Chalgravesteve

Ah I see, the network is pissing water out everywhere so they need lots of water at the top! They do need to keep the reservoir reasonably full, it would actually probably cause more maintenance issues of the reservoir itself if you allow the upper sections to dry out and become overgrown. There will always be two sides to a story, its probably far easier for them to keep pushing water into the system than to shut and drain sections (which causes disruptions to others - who will complain vociferously when it directly affects them, but will otherwise just let it pass when it doesn't!), but that becomes necessary when safety is compromised. Modern policy on a lot of infrastructure these days seems to be patch and repair until its so bad it can't be!

This is exactly their problem. If they dumped 1/3rd of the reservoir capacity every time they had heavy thunderstorms predicted, they would get so much criticism! They were between a rock and a hard place (although if the spillway was there then they wouldn't have had the problem!!) that they need the reservoir full to meet their high level demand, in a period of time not usually associated with torrential and sustained downpours. Its taken them a week with emergency pumps going full blast to lower the level, you simply cannot shift that volume of water in a short time frame, so the likelihood is that they probably needed to start shifting water OUT of the reservoir a week or more ahead, before the bad weather was even forecast!! And if you search on youtube for the USA spillway destruction, you will see that however good and solid it looks, the destructive power of flowing water is staggering once its found a way into the structure. Its OK if you are like the Hoover Dam, with huge solid rock formations acting as buttresses to the dam. They bored tunnels through that rock so that they could release water if they needed to. If they open those gates for 24 hours, the only thing that's going to happen to the tunnels is that the rock walls will get a little bit smoother than they were before! I'm not defending in anyway a lack of maintenance (perceived or real - there was a quote from a reservoir panel engineer saying that she couldn't see anything that caused her concern in the pictures taken prior to the problem).

The reservoir has been there 180 years and this is the first time it’s been breached? That’s once in180 years then you could argue that without the spillway being constructed 50 years ago, the dam would have overtopped and it would have collapsed. The spillway, despite sustaining damage did its job

I saw a YouTube video showing the overflow channel that comes around the side of the reservoir with deep fast flowing water. It was flowing well before the slipway started to discharge (into the same channel). The channel couldn’t handle the volume of water being thrown into it and areas like a children’s playground were getting flooded. So there were efforts to divert the inflow to the reservoir before it overtopped the spillway.

I'm sure that there are additional overflows etc that would have come into play. I don't know the area or the canal/river network, or the background of CaRT. It is true to say, in my view, that there have been a number of organisations that have adopted a "charity status" to oversee the management of previously public owned facilities, which gives them a massive taxation advantage that they didn't previously enjoy as a "normal" organisation. In many cases, the board/exec officers are very handsomely paid, so the setting up of a "management team" to take over of the running of an organisation that they can't afford to buy but then don't have to, and then voting themselves much higher salaries out of the new surplus from the lower tax regime! Very little overview on this. With regards to actual reservoirs though, there are stringent regulations (as you might think) in the maintenance and inspections of these. My main business is a golf club and in 2009 we constructed a small reservoir to store water for irrigation purposes. Originally, the reservoir was designed to hold around 15,000m3 of water. As a result of proposed changes to the Reservoirs Act, we reduced that to just under 10,000m3 capacity, as anything above 10,000m3 was then going to require annual inspections and testing by independent third parties. This was going to be ridiculously expensive for a small reservoir. There are two types of reservoir, non impounding and impounding. Mine is a non impounding, which means that there are no water sources that feed directly into the reservoir, and all the edge slopes away from the top bund slope away from the edge, so that there can be no water run off from rainfall. The only way my reservoir can fill, is from rainfall actually landing on the surface, or me pumping water into it from an abstraction source. The Toddbrook reservoir is an impounding reservoir. It is filled from river that enters the north/western end, which in turn collects run off water from the surrounding area. So its rather like a tap, except that a tap normally has a maximum amount of water that can pass through it. The surface area of the Toddbrook reservoir is about 100,000m2 by my rough estimate. The spillway would normally be at least 50cm ABOVE the standard full level, so in order to start flowing, there reservoir has the ability to store an increased amount above its normal holding capacity before it starts to overflow. So for the reservoir to rise by 2m in height, 200,000,000 litres have had to flow into it. It would be really rare as well, in my view, for a reservoir to be at its upper limits in July/August, although if its sole purpose is to be the header tank for the canal network I suppose that that might be possible. So put this into perspective. Rainfall on the reservoir on its own, cannot do that. If you get massively excessive rainfall, lets say 6" in old money or 150mm, in a few hours or even over a couple of days, what that actually means is that the volume of water that has fallen from the sky, is 150 litres per 1m2 which will raise the level of the reservoir by 150mm, assuming that there is no outflow. This wouldn't even bring it up to the spillway. The ANNUAL average rainfall for the whole of the UK is 885mm. The news reports were talking about getting 1 months rain in a few hours, maybe 4" or 100mm. so the reservoir would only increase in depth by 100m! Except that, there is an uncontrollable flow entering the reservoir from its impounding river. The river is collecting water like a giant funnel from the surrounding area, massively increasing the catchment and volume and chucking all of that into the reservoir. If the increase was (and clearly it was) sufficient to fill the reservoir "spare overflow" capacity to the point where it overtopped the spillway, then the volumes are really not manageable. The damage would have been caused as the reservoir continued to fill, increasing the steady trickle over the spillway into a raging torrent of several feet depth, with enough water still coming down off the hills to keep pushing it over the top from behind. If you turn off the tap, the bath stops filling immediately! They are pumping out water and dropping the level by 2m every 24 hours. The incoming water raised the reservoir at at least the same sort of rate as that! Had the Toddbrook reservoir not been there, it would be extremely likely that the areas downstream of where it is now, would have suffered extensive flooding. The reservoir held the excess capacity and it was not until the spillway gave way that there became an issue, at which point you are really in trouble! So irrespective of the current lack of proper management or the way that it is run by CaRT, the engineers who built it 180 years ago, managed to do so in a manner that dealt with a once in 180 years event and its still standing!

It’s not nonsense it’s physics and capacity. If you had diverted the huge amount of water coming down into the reservoir directly into the overflow system of canals and rivers then you would have had breaches and flooding downstream in substantial areas. Its the same as filling up your bath or sink. Once the water reaches the level of the overflow, then it self regulates BUT if the incoming flow is greater than the capacity of the outflow, then the bath continues to fill until it flows over the side. Then the water is going everywhere instead of where it’s planned to go. If you divert that volume into a canal, even if you left lock gates with sluices open, there is not the downstream capacity to absorb that volume of water without breaches. Add to that there are people living on boats on it! What they are doing now, is discharging the water from the reservoir at a controlled rate into the overflow system without breaching it It clearly all works. I don’t disagree that lack of maintenance has not played its part on the spillway. But the spillway was not, I’m sure, envisioned to have to have the incredible volume of water flowing over it. How far do you over engineer something to make it safe? Clearly it’s not been breached like this since it was built so you are looking at a once in one hundred years plus set of circumstances

The problem was that the spillway/overflow is what is designed to ensure the reservoir doesn't get too full. Excess water just flows over the top and away, maintaining a consistent full level. Two things occurred which were not anticipated: One, the massive volume of water incoming into the reservoir in such a short period of time through the massive rainfall, and Two, the damage/erosion of the spillway when One occurred. Moving water is incredibly powerful. The 1.3m m3 of water weighs 1.3m tonnes, but when its contained in its reservoir, it exerts an equal and relatively low pressure on the sides of the reservoir. However, once that water starts moving, in one place, absolutely nothing is going to stop it and the forces involved are immense. The spillway looks as though there is a void underneath the concrete ramp. Once the water started to get into the void, it will have washed more soil away until the sections collapsed. The water wold then just tear the whole thing apart, unless they can reduce the levels down so that it cannot overflow the spillway. Those bloody stupid people refusing to leave, don't have to run up the nearest hill to get out of the way, the water probably won't kill them, it will be the hundreds and thousands of tones of debris that will be swept along with it that will batter them into a pulp. Its fine, if they want to kill themselves, so be it, but the emergency services cannot just up and leave so they have to stay there as well. Realistically, its probably safe now, they have dropped the level way below the spillway BUT they cannot be sure about what else has gone on underneath the bit that's still in place. There was another reservoir problem a few years ago, where a fallen tree partially blocked the spillway and more debris got caught on the tree until the flowing water was forced out and over the edges of the spillway where it just eroded the soil banks in no time. No easy solution, you cannot just release millions of gallons downstream in an uncontrolled way as the downstream routes simply cannot deal with the volumes and you breach banks downstream and flood out other communities.

Wet logs on an ivory/white tablecloth at a wedding leaves marks all over the cloths that don't come out easily..........so be prepared for a bill from whoever dresses the tables/owns the cloths!! Not saying it happens all the time but it does happen! I've done both sides of the coin, cut the logs for someone and run the function and had cloths ruined. Best thing you can do is place the log on a piece of decorative voile fabric or similar which protects the cloth.

That's the issue. Theft will not stop until people stop buying stolen gear. I have absolutely no facts to back this up, but in my opinion, less than 5% of hand tools nicked will ever be recovered by the police. That might be a generous figure actually! So the only way to get the stuff recovered after its been nicked, is for some kind of miniature tracer/sim which gives you the gps location of the item. Bearing in mind that power tools have batteries or mains electric cables or motors in the case of chainsaws, it can't be difficult surely to utilise those sources of power? Then when its nicked and used, you can track where it is. Hoping that the police will find it and return it is a waste of time.

www.logs.co.com Our website and webshop.

....and that's entirely my view and my experience as well!! My customers buy from me because we use local timber, and our wood is dry. We use barrow bags and put the bags where they want them, not just dropping it loose on the drive. I provide a product and a service that no one in my area comes close to, and a HETAS (or anyone else's) sticker won't make it any better than it is now. If I put a "ready to burn" logo on my product, I'll design it myself and use my own!

The company is owned by its directors, although it is limited by guarantee and not shares. I quote from my email from "Laura Sceal, Business Manager, Grown in Britain Team" We are connected to Woodsure and Ready to Burn. We do offer a discounted audit rate if you choose to have both audits done at the same time.

I've recently been approached by "Grown in Britain" to register my kiln dried firewood with them, to enable me to display the logo on my products which are all sourced from within 20 miles of me. I have also been approached by Woodsure, the woodfuel quality assurance scheme. I have also been approached by the "Ready to Burn" scheme as our products are all under 20% MC and we kiln dry it ourselves. All of the above are linked/operated/controlled by HETAS Ltd? And when you search Companies House, HETAS is a private limited company, with over £1 million in cash in the bank according to their last filed accounts? I always thought that HETAS was a regulatory body? Clearly its not? Now I take my hat off to them if they have built a private business around providing other private businesses with certification saying that products/services are compliant, but compliant with what? There have been recent published articles regarding firewood (The Clean Air Act) and the emissions etc, and it would seem to me that there is a push towards having these brandings on products to enable the consumer to know that the product meets certain criteria, but I can't see how that is compatible with a private company run for profit? Or am I missing something here?

firewood is not a sustainable energy supply!! How the hell can it be sustainable when you can burn a tree in one day but it takes 20 years to regrow back to the same size? The consumption of wood in fires will always outstrip the regrowth! We use entirely arb waste in our firewood production, so these trees are coming down anyway, but it has always struck me as being a strange claim that firewood is sustainable!

Its pallets. Apart from the blue/red ones, thats a pretty dry pile of timber!!

Some interesting stuff in there. Hard going at times, and I haven't read it in full yet........

messaged you

No you don't have to give a base price for clearing the tree/s. That's one job. Price it accordingly. You remove the cut down tree and dispose of it in that price. Cutting it up into firewood, storing/seasoning it and delivering the end product to a customer is a completely different job. Ask yourself this. If the tree is so valuable as profit/firewood, why don't all the people who have trees being removed all just keep the trees themselves and sell it and make all that lovely profit themselves? You are undervaluing yourself and doing 2 jobs for one income.

What it says really!! renovating a 1920 3 bed semi with fireplaces and chimney. Rooms are smallish at around 10’x12’ what would you recommend as a good small stove? I’ve heard the Morso squirrel is a good small one? Cheers

Hi All I have a customer with a specific request. I don't have the materials or the time to do it. I need 8" diameter logs cut the approx 2ft length and split into quarters along the whole length. I need 300 in total, so 75 logs at 8" diameter and 24" length split into quarters. So allow for margin for error and lets say 100 logs. They don't need to be dry, and there is no specific species required. the "cheese wedge quarter" will be approx 100mm x 100mm x 600mm long. I need them early next week, delivered to Toddington, Beds. Anyone fancy the job? I need a price asap please if you want it. Cheers Steve

That's what I was after. Cheers

Hi All I'm told that there are companies who have substantial sized mobile chippers which take all sorts of sized chunks of arb waste and chip it down. I'm interested in seeing what the cost for this is, does anyone have any contacts or knowledge of anyone doing this? Cheers Steve

Depends what the wood is? Is it cord, arb waste, chip or random branches?

My customers rarely buy 2m3 at a time. They buy it in 2 bags (0.5m) 3 bags (0.75) or 4 Bags (1.0m3). Probably less than 5% of my customers want 2m3 at a time. Usually, that customer wants to buy in bulk to pay substantially less for the volume. I'd rather sell it in lower volumes at a sensible price. Its kiln dried and between 17-20% MC. They don't need to store it, they buy enough to use for the time being and then buy more as they require it. If dry wood does reabsorb moisture, then its a bloody slow process and my customers will have used their fresh stock up long before they start to see 22% or more. The issue of course will be, if the demand that I get, owing to everybody wanting/having to have dry wood, will exceed my capacity to produce it. I'm not leaving it in the kiln for 2 weeks instead of 1 to get it to 15%, that halves my production output! Still, if demand increases beyond the capacity for supply, then the price will increase as well, so I will sell the same output for more money!

My business model is different to most, in that firewood is a secondary business for me. My main business is a golf club, so I have 5 greenkeepers who are already employed anyway, but they have substantially less to do in the winter than they do in the summer. Well, they did. Now they are bloody busy all year! So, my initial set up was always based upon the fact that I don't have any staff overhead as they were already being paid anyway. I also owned most of the equipment, I've got 2 processors now though so I've spent a bit there. I also have an RHI kiln and we process arb waste, selling it in barrow bags not loose bulk. However, I do consider the real cost of producing the bags, and whilst we have incoming arb waste free, the wages costs are higher because its much slower to process and needs more manual handling, to process it, get the bulk wood into the kiln, get it out again, pack into barrow bags and deliver it. Our kiln dried product is a stovemix and will be absolutely anything, but we always make sure that every bag contains hardwood. We do process some really big chunks though, which could mean that an entire bulk drying cage can be filled with the same tree which might be a softwood - so we keep a stock of pure hardwood to mix in if need be. I dont sell pure hardwood except in nets which I buy in and sell to people who want to collect and they can't collect a barrow bag because of the size. My barrow bags are 50x50x100 so 4 = 1m3 and because we are essentially handpacking, as I don't want them to sag and fall over on the truck, I know that three of my bags is roughly 1m3 loose. I sell 1 bag delivered at £49.50, 2 at £47, 3 at £44 and 4+ at £39.50. I know 4 bags are a proper 1m3 and I sell that then for £158 - £198.00. My market is not the loose load 2m3 customer. Mine is the customer who doesn't have that much space to store it, wants it delivered in a nice clean back, to the log store on a sack barrow and left in the bag so the customer doesn't have to get their hands dirty. They don't want to pay the £7.99/£9.99 for crap seasoned logs from a garage forecourt though. I've got an 85% returning customer rate. They buy and they keep coming back and buying more, plus we keep getting more new customers. I'm fortunate that I have a very good head of population in my area, and excellent road access, so deliveries are easy within a 15-20 mile radius. I've got 6 bags on the truck to deliver now, its a 24 mile round trip to 2 destinations and I expect to be back in about 45mins to 1 hr. I am looking at the prices though, and what I will probably do, is leave the 1 bag price as it is and increase the multiples slightly and the 4 bag+ price to around £41/42 if things start getting to tight in my view.