Stereo

I suffered with my back for many years until I went down like a sack of spuds at home and was prescribed serious pain meds to get off the floor. I used to get this pain that would be like being shot. I would just hit the floor no matter where or when. I finally dragged myself to an HNS physio and she has changed my life really. She made me do some excersizes and then promptly told me it was all in my head. I do have a dodgy back but she said my brain is putting it into lockdown every time things move a little further than they should. The last time it went I was stepping over a baby gate. Apparently I'm 'hyper-mobile' which means sometimes my joints go a bit further than they should. She told me about breathing and forcing my back to relax and also that the best thing is to get a good walk and move your arms and back in a natural way. She said a belt would be good if I had to do any heavy work but to carry on. I staggered into see this lady feeling like i was about to collapse in agony at any second and i strode out perfectly normally. No meds or anything. I also got a really, really, really good book called 'treat your own back' by robin Mckenzie. Highly recommended for those who generally suffer with a weak back. Obviously I am no expert and if you have real damage then you must take your docs advice but sometimes I think that laying flat out for days is not the answer. I think for many back issues posture, breathing and movement are the way forward.

We have a wood which we are going to bring back into management and there is a lot of big wood in there. It is mainly ash, oak, beech, over stood hazel coppice, sycamore and some sweet chestnut. Im looking to take a lot of firewood out but. Also save some of the best wood for building material. I have an idea to build a hut or shed in the wood. From its own trees. Which ones should I look to be milling? Obviously oak but there is not a massive amount and I want to leave any veteran oaks where they are.

I use a circular saw and cut across all the planks next to the ends which leaves kindling length planks ready for the hatchet. . This leaves a load of planks and usually 3 lengths with the blocks in. I've got a 300mm chop saw which will chop the ends up into blocks and they go straight in the stove if they are HT pallets and not chipboard.

Is it just me or isn't the concept of an airtight house just totally bonkers?

I too thought the pig shelter was inadequate. Not only from wind / rain but also sunshine. I'm no expert at all but it looked pretty poor to me.

UPS I would imagine from the price structure.

I thought it was pretty good to be honest. He did admit many times that he is very green but he's having a go at doing something worthwhile so hats off to him. I'm really looking forward to the next one. By the way, anyone think he had his head in the barbers chair removal position with that birch or was it just the camera angle?

I like cider. Can I get on telly?

I was 16 and out on the beers with some mates. It was a bit windy by midnight out so we decided to go up to Dartington woods and see what was going on. The night was a bit of a blur as we were pretty hammered but I do recall running through the woods laughing and all these crashing sounds around us. Pretty bloody stupid. The next day it was like some kind of apocalypse movie.

Amazing firewood but near impossible to split in lengths. Anything under six inch we cut very short and burn like that.

We used to get ebayers hot linking to our images. One way around it is to not use the image yourself and then change it to a text image saying 'Buy one get 2 free!' Or similar. Use your imagination.

I'm not that up on beeches to be honest. We tend to let ours get big. I haven't coppiced any but as far as I'm aware they are pretty fragile in terms of hard pruning. Others here will be better able to comment. In terms of a license, once the big stuff is out, you wouldn't need a licence to cut it after that as long as it's under a certain size I don't think. But you may need one if there is a lot of big stuff to fell initially. I believe coppice work is exempt.

I would keep it straight up and go through the roof with a seperate flue. Putting bends in has to be undesirable if it can be avoided.

I personally wouldn't thin if it's syc, ash or hazel. It seems to sort itself out quite well. I think hedgerows are totally neglected as a source of fuel. Some of the hedges we sold 20 years ago and have been left now contain tons and tons of firewood. It could be felled in sections and managed that way. The only problem I see with this is that in Devon, many hedges are road (or lane) hedges. Letting the trees grow up tends to shade the tarmac, make it damp, slippery and prone to more erosion. Not sure on the evidence to back that up other than my own experience.

The biggest issue I find with burning softwood is the lack of embers. If the fire dies down it goes cold quickly. I think a mix is good. We need to grow fast hardwoods like Syc and Ash and mix with the softs.

A mix of 70/30 soft to hard works best for me. 100% soft and your fire dies if you leave it too long. 100% hard it burns too cold unless kiln dried. I chuck pallet planks in with my coppiced hazel and alder fare and it burns long and hot. Plus I can rescue the fire if I forget it for too long.

We run a 93 and its rock solid.

The pick up is a 505. They were brilliant trucks. The 504 was good too. Only 2wd though.

Thanks for that. This looks like a solution for me.

I've been thinking about using all the piles of brash we get from our coppicing. I figured we need a machine which can chop it into 2" lengths and then somehow produce shrink wrapped logs. As you say though the question is what to wrap it in. It's a bit gutting feeling the heat off a brash fire and thinking it could be saving your gas bill instead.

Yeah. I'm looking for a better way to dismember pallets. At the mo I use a circular saw to take out the planks and then a big chop saw to chop up the ends. The only problem doing pallets with a chainsaw is the random nails and embedded stones. On the plus side most pallets we get these days are clean and heat treated. The old scummy ones must be getting burned up.

Do you reckon you could get a couple pallets in that? Standing up I mean.

I know of quite a few people who have stoves but don't use it as a main source of heat. It's more a social thing if they have guests. So they may just buy a cube a year or whatever. I'm guessing that's a large part of the market. I guess they probably actually pick up a net from the garage when they want a fire for the evening.

I would go for what hazel coppice with ash standards as that seems to be what works where I am. I'm not adverse to sycamore either. It's a great fast growing wood but does tend to dominate a bit. I have a small alder coppice which is coming along nicely with a few hazel and sycs in there as well. Seems to only grow near rivers where I am, not in the main woods at all.

Yeah, it's not about the money. Today I fought my way through 20 yards of nettles to confirm what I thought I saw. A ragged old hazel stump I had coppiced back to nothing in January. Now there is a stem which stands taller than me and plenty others following it. Plus some of the Alder sun shoots I had cut from the fallen tree, left in the river for 3 weeks and then roughly stuck in the soft ground are now trees. Makes your heart sing, or mine anyway.