Stereo

Thanks, I think I'll have to get the beech looked at as it's overhanging the land of a manor house and kids often play around it.

I have a couple trees on my land which have recently lost a big part of themselves. The first is a pretty old beech which is a wonderful old tree. The limb which came off was one I used to sit on as a child. It's split away from the body of the tree leaving a large wound. The second is a youngish Oak (maybe 20cm dia). It's like it was hit by lightning but I think it's just a weakness in the tree. A whole 'side' of the tree fell off, again leaving a large wound. I've noticed at Dartington that they paint such wounds with some sort of black gunk. Are these trees doomed? The oak could be logged without too much discussion as it's not a landmark. The beech is something else. It's one of 'those' trees which you feel you have no right to be messing with. A piece of history. Maybe I should take some pics next time I take the dogs out and post them up somehow.

So, according to that scientific report, the expensive and excellent Clearview 500 is no better than my Villager A Flat. Both are poor and inneficient. That said, when I fill our Villager up with dry wood and close the bottom inlets, it pumps out an enourmous amount of heat and burns for ages. It has the clean burn screen wash business which does seem to work. More confused than ever now. I can get a big old Clarke stove (made in China probably) for a couple hundred quid as we sell their tools. I'm still not convinced I should spend near on 2 grand on a few bits of steel welded together and painted black. Hmmm.

So is it the case that my Villager A Flat has fire bricks to protect itself from the heat of the fire and this means that a lot more heat goes up the shute instead of out through the body of the stove and into the room? I'm still considering a smaller Clearview for the lounge and then move the Villager down to the shed with a back boiler as it will do the job down there well enough and is nice and big so we can chuck in all kinds of offcuts and stuff we get.

Peter, that is an outrageous comment and I hope you can find the new man in you and take it all back. We are burning every night at the mo in our Esse which heats up our heatstore for domestic hot water and we get to cook stuff on it as well. Saves us a packet on gas and is very eco thingy. I only light the other fire when it gets to -60c and then I still walk around in just my pants and have the windows and doors open.

Have you tried pricing in pasties? Us likes they down yer.

Meindl used to be known for being a wide boot. Not sure if they are now. I still wear a Meindl general purpose walking boot every day. Very good footwear maker IMHO.

Pretty down on the Villagers huh? An honest question. Why are Clearview so good? You mention that they are more efficient. How do they achieve that? I'm not being a plank, genuinely interested. I see a stove as a big black metal box with stuff on fire in it. I can see that boiler design may affect the efficiency but for a non boiler stove? How does a Clearview get more heat out of the logs and into the room? As I said, genuine question. We've been in various rented places and they all had Villagers and we have one now which I bought from a farm shop when I was converting our barn as that's all I knew.

Thanks, Woodwarm and Clearview seem a bit pricey for what we are after. Another option we have is to get a higher output burner in the house and move the Villager down to the shed with the optional 10,000btu boiler added at a later date which would probably be adequate. That way we could get a higher out to water burner for the house and feed it into the heat store to complement the Esse.

Best thing is that the shoots on the tree we felled are already 4ft high and will be firewood in a couple years.

Sycamore. A big, multi stem tree which got felled to make way for a phone cable last winter has been split small and stacked out under a tarp for a year and I'm very impressed. It burns as hot as anything and lasts for ages. I'm seriously thinking of adding this to our coppice plans alongside Alder. It grows like a weed down here in Devon. I know the forestry lot want it irradicated from the UK but it seems like a good, fast growing fuel to me. I would compare the burn performance to well seasoned beech or ash.

We are looking for a wood burner for our office. The longer term plan is to tie this in with a water tank and a couple rads in the future but for cost and time reasons, this year we want just a burner. So, we need a machine that we can install with just a flue and nothing else but one which can be fitted with a back boiler in the future. I'm looking at the villager range at the mo as I have an A Flat in the house I am happy with and I see the C range is around £360 and can be fitted with a boiler retrospectively. Any better ideas arond that price range? Would stretch a bit more for a top class option but not too much.

'They' say that burying lines is way more expensive than pylons. I've seen a site where they were burying lines and they cut a track about 100 yards wide (I kid you not). No idea why and I still can't work it out. We have an IP gas main put through our fields a good few years back and that has to be just as dangerous and they just removed a good bit of turf with a swing shovel and then put a 'normal' trench in and stuck the pipe in. I would imagine that power lines may be laid in trunking or tubing of some sort on such a scale but even so, need it be so expensive? I doubt it.

South Brent any good?

I would start at a good price. The burning season is long enough and if you find you are landed with it you can always flog it off after Xmas when many sellers will be running short. Don't be a busy fool. You'll only drive the local price down and then nobody wins except the customer.

You are probably right Baba, land will be a good thing to hold in times to come. Especially if it is fuel producing.

Alders are known for it. We always take a stun gun into the wood which stops them for enough time to fell them.

As far as we are aware, recip links have no value for SEO. Google has very sophisticated ways of working out link exchange setups. Some even say it's negative as you are linking off your site which takes weight away from your pages. Don't mean to stick my oar in but we live and die by google results in our business.

I'm not sure. If I invite the woodland trust I'll have to drink all the beer myself before they arrive. I may learn less than from a bunch of drunken arborists as I'll be face down in a badger set.

These straps also fail with age. I recently tried to strap a length of drain pipe onto the Hilux but it wouldn't go tight. I grabbed the strap and gave it a yank and it snapped clean in two. On further investigation, I was able to break it with my bare hands. It was initially rated at 1000kg. Not the same thing as in this story but it pays to think about how long your straps have been left in the cab damp or left lying in the sun.

It's steep, about 4 acres I guess with a flat bit on the top. Very slatey(?) ground so big trees tend to fall quite often as the roots can't get into the ground. I haven't done anything with it as access is a pain but we plan to put in a track or 2 and get it working in some way. I just don't want to steam in and balls it up through ignorance. Guess I need some expert advice and education. There are some mighty, mighty trees in there and some rubbish as well.

So, I have been watching all this stuff on woodland management and I look at my wood, the majority of which is big stuff with some interesting new ash growth at the top of the wood which is to become coppice. Under the widely spaced standard grow a multitude of ferns and there are plenty of rabbit holes and badger sets. I'm being told that standards aren't natural and that the only way to manage the wood is to knock them down and get some new growth going. Considering many of them were my age when my great grandad was in nappies, I'm not sure I can do it. Some of them older I guess. What right have I? Lot's of firewood though. Hmmmm.

Boar seems the obvious choice. Plus you get free meat. I was going to do this with our wood but had a dream about a lone male hiding away in the woods and never being seen for many years until he was massive and then coming and killing me a bit and eating my brains whilst I was working in the woods one night. Think I had been watching Razorback. Damn pig.

Xerxses, that's one reason why I can't understand the fixation with hardwood in the UK. Well dried softwood mixed in will mitigate much of the problem of not quite properly seasoned hardwood by keeping the fire hot. It's not the right answer but we need to accept that there are loads of people out there burning unseasoned hardwood. So many people sit there with a load of 40% oak smouldering away for hours. Or overnighting with a huge damp old lump of god knows what. They think it's great that they have a log left in the morning which breaks apart into hot embers, ready to start the day. Just look up the chimney though. Better to set in a good fire if you are going to overnight. Get it raging very well before you close it down. A few planks of offcuts or pallet will keep the temps up. Better to have it burn well for 3 hours and then have to re-light in the morning.

I would go for Alder. Get it coppicing well and it's a very easy crop to manage and harvest. Very nice to split as mentioned and dries out quickly for the fire. Once you have established the land with Alder, you should find that you can start to put in some Ash as a longer term crop which will thrive once Alder has worked it's magic with the soil. Also, I rate Sycamore, purely as a fuel. It grows like weeds around here and coppices well. I know it's not politically correct these days but it's a great firewood. You could also try some crazy hybrid willows if you want to start harvesting in 3-4 years time. I've got one in my garden. It came free with a cherry tree and we didn't even know what it was. Stuck it in the soil 3 years ago and it's now 6 meters tall and must be 6" across at the base. It's coming down this year for firewood as it's out of control. Hopefuly in another 3 years we'll have the same problem with it. Good luck.