teepeeat

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

isnt it Tuesdays that you become 'Felicity' ??? :lol:

my oldman used something like that in Africa probably 35 years ago. He definitely refered to it as a tree bicycle. Not sure what they were doing with it - only witnessed it in use when he had to rescue the cat from a long way up a massive pine - twice.

bloody hell, some serious prizes on offer there. Sponsors have turned up the heat, now down to the membership to cook up a 10000 storm

Hey Paul looks like you are getting stuck in down there. Your inbox is full - tried to PM earlier re a bit of potential work on your way past. Give me a shout when you get a minute.

yup, and it is also quite feasble these days to design the heating requirement out of houses, but you dont seem to get too much incentive to do this. The government just tinker about on the edge so as not to upset the big energy companies, but show that they are doing something - not

Hey gents, been a bit busy and dont do the mobile Internet. Nice to meet everyone this year - pleasant evening Thanks to Pete & Genset Steve for the lifts. Quite a balmy night in the van, and didnt even have that much of the apple juice. Good sunrise as posted by Silky on Sunday morning.

mmm, do these here thermometers just sit on the flue? My stove is a high efficiency German effort that does our hot water and heating and thus is insulated all round to help the efficiency - I can touch the side or top while it is roaring away - the only hot bit is the door. The manufacturers have figured out how it works best so I just stick to their recommendations - pretty simple really What ever the thermometer would tell me I have only one air control that only needs tweeking sometimes once the fire takes off, so not sure what use a thermometer would be. That said I tend to be curious about what is happening so might just try one - 6 quid aint going to break the bank.

nothing new there - UK cities were black with smog for centuries. They have more recently quantified it a bit and brought it in line with scientific advances Wood burning or burning anything releases particulates - whether in a power station or in a domestic stove. There are ways of minimising these particulates in all scenarios as well - to a greater or lesser degree. Politics will kick this one around a lot more for many years to come, in the meantime I will just burn the minimum I need to, as efficiently as possible.

As a non tree professional, just wondering why blast the tree?? got too be more destructive and less predictable outcome than felling, or is it more to do with simulating natural situations such as lightning strikes in what is presumably ancient wood type area where habitat etc is the primary objective??