Stereo

I got Ben laws the woodland way for Xmas and a great read it is too. I'm now considering more hazel coppice as it grows well here, is a great firewood and also has value for other uses. I'm thinking of that with oak and ash standards and on the boggy land mainly willow or pop coppice for fuel use unless I can find a local market for basket willow. Alder is another strong possibility on the boggy stuff for firewood or charcoal.

I've got a couple m3 of dead standing elm which I have saved for the Christmas week and beyond. All split last year. It's hard as rock and dry as a bone. If only I could get this organised all the time.

I would have thought with such a seasonal thing, it would be far better to consider another income source for the other half of the year? If it were me, I would spend the winter delivering logs and taking advantage of the cold weather to put in some serious work on next year's supply. In the summer? Something else. Tree work? Gardening? Building sheds? I dunno.

I burn a lot of softwood and playing Devil's Advocate here, I can see why people don't like it. We know all about the fast seasoning, the fast growing, the (usually) easier processing. But, the problem I find with burning it exclusively is that it's hard work. You have to load the stove more often in most cases. Not really a problem for me as I love mucking about with fires. The main problem I find is when you let the fire die down too much. No bed of glowing embers here, just dead, black ash. I put a lot of softwood through our Esse stove as I find it's great for heating the water but if you go out for a few hours you better have a chunk of ash or Syc to hand or you will come back to a dead fire and that's a whole load of work. Chuck a nice big ash log on there and you'll have a bed of coals to chuck more soft on and you're away. Is this stove design? Our Esse W25 seems to be one of the most efficient burners around and with dry wood, extracts every bit of heat out. How do the Scandinavians cope? Is it just accepted that you need to tend more regularly or do their stoves make a better job of softwood?

I quite like Pop as a firewood. Not much experience of Willow. It just needs treating properly once felled. Pop splits easily and is a clean wood. But it needs dry storage really. I agree with the idea of leaving something to your kids (they'll probably concrete it). It's just that I want to see some return while I'm still fully active. That said, my old man is still out with the saw and he's 75 next week. I also want some useable fuel in the next say 5 years so that I'm not just pulling wood out which should be left alone. I'm thinking a mix of poplar and ash. Areas in the wood which are already throwing up sycamore I think I will coppice and see how that develops once a few of the standards are out of the way.

OK, thanks.

What with do you reckon? I've got a pro spray gun which I could hook up to my compressor. Or a garden sprayer? Is it thin enough to spray with one of them?

THanks, I'll check that out. Reckon I've got about 70m2 to do.

Problem is when you are the wrong side of 40 and you are told 15 years to the first harvest, you start doing sums........

Yeah. I'm looking at those sort of products now. I'm looking at replacing at least a quarter of the worst panels with plastic lights as it needs more anyway. Doing this might give me easier access to the roof from a scaffold tower inside once the old panels are off. I can get up through each gap with a pressure washer and get all the moss off and treat as required.

What's wrong with pop? Don't a certain big log supplier major in it? It's a good hardwood surely. Anyone got any to give away in Devon?

Thanks, it's pretty old. Maybe 1960's is my guess. I really wouldn't fancy walking on the sheets to be honest. I was told that it was highly likely there would be asbestos in the sheets. Who knows?

It's not like there are holes you can see through. There are a couple little cracks but I can repair these with glassfibre or something similar no probs. It's really just become porous over the years, probably because all the moss sitting on it has kept it wet all the time. Maybe the moss itself has attacked it in some way. In heavy rain you just get a general wetness on the underside which turns to drips when it hits the purlins. It's not doing the timbers much good either. I really need something to get into the matrial and then harden up like PVA would but it has to be cheap. Thanks for all the suggestions, I'll check them out. It's actually not a bad time to do it as the rain keeps it damped down so there is much less risk of nasty dust flying about. I wear a dust mask anyway when messing with it. Plus, always use ladders / boards etc. It's a long way down inside.

I've got a barn which has a lean-to bit on the back. The whole thing is done in that big 6 type concrete fibre sheeting they used to use all the time. I am aware that it may have some asbestos content. The problem is that the lean-to bit has had a lot of moss on it as it's not as steep and this has led to deteriation of the sheets over time and it leaks quite a bit. I've cleaned off a few sheets as I was told that this would help but it's made it a lot worse. For one reason or another, I don't want to replace the roof at this time. There is a longer term plan in place but for now what I need is a quick and most importantly cheap repair. If possible I want to keep the sheets in place. It's about 5m x 18m in size. Most of the paints etc. I have looked at are horrendously expensive. So I'm looking for a bodge which will last a few years. There are no real holes, it's just become porous by the look of it. So I was thinking something to bond it up like thick PVA solution or maybe a very wet wash of sand and cement? Or just cement and water with waterproofing stuff in it? Any ideas?

Google ranking is far more dependant on inward links of which you have none so I would place little value on that aspect. If you set up a website about electric wurzel monkies and got it into google by a simple forum / ebay / facebook campaign you would probably be number 1 for 'electric wurzel monkies' after a month or 2. Because there is no competition. Try getting it to number 1 for 'monkies' or 'electric' and you may struggle (a little bit). I just thought it was a nice looking site and people will pay for that. If it can be easily altered to another businesse's branding etc. then it just has some basic worth. About the same as getting a web developer to build you a brochure site I suppose.

Personally I would put some value on it but not much really. £500 as it's a nice looking site? Plus used value of any equipment. If you can point your buyer in the direction of some sales channels / customers you might ask a grand for it. It's very easy for many people to get where you have got to without too much effort so you are really looking for a specific customer. That's my take but I'm no expert.

It's just getting up on the roof I'm not keen on. I don't have all the climbing gear and don't want to do a Rodd Hull.

I could but I'm too tight! Thanks for the tips. I thought about a brush with a wire shank and putting a little bend in it then marking the poles so I can make sure it's in the right direction when it gets to the second 45. Our other stove is just a couple feet of enameled and then SS straight up and it takes me literally 10 minutes to sweep it a few times a year.

I've got a bit of a problem with the flue on our Esse. I'm not sure they did the best job on it (Hetas certified etc). We have a high ceiling and it's about 5 foot of single wall from the Esse vertically, then a 45 to the right. Then another 5 foot or so of single wall and another 45 upwards which is where it changes to SS double wall before it goes through the roof (single storey at this part of the house). For a start I find it impossible to get a brush around the second bend, it snags on something. So I either have to dismantle the vitreous part every year or get up on the roof to sweep the SS part which just goes straight up about 20 foot to the ridge of the rest of the house. I have tried standard rods and brushes and even bought some white flexy ones with a brush with a ball on the end. I even trimmed the bristles on this one to make it more conical but no luck. The problem is that after the brush goes around the first bend, I guess it's then being forced against the bottom edge of the diagional pipe so has no reason to go around the second bend. Couple questions really. Any ideas on how to get around this bend from below and also, should they have used so much single wall pipe? It's a pig to sweep as I guess it gums up more as it's colder. The SS stuff comes up shiny with a single sweep with a soft brush.

I'm in the same boat and go from Sycamore to Ash to Poplar and so on. I want a harvest soon but I'm buring Ash at the moment and it is by far the best firewood really. Like sycamore, a lovely ember bed. I'm looking at sycamore because it thrives where I am but it does go some damn mouldy in a pile. Poplar will grow fast and be a good fuel but is harder to manage once felled. I guess a mix...I dunno. I'm still at the planning stage.

I loves my husky gloves. Very snug and lets face it, there are some serious creepy crawlies out there! Really seriously, I have some kind of reaction to some kind of bug which lives in alder bark (or ivy, I can't work out which). If that little red critter bites me I'm in bed for 2-3 days with a fever and it gets worse every time. So, I wear sleeves and gloves whatever the weather. Wetness is a problem. I spent today splitting up some ash which has been sitting on the ground all year. Very soggy business and yes I can see that point. But I kept my gloves on. I loves my husky gloves.

I'm honestly not sure what thype 1 and 2 is but my mum has been insulin depnedant since she was 21 (now 77). I guess that's type 1? Anyway, I grew up knowing that my sweetie box might need to be raided at any minute (of course I didn't mind). Things were not as controlled in the 70's and 80's when I was a kid, god knows what they were like in the 50's and 60's when she first got it. No daily blood tests and plenty of hypos (insulin reactions as we called them then). I got quite good as a 10 year old, sorting out mum who was in a deep hypo and finding milk, sugar lumps, mars bars etc. when people had be idea what I was on about and thought she was a nutter. Things are obviously much better now with the control technology you type 1 guys have. It's still not a perfect science though when you have varying workloads etc. The point of my post? My mum is 77 and still in full health. Not blind or any of the other things they told here she would be and she's had the full version for well over 50 years. So, I suppose the point of the post is good luck and don't worry too much. Look after yourself, be open about it (I know a few people who try to hide it) and crack on.

Our stove is still going in the morning but we don't slumber it. I stack it out and get it raging before we go to bed. I'm guessing it really lasts a few hours but there are plenty of embers in the morning. Even when I try to let it go out I can leave it 24 hours and there are still glowing embers buried in the ash. A few bits of kindling in the morning and open her up, away she goes. Some softwood logs on next and the kettle is boiling in 15 minutes.

Jon, it's an Esse W23. Very good with the right wood but a bit fussy to be honest. I love it most of the time but it's fussy. The ember bed is probably the key. I looked at the fire about an hour after I took that snap and the sycamore had disintegrated into embers about maybe an inch or less square. The lump of oak was still a lump. It was hotter than the sun but that's what happens with oak. It sits there and everything around it goes cold. I prodded it and it fell to bits but it didn't do it on it's own. If you moniter a lump of oak it just reduces over time. Needs chopping into small chunks or mixing with a good ember bed wood like Sycamore or Ash etc.

Here's a lump of oak and sycamore log in our esse at the mo.