Fahrenheit

Don't let the mpg of the caddy put you off. It is a sportline and I have had it re-mapped to 190bhp. I'm sure a standard car type caddy would do way better on fuel. I'm happy with 28mpg for it's speed and comfort but don't take my caddy as an example of the mpg you'd get. It does a set of front tyres in every 4500 miles too:-)

Yeah I realise that but they are 1/2-3/4 full of gear all of the time with a fat guy in the passenger seat and a triple extension ladder and roof ladder permanently on the roof. Also they get some hammer on the right hand pedal. I'm fairly happy with the mpg considering.

Good advert. Love the beach boys! VW all the way for me.....got a Caddy Maxi Sportline and a Transporter T28 180! Lovely vans! I get about 28mpg from the Caddy and about 22mpg from the Transporter. Would quite like some kind of VW dropside in the future for the wood. The Nissan Cabstar lets the side down a bit! It's a nice size and does the job but drives like crap and only does 60mph comfortably!

£115 is nowhere near the norm so i doubt he was busy sweeping for 3 weeks. He maybe didn't want the job so over priced it. I'm not sure what he means by 'job unseen'......i've nevr heard of chimney sweeps doing a site survey prior to a sweep:001_smile: I'd say £35-£50 was the norm.

The galvanised coating don't like heat either...it'll rust to **** now. Can you claim on insurance?

Renewablejohn - What minimum quantity would you do?

We nearly always run the twin skin pipe down to the stove. Especially when going through single storey vaulted ceilings as the changover section is quite flimsy and it will buckle and leak water in after a strong wind.

Obviously i sweep chimneys and install stoves and i've just started in firewood. No reason why it wouldn't work the other way around. We charge £35 + VAT. It takes around 15 mins to sweep one of our installations. The only issue you would have starting a new sweep round is that you'll have a good percentage of chimney that you either can't sweep or are a nightmare to sweep because they haven't been installed with regular sweeping in mind. We're fortunate where we pretty much only sweep the stoves that we installed. I hate sweeping open fires and installation that other fitters/DIYer's have done. We pretty much only sweep the stoves that we installed nowadays. Chimney sweeping sounds quite simple and it is in theory but in reality you could very easily ruin a £2000 carpet. Doing fast and clean is the key. It's no good if your only going to do 5 sweeps a day. Need to be in and out but do a good job. There was a local firm near us which had been around for 30 years or so.......they retired and a guy bought the sweeping business. He came in our shop trying to get us to recommend him to customer. He was going to 'revolutionise' the sweeping industry. A year or so later and his customers are leaving him and coming to us in droves. He's rubbish at sweeping chimneys. You don't need to be part of any organisation or need any qualifications. There are things such as NACS but they're a waste of time unless your going to do loads of council owned, housing association, rented houses etc. My mate in Aylesbury charges £45 per sweep. We can do around 15 sweeps a day so you can easily figure out the income. All you have is fuel as an expense other than the actual vehicle. Andy (county4x4) in the previous post came sweeping with me for a day when he was starting out and i think we took around £600 in a pretty easy going day. Started around 9:30, finished around 5.

What about the food grade side of things. Someone has pointed out to me that they may have to be produced similar to food products with a dedicated machine only for food grade pellets and food grade lubricants etc? Does any of the machines lubricants get into the pellets themselves? I'd assume not. I'm not sure if the rules on pellets for cooking with would be that strict as you are setting fie to them at the end of the day.

Does the moisture have to be down before producing the pellets or can they be produced and then dried? also do we comes across much hickory in the UK?

£500 for one pallet of heat logs is naff.........2 pallets would be okay. Just tell them to keep the logs and they'll have £500 off the cooker. They'll probably go for it as cooker sales are slow at the mo......I know this because I sell them. On a 4k cooker they'll be making around £1000. £500 profit is better than non. Tell them to tell the salesman that they've been talking to Esse and it seems a better deal that they're offering on their cookers:-)

That's very interesting as the pellet BBQ scene is quite small in the UK and i think the main issue is the price of pellets. Most pellet BBQs are used for smoking meats and they may run for 10-20 hours at a time. This gets pretty expensive at the current prices.

I have a pellet fired BBQ/smoker. The pellets are very expensive for the kind of quantities i buy. If someone in the UK produced good quality oak, hickory, apple......pellets at a decent price you'd clean up. How much could you supply a 10kg bag of hickory pellets for? If i were to buy wholsesale what kind of price can we do for what kind of quantity?

With our other business it's always cash on completion. We get it a lot where the wife has the chequebook or they need to move some money. If i feel they're been genuine i leave without payment but call them within 3 days to remind them. If i feel they're just trying to dodge paying then i pretend that i'm just a member of staff and my boss wont let me leave without payment. Funny how quick the chequebook turns up:-) Don't let them know your the gaffer is the key! This isn't so easy for us any more as i've put a 'meet the team' page on our website but we don't really have issues with non payers. The wood business is strictly cash/cheque on delivery.

He does sell to the public too. I don't fully understand it either but that's the way it is and i'm not going to talk him into increasing his prices:-) He sells massive volumes though and firewood is not his main business at all. He's simply getting paid to get rid of his waste. He possibly doesn't realise the value of what he is selling too. When we started sweeping chimneys the going rate around our area was £15. We came in at £35 + vat and are now charging £45 + VAT but we offer a much quicker, cleaner and more thorough service than anyone else.

There are quite a few regulations. If it's a new build then it will need to be passed by building control or you can use a HETAS registered company. The twin wall flue is fairly simple to erect. It's the regs concerning clearances and distances, fire protection that takes some learning. Check out: http://www.specflue.com/regulations/DOC_J_2010.pdf for the latest building regulations. Also different stoves have different manufacturer requirements for clearances and such so you need to have an idea for what stove your going to install before you get started. Otherwise make sure you allow plenty of room so any stove will fit. We use Poujoulat TI twin wall flue. It's some of the best on the market. There's a brand called Negarra but it's pretty ugly and cheap. You get what you pay for.

It's mainly a mix of 3 species, ash, beech and birch. £55, 1.2 cube, cut, split, seasoned, dumped into the back of my truck....done. It includes VAT. There's a guy near us doing the same amount for £140 delivered....he's so busy he's been turning all my customers away lately. Hence why i've set up.

Just to clarify it's £55 for 1.2 of hardwood.......i did buy a bulk purchase of softwood in also a while back. I've sold some of this but i'm mostly using it for the wood burners in my showroom and my house. Looks like i've got a good deal then. Hence why i'm not bothering to process myself. I may be able to get it cheaper once i can prove i'll be shifting large volumes.

Yeah well i may not be able to keep up when winter rolls on so i'll have to try and get something sorted before then! I'll worry about that when we get a bit closer. I could get a bigger vehicle and get storing it up over summer maybe. I'd still like to get a processor and buy in cord eventually but the current setup is quite nice at the moment as i have no overheads other than a truck. I bought a load of softwood lately and i' more than happy with how it burns in a stove.....nice flame, plenty of heat and lasted pretty well. I may move completely to softwood as my customers are 99% wood burner owners rather than open fires. There seems to be plenty of softwood about.

Egg on the face was a possibility but it was either send a few letters out and don't sell any wood or send loads out and risk not being able to meet demand. If i was spending money on a truck and insurance i'd rather it be too busy than too quiet though. It seems to be holding steady at the mo which is lucky.

I'm not trying to teach granny how to suck eggs. It wasn't intended to sound that way anyway. I've sent out over 1500 letters to my customers that have wood burners offering a summer discount so it's not too hard to get booked up every Saturday for 3 months. I'm sure if anyone did the same you'd have the same result. I'm sure the big firewood sellers on here are still doing plenty anyway. People are still suing their fires as it's still a bit nippy on an evening. The only reason I decided to go into firewood was because there are a lot of poeple that have jumped on the firewood band wagon and are selling wet wood. This leaves us having to unblock tar clogged flues due to wet wood being delivered which is a nightmare. I'm not really in it to make a fortune as i have a business already that earns me a good living but as it turns out we're not doing bad and it will save me a lot of hassle cleaning messed up stoves. We've sold a fair bit of wood already and have plenty booked in. Our stove fitting service is more expensive than most around here but we still get the jobs due to our service, standard of finish and reputation. Just had a guy book in today who said we were £300 dearer than the other quotes he had but he still wanted us to do it. I thought i'd try and do the same with firewood....that's all. I'm sorry if what i said has upset anyone but it wasn't intended to do so.

We're currently buying 1.2 cubic metres at £55, cut, split and seasoned. I'm selling it easily at £110. I can fit three loads on the truck. I'm doing 6 drops on a Saturday and i'm fully booked every Saturday for the next 3 months. I'm getting finished for lunchtime and coming home with approx £300 profit for a mornings work. We have a tidy truck, sign written, nice website, we always answer the phone, we give accurate delivery times and always turn up when we say we're going to. Our prices will go upto £130 - £140 for 1.2 cube in the winter. Not like all the other wood suppliers around here in battered old hilux's doing one load at a time, never answer the phone and when you do get them on the phone they're like...."yeah i'll drop some off in the next week or so"....then when it arrives it's wet. Poor service, no repeat custom means you have to keep your prices low. Customer service is everything in any business.

I've done a fair bit of research into them and i think that's the machine i'd purchase. Not a bad price for the spec and seems to cut and split at a decent speed.

Thanks, that was exactly my point. I used to be an aircraft engineer. The flying club i worked at had around 15 flying instructors. They were classed as self employed by the aeroclub. The tax man looked into it and decided there was no way they could be classed as self employed as the club arranged their work, they had fixed hours, they had a uniform, they worked from the same place every day.....etc. They had to pay in excess of £850,000.00 in taxes they'd avoided. Also they had to employ all of the staff and pay them the holiday and other things they owed. Ended up over a million pounds owed. Slap on the wrists indeed!

Having someone self employed or employing someone isn't just something you choose either. If the person your using is coming to the same premises every day and you provide tools, equipment, have set times he's required to start and finish, uniforms.......basically he answers to you, he cannot be classed as self employed. You must employ him and pay the relevant taxes.