pegs, and they are at least 30 years old. I know the plastic ones are rubbish but wooden ones are cheap and last ages if you don't leave them out in all weathers...

I do think the press are going a bit OTT about it though. It is housing costs in this country that are the real killer. There is no such thing as a cheap house in many areas whether you rent or buy. At least energy use most of us have some control over. Central heating can be turned down a couple of degrees; research can be done on which appliances and habits cost most (really easy with a smart meter). Even food inflation can be mitigated to a fair extent - how many people can really not save 5% or even 10% on their food bills if they really need to? I do get that a few people will struggle but genuine poverty is rare indeed in the UK. I don't think it helps when international bodies (and followed by the UK) say that you are "in poverty" if your income is less than 66% of the national average. On this basis I and my family have been in poverty most of my life.

Indeed - I had a Transit dropside until last year which had one properly fitted for its first owners (SSE). When I got around to taking it to the weighbridge one day I had a shock to discover that unladen weight of the vehicle was 2900kg. So I had a vehicle quite capable of carrying a ton or more of logs, but legally could only carry 600kg. On a trailer it could make more sense...

Hopefully we are moving to a situation where we are addressing the real problem (deer and lack of their predators in this case) so we don’t need to use plastic guards. Woodland Trust have totally stopped using guards.

Lime is very much still used for carving. I always sell out quickly when I can get hold of lime logs.