Squaredy

I have used Dropbox for years, works well as long as you remember not to update a file before the system has synchronised when you switch a laptop or whatever on. Mind you I am the only user -not sure how it would work if miltiple users were involved.

And everyone seems oblivious to what a good timber it is. I have an Alder kitchen, bathroom floor, clock, in fact any indoor furniture is great in Alder. Frustrating thing though is I so rarely get offered Alder logs as everyone just thinks of it as firewood!

You may be able to buy a single size tap from eBay for a few quid. You can even make one from a high tensile bolt if you are stuck - it just takes a couple of minutes.

What this thread shows is it is very easy to confuse different problems. Air pollution can be caused by burning wood - with possible health implications if too much is done in one area. Burning wood does not however cause climate change. Yes it releases carbon into the atmosphere, but it is part of a balanced cycle, with new growth absorbing carbon. De-forestation is a major cause of climate change, but tree maintenance and management in the UK is not de-forestation. Running a chipper fueled by fossil fuels is of course a small contributor to climate change, as are leaf blowers, chainsaws, tractors, road vehicles etc. So as one poster said, it would be better to leave brash on site to rot, or indeed to burn on site. For many reasons this is often not desirable. But the original point is a good one, perhaps chipping should not be the default position?

Looks like normal Oak but with wide sapwood. Thanks for the pics!

Got any pictures? I have a couple of stems here I have been putting off milling. My research has given me conflicting information. One source I found a while back stated that Turkey Oak is the famous Wainscote Oak as used in Houses of Parliament (which of course has amazing medullary rays) but other sources I found give other info. Holm Oak I know has amazing rays, but is usually bendy and splits really badly. I would love more info on this. Sadly I am a bit too far away from Surrey to consider a lorry load as the OP is offering but I would like to know for the future.

Work out timber cost, then add 50%. Estimate how many days it will take per door and double it and multiply by your required daily rate. If you are applying paint or any finish add at least a day for that plus cost of the paint. Depending on how well equipped you are and how skilled and whether you do proper mortise and tenon joints etc, I would say it is 6 days minimum and could be much more. Timber is surely going to be £300 in decent quality softwood or maybe £600 in Douglas Fir or Larch (if you can find it dry which is unlikely) or £1000 in Sweet Chestnut. Or tropical hardwoods would be ideal if you like de-forestation so consider Idigbo or Iroko. I doubt any normal joinery shop would do them for less than £1500 to £1800 in cheap timber.

I wouldn't risk my re-saw on nails or my Lucas Mill! I know you can get blades designed to cope with nails but normal TCT can chip or get broken off altogether. At least with a band mill the blade is quick to change and costs about £22 new so not so much at stake!

There is a guy with his own mobile splitter who lives in Pwllmeyrick who is on facebook as Dennis' Tree Services. He may be able to help you.

Yeah re-sawing reclaimed beams is rarely worthwhile. I have done a few recently and charge the same hourly rate for de-nailing as for the sawing. Inevitably the sawing is just a tiny part of the cost. A friend asked me to do one in the summer and said he had de-nailed it. We put it on the forklift and my wife removed another 77 nails before we re-sawed it. Three hours de-nailing, 30 mins sawing.

I think you will have to enlighten me - what exactly is a soapstone surround? I have tried googling it but this hasn't really told me what it is. Wikipedia tells me Soapstone is a metamorphic rock with good heat storage capacity, so is this the key? I am guessing it is not a cheap option....? And not good for native wildlife, so maybe not good to promote?

I have just been totally fooled into thinking I was watching a Marsh Harrier, but it turns out it is a very realistic kite. Do Network Rail employ such measures around overhead wires? It is right next to the newly electrified South Wales main line in the Gwent Levels. Would birds pose a hazard to a train? I am no birdie but I get excited about wildlife, and then my wife spots the string! She can’t stop laughing.

Photos would be a real help. I also suffered subsidence recently but luckily due it being my own tree, the 'solution' was easy - it was removed by the insurance company. But to be fair although my tree was the obvious cause there was another much more serious cause. My house is built on shrinkable clay with foundations around 400mm deep. New builds in my street have 1000mm foundations specified by building control now. So the real fault lies with the prevalent building regulations 90 years ago. My house is always going to be at risk.

What you are describing Saul is if I understand you correctly a small version of a pump storage power station. There are a number of them in Scotland and at least one in Wales. I think they should build more. For that matter I think there could be much better use of hilly areas with hydro power. There is a fairly small (42 acres) reservoir near me which has been empty for years as maintenance is carried out by Welsh Water. They should so use the opportunity to install hydro power whilst they are at it. Even if they only get a small amount of electricity - it all helps.

You make a very very good point, I also dislike the plastic based insulation materials, they are themselves unsustainable. But I think you also underestimate the cost of electrical heating. Currently electricity is around three times the price of natural gas. So without insulation an average house with a current heating bill of say £1000 per year (natural gas) will cost £3000 per year with electricity. Unless of course renewably generated electricity eventually becomes much much cheaper. And of course you are ignoring the extra comfort in a home which does not get too hot in the summer or freezing cold in the summer, Maybe the solution is vastly improved insulation with natural materials. For example wool, straw etc. I am aware this may give rise to problems with mice and other critters, but I assume there are ways around this? My own house I am toying with the idea of adding 50mm western red cedar external cladding (which I will mill and dry of course). If I ever manage this I would expect a much drier house and a reasonable increase in insulation.

I don't know enough about new builds to really comment, but I agree old houses need drastic improvement. Insulation is possible, but to do it properly is very very difficult and expensive. My brother lives in a 1920's end of terrace in Bristol, brick built with no cavity. He has recently had 100mm external insulation added, partly funded by the local authority. It has been done well, but there are still problems, as windows, doors, downpipes etc were all designed without this extra 4 inches of wall thickness. On the plus side, the house is now much more pleasant inside in all weather and heating costs have decreased a lot. It would look a lot better if all houses in the street had been done, but only about half were. I would love to insulate the outside of my house too but I am not yet sure what if any approach will work. My lounge has two external walls and a very nice but very cold large bay window and if the rad gets hot enough we recon we have done well if it reaches 20 degrees C on a cold evening. In the morning it will be down to about 13 degrees after a really cold night. It is brick built with a cavity, and some damp but a lot less damp than it used to as we have had the cavity wall insulation removed. As John Seymour said in one of his books, insulating old houses to a high standard needs to become a huge industry in the UK.

And put aside a lot of time to keep maintaining it.

If you have an Axminster store in your area you can go there and have a demo of Tormek and other systems. Their staff are only too willing to show this sort of thing in my experience.

Why do people think farming is subsidised? Because it is. 3 billion per year roughly in the UK. Is cheap food really a benefit? Maybe food waste and obesity might be reduced if people valued food more?

I am no expert I will admit, but farming in the UK makes more money from subsidies than selling their products. And to be specific, don't small farms receive something called the Single Farm Payment? A relative of mine who is a cow farmer certainly does and it is very important to him. So as I said livestock farming is heavily subsidised. Who do so many farmers neglect their woodlands and work their fields hard? Because the agriculture is so much more heavily encouraged financially than the forestry. Wales alone has around 150,000 acres of unmanaged hardwood woodland. When did you last see a field that has not been touched for 70 years?

I have been reading this thread with interest. Fair play Jonathon you are good at starting interesting threads. I think anyone who doesn't see the down side of the high property prices in the UK is being a little naive. A lot of people have benefited from the high price of property and land....mainly land owners and anyone who owns more than one house especially. And of course anyone who inherits a house or a share of. The majority of people in the UK have done very nicely out of this bubble. I may do one day when my parents/in-laws pop their clogs. But you have to feel for anyone trying to get their foot on the property ladder. That is really what Big J is talking about. OK he is wanting to do it slightly differently from most, but before the last 20 years of crazy property value increases it would have been probably quite feasible for him to do exactly what he is suggesting. For an average decent family home in Devon to be worth maybe £350,000 when Devon is full of people in the tourist industry earning maybe £17,000 per year is a huge problem. The system is broken. Same problem in London and most of South East England. Many people can only ever rent (at a rate that means they will never be able to save up a deposit) or hope they will one day inherit. It is a very sad situation, not for the majority who are doing very nicely thank you, but for the millions who may never be able to get on the property ladder, and are stuck in a cycle of ever-increasing rent. I for one think that if Brexit means the property market crashes, or at least drops 20% or so this could be very welcome relief for a lot of people. I also want to just say that it is so ironic that as this thread highlights, the only type of activity that is fully supported and for which an AOC is likely to be granted is exactly the sort of activity that is contributing vastly to global warming and food insecurity. Sustainable profitable forestry is not allowed, yet unsustainable animal agriculture is encouraged and heavily subsidised. And when I say unsustainable animal agriculture, I am not suggesting all animal husbandry is unsustainable, but if you take a look at the bigger picture such farming is most certainly unsustainable.

So it is not going on the road at speed? In which case balancing no problem. Go for it but watch some YouTube vids for instruction. Most difficult part is breaking the bead.

Yes have done it several times. Not too easy and will take much longer than you imagine. And it will not be balanced. Two questions really: is it worth it; and what type of vehicle is it?

Yeah maybe that is all they want. OP didn’t say and I assumed product liability. Theft and accidental damage cover should be cheap enough. Proving the value could be tricky if it was pinched.

I could carry out a risk assessment for you for a modest fee....