teepeeat

are you taking a piss ..... someone had to say it :lol: It does seem to work, judging by efforts on a particular stump coincidentally positioned along the track between the house and pub Not particularly speedy mind, but didnt drill it and wasnt in a rush anyway.

Interesting that the 'not voting' option is running at 4th in the poll - discuss!!

Just got home from a few weeks away at work to find a handy pair of Stein gloves in the pile of post. Many thanks Richard & co and well done for supporting the raffle Regards Terry

Hi Billy Many thanks for the package - 20kg of bird feed - been away for a few weeks so just been delivered today. Will come in handy. Very generous of you and well done for supporting the raffle. No doubt the local bird population will be wanting me to pass on their thanks as well - once I have put some out :-) Regards Terry

Dont know anything about the legalities, but presume that if someone rents farmland and plants a crop, does the crop not belong to the person renting rather than the owner of the land. Trees are just a long term crop - no??? I would guess the terms of the long term rental agreement might also have a bearing on who owns what.

haha, thats what we like, work em young. Them Stihl's dont come cheap either - got to earn its keep

Last batch just bought. Hopefully the total will jump in the last day - seem to recall a significant rally on the final day last year. Well done to Steve and the team for doing this every year, and to the prize sponsors. Come on everybody - some cracking prizes up for grabs at the same time as donating to a worthy cause. Terry

My take is that it is not just about sugars, but that everything that is left is in a more concentrated form........ and is this a good thing. I think that the whole question about foods is very confusing. We as a bunch of amateurs have a particular take on it based on our own personal experiences and what we have read and even the professionals dont seem to agree and not a day goes by without the press going on about new discoveries on how the body works and what is good or bad for it. Even the younger members on here have probably experienced the wild swings of nutritional advice - one day red wine is bad for you, the next its the best thing ever, not to mention all the others over the years. I find it all very interesting, but take it with a pinch of salt - proverbially speaking of course . The strategy that works for me is to have a varied diet and have a little bit of many things - that way anything that turns out to be bad is a relatively small proportion of my diet. As they say, variety is the spice of life.................... so live a varied life and be well seasoned

oops, missed this post before. I guess you fall in a special decolonised bracket with particular dietary requirements so I guess its juice party for you

Andy, it would be interesting to hear your dieticians take on this whole debate - for the colonised and decolonised

To continue in layman's terms, do we actually need to start the day with the juice of 4 apples or 5 oranges? Is the proportion of juice to fibre in the fruit not already appropriate. As said before, no specific knowledge, just curious about these things. Agreed that we do need to 'fill gaps' in the modern diet as most crops these days seem to be grown from seed and tended in a manner that is optimised for drought resistance, pest resistance, yield (ie quantity vs quality) etc etc rather than nutritional value. And that is before all the processing and chemical additions between harvesting and us shoving it down our gobs.

:lol: Dont know about 'epic fail' Steve. Seems like the ultimate aim cos thats all we need to do with it really. Think I am going to work through any 'issues' I have and aim for the simplicity of your approach :thumbup:

Just curious as to whether it is a good thing to separate the fibre etc out from the 'nutrients'. Is the whole fruit not a balanced product where as just taking the juice out gives you an overpowering shot of certain elements?? No specific knowledge, just curious about this as I have juiced in the past and cant be bothered as I just like to eat fruit and veg as is - mostly raw - and love the taste of it where as some of the juices of the same fruit and veg didnt go down too well - individually or in different blends?? My most successful efforts taste wise were using a blender to mash everything together - particularly when fruit is a tad past its best. Throw in the cost of a good machine and the cleaning up etc and it just seems unnecessary. (and possibly why a lot of juicers etc end up rotting in a cupboard somewhere?) Not trying to be negative on the subject as I find the whole food thing very interesting, just giving my thoughts based on personal experience. History is littered with man trying to improve on nature and take short cuts and am wondering if this is perhaps another of this ilk where it will eventually be proven that nature had it more or less right all along????? Appreciate everyone else's thoughts on this.

If you go down the green roof route, you can save a lot of money by getting an EPDM pond liner for the roof membrane - exactly the same thing they will sell you as a roofing membrane, but half the price. Not sure of the price of metal sheeting options, but the EPDM is not particularly expensive although you need to deck out with ply to glue the membrane on. Also with the green roof option, you need to allow for the weight of what ever 'greenery' you plan to put on it which can be substantial.

I think that stoking the fire is always a compromise as opening up and reloading will always affect the temps/balance of what is going on, but is of course a necessity. The more wood you put in at any one time, the greater the effect - ie there is more wood to get up to temperature, but when it does there will be a lot of energy so I am guessing there will be greater fluctuations and extremes in Big J's case. Cornish Wood Burner's chip boiler I guess relies on automatic fuel feeding, but would indicate a little and often approach where the manufacturers of my stove have moderated that approach for practical reasons related to manual feeding of logs. As Stereo has said, and my experience backs up, a half load burns for almost as long as a full load, meaning the extra energy is just going up the flue. Having a boiler attached, I guess there is also the rate of transfer of energy to consider, which will have limits and excess energy again just flies by up the flue. My stove is insulated to the extent that I can put my hand on the side when it is roaring away, so burning more does not translate to more heat to the room to any large degree as the only transfer to the room is via the door, but then it is designed to put the majority of the heat to the boiler. The OP was looking at achieving fuel efficiency, This is going to vary with different set ups, however I think the general trend for efficiency is to feed little and often depending on your setup as regards heat transfer to a boiler or the room. For the record Big J, my 8kw stove does the hot water and heating for a 200m2 house. It is located in the upstairs open plan living area and the heating in that space has never to my knowledge kicked in, although this is more to do with the levels of insulation we have. I can burn for an hour in the evening and then come upstairs the next morning and it will still be 18-20 deg C in the space, although this is helped by the underfloor heating from the bedrooms down stairs migrating up. Bedroom thermostats set around 15-16 deg C normally.

Happy new year one & all from a breezy North Sea

Interesting one Stereo I have a supposedly high efficiency 8kw German unit that is designed to give 70% of the heat to the boiler and 30% to the room. Their manual - from hazy memory - recommends using relatively small, well seasoned logs with a total of I think 2,5kg per load. The object of the exercise supposedly to burn hard and fast for maximum efficiency. Clearly this works best with a thermal store to store the energy. I do tend to split fairly small logs anyway as this gives more surface area for seasoning as well as for improved burning. I dont tend to weigh the wood, but did experiment in the early days and 2,5kg only filled the box about 40% which ties in with your half load. From observing the thermal store temperatures it seems that the half load burn maintains the best temperature vs wood consumption although I find that I do need to load slightly more often when compared to a full load. No doubt the Germans have tested it to the n'th degree to come up with their recommendations and works for me.

Cheers Alec Been looking at getting some chisels so might look a bit closer at the Japanese ones with yours and others comments in mind.

16 here Fort Knots (16–18 points) This one is less a woodpile than a security blanket. For the person who builds it, wood is like money in the bank: You can never have too much. For them, actually burning the wood is like taking money out of the bank, so they do it as little as possible, to the dismay of the shivering people they live with. Not money in the bank, but definitely money I dont have to take out of my bank to pay a multi national robbing barsteward.... erm... utility company for electricity or gas. :lol:

Alec, why your preference for Japanese chisels over European ones?

Agreed - should have said heat store. I have an 800 ltr heat store to allow for a good efficient burn in the stove.

seaman, driving boats

we have gone the accumulator route - gives flexibility with combining different heat sources. have been running on wood burner for hot water and heating in the winter and solar does the hot water mid March to mid October. We do have mains gas, but have not bothered with a gas boiler, partly due to the cost and reliance on gas companies, but also due to the fact that gas supplies will not be around for that much longer plus we have our own wood supply.

last day of work - ha, I wish. Working through till 21st Jan, including today & new years

Merry Christmas everyone