Spruce

But it isn't a waste product - it's perfectly good firewood. If it really is the case that nobody down south will burn softwood in a stove because of some sort of nonsense their granny told them then I despair. What's new about the subsidies that are being paid for so-called 'renewables' is that the money is not being used to develop a sustainable power generation industry, it's going to grabbit and run opportunists who are in it until the subsidies are gone. Then we'll be right back at square one but a heck of a lot poorer. Of course we should subsidise things that help people who are on low incomes - that's social responsibility. However, I don't want to subsidise (and I'm thinking more about wind here) huge profits for the already wealthy especially when there will be no long term benefit to the environment.

Yes, burning wood is fairly close to carbon neutral bar the machinery used during production, road transport etc. My issues are with burning wood to provide heat to dry wood to burn when time and wind will achieve the same thing *and* being paid a subsidy to do so. I agree totally that burning wood to provide necessary heating is better than burning coal, although you could form an argument that we should dig a big hole in the ground, cut down all the trees and bury them to permanently remove the carbon from the atmosphere. Obviously you then plant more and repeat.

You're not being paid by the gov, you're being paid by the rest of us through our electricity bills. I find it ridiculous that I'm paying for you to pointlessly put more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere when the idea (supposedly) behind the subsidy is to reduce the amount. I'm sorry if that was a bit direct, but we are becoming more and more fed up with these crazy subsidies and the idea that somehow the government is paying rather than us.

Another plus point with the underfloor heating is that provided the pipework is laid on top of the insulation before the floor is poured you have several cubic metres of concrete acting as a thermal store. We have underfloor in half the house and rads in the rest all run from an Aarrow boiler stove. The half with the underfloor heating is always lovely and warm in the morning. And another good thing - the underfloor kit works out way cheaper than rads/copper pipework and took two of us about three hours to fit.

According to the packaging these things are made in the USA! Hardwood Wood Briquettes - Eco Logs

ad·ver·tise/ˈadvərˌtīz/Verb: 1.Describe or draw attention to (a product, service, or event) in a public medium in order to promote sales or attendance.

The HSE are banning premium wood from 2016 onwards because it's too dangerous when it catches fire - it will only be permissible to supply cool burning safety wood to non-professional users. I'm amazed you didn't know already!

I think that pay in lieu of notice is quite distinct from any enhanced redundancy deal and will be paid PAYE. I was recently made redundant by a huge company who follow the letter of the law in all this sort of thing as they want to avoid any legal disputes. I received pay in lieu of notice through PAYE and an enhanced redundancy payment of two weeks pay per year's service on top of the statutory redundancy payment which was all tax and NI free. There was a compromise agreement associated with the enhanced payment, the company not only paid for a consultation with a lawyer but insisted that I had one. £1000 enhanced redundancy for 7 years service is a joke, though.

I keep reading how much damage is caused by using old fuel in chainsaws, but I'm not clear whether this is down to using old petrol or an old mix of oil and petrol. In other words, is it ok to use petrol that's been stored in a tin for 6 months provided I only add the two stroke oil shortly before use? I ask because I tend to use my saw fairly intensively for a couple of months in the spring and just occasionally during the rest of the year. My Husqvarna 345e manual says you should not mix up more fuel/oil than you can use in a month which kind of implies that it's the mixture that deteriorates rather than the petrol.

The idea that softwood produces creosote but hardwood doesn't is a myth. If anything you're more likely to get a buildup of creosote with hardwood as it is likely to have a higher moisture content. I doubt anyone who has burned dry softwood would agree that hardwood burns hotter. The solution to the size/weight/number/burn time conundrum is to split softwood into bigger lumps. I'm on my way. What's your address?

I can't see that hardwood would be any cheaper than mains gas. I've learned quite the opposite. Softwood is much cheaper, easily available and has about the same calorific value as hardwood by dry weight. It's lighter, easier to cut and split. I wouldn't be able to lift decent sized hardwood rings onto the splitter so I'd need to source small diameter hardwood meaning more cutting or cut shorter rings meaning more waste and more cutting. Softwood burns well in bigger lumps than hardwood meaning less time and effort splitting. If your flue is tarring up the wood is not dry, your flue liner needs insulating, you're letting the fire smoulder or a combination of the three.

I'd suggest skipping the open fire stage and going straight to stove. You'll avoid the additional expense and the disappointment of how much fuel an open fire burns for so little heat. Stoves with back boilers tend not to be very good for central heating as they output too much heat to the room and not enough to the water. Go for a proper boiler stove such as an Aarrow (now Arada) Stratford instead. The stove manufacturers' sites mostly have examples of how the plumbing should be done, the stove/flue liner sales sites have instructions on how to line the flue. You can easily do the flue liner yourself but you may be best to get a plumber to do the pipework depending how much needs to be added/modified in your existing installation. Do your homework and make sure you understand what needs to be done and what stove you want to use before you start. My experience of stove shops and plumbers has been that they want to sell you what they are used to/profit most from etc rather than what you need or want, and any apparent qualifications or approvals such as HETAS are no guide to actual competence. If you want to heat your house with a stove more cheaply than mains gas you will need to buy softwood 'cord' (ie, lengths of tree trunk) by the artic load, saw and split these yourself and store the wood in a very well ventilated place for a year or at least a good summer before burning. You will need to buy a decent chainsaw and log splitter and be prepared to do a lot of hard work. I love it as it keeps me out of the house and in or at least near my sheds, but your experience may be different.

I know that. My point is that the average customer doesn't, though, and isn't likely to believe anyone who says that it doesn't. Customers understand weight but do not understand volume or density. It's common folklore that a builders bag is a ton bag and it's probably a lost battle to educate people otherwise.

Speaking as an ex-customer (I do my own wood since we started using it as our only source of heating) customers only think of weight and price. We have no idea how much weight water adds to wet wood and volumetric measurements like a cubic metre are pretty much meaningless. However, we all know how big a builders bag is, and we all know it weighs a ton when it's full. You're wasting your time trying to educate people because we know it all and we're not going to be ripped off by one of you lot selling us wood that was free anyway. I mean, look, the stuff grows by the side of the road, doesn't it?

Bone dry Sitka, split and stacked summer 2010. Toasty!

You could just advertise one and a half builders bags for £75. Then, without changing anything, you'd be at least as cheap as your competitors in your customers eyes as well as their pocket.

Probably because that's all you need. Fire doesn't care where air comes from as long as it has enough. I would guess that the myth about wood burning from above, or needing air from above has come about from people shutting down the lower inlet to slow the burn down. Most of the air would then be coming from above so the wood would burn more strongly on top thereby giving the impression that wood burn better with, or needs, air from above. In addition, people would notice that coal doesn't burn well if the bottom vent is shut which would serve to reinforce the idea. The reality is that coal doesn't burn well with air from above simply because there isn't enough of it, whereas the wood being much less dense requires less air per unit surface area and can still give a reasonable fire without air from below. Blackened glass is caused by the products of incomplete combustion sticking to the glass - the cure is to give the fuel sufficient air to burn properly. Given that the heat from combustion causes the exhaust gases to convect upwards the logical place to supply air is from below. We burn only wood and only use air from below - the stove burns beautifully, we never have black glass and the house is lovely and warm.

Is it the cost they're bothered about or the hassle of refuelling? Maybe someone in head office said they had to have a log fire to create the olde worlde effect and they just want the easiest way of doing it without caring whether it's any good or not. In any case, if a chimney fire burns the place out they'll get a nice new refit on the insurance. Am I too cynical?

I'll bite: What's the obvious reason?

Yes, I couldn't see the wood for the trees. Do you import the wood ready-to-go in the crates, or do you buy and process in the UK?

That's way too obvious. No wonder I didn't think of it! Maybe it's just the "got an email out of the blue trying to sell me stuff" effect?

I wonder how Premium Wood got hold of all your email addresses?

Now there's a man talking sense. It doesn't even need to be a small bit with softwood - if it's dry it'll go.

We find that you can use much bigger lumps of softwood without getting the smouldering-lump-blocking-the-grate syndrome which increases the reload interval a good bit. The way dry softwood will produce any amount of heat you want almost instantly suits us really well. Honestly, after several years of heating the house exclusively with a boiler stove I'd probably decline a load of hardwood even if it were offered to me at the same price as softwood. Given that the calorific value is about the same by dry weight I can't see any disadvantage to softwood other than having to get off my unpleasantly large backside a bit more often. This might even be a good thing!

It's weird - softwood burns great, dries out in no time and costs a fraction of the price of hardwood. In fact, it seems to be almost free in the south of England yet you guys are all struggling to burn hardwood on your own fires while complaining that your customers don't want to buy softwood even though it's perfectly good.