Chalgravesteve

Hi All. I am looking for a supplier of Kindling. I will be buying by the pallet load, probably 2 pallets to start. I am based in Toddington, Beds Postcode is LU5 6JN. I produce my own kiln dried logs for retail sale. I have a reasonable demand to supply kindling as part of the order but I don't want to get involved with the production of it. I just want to buy it in and sell it on. So, I need to know the size of the nets when filled, and the number of nets to a pallet and the delivered cost to me. I don't have the time or inclination to collect. Cheers Steve

I sell the majority of my kiln dried logs in 0.25m barrow bags. They are 0.5 x 0.5 x 1.0 but they do stretch and we reckon that we get about 0.35 in them. Our USP (unique selling point!) is that we deliver the volume they want to where they want it. I don't drop the stuff on their doorstep and bugger off leaving them to clear it up! Customer service is about giving them what they want, when they want it and leaving them happy that they didn't have to get their hands dirty like they normally do. They now know they can buy 2 or 3 bags, use a couple and get some more delivered. Its kiln dried so they can buy today and burn today.

I got into it purely from a business viewpoint. My main business is a golf club. I have 5 greenkeepers already paid for who have relatively little to do in winter. I had loads of arbwaste coming in, as a by product of the woodchip we also took for pathways. I spent £55K on a kiln, 195kW boiler with accumulator and a new firewood processor as that was the only bit of kit I didn't have, plus the rest of the bits and bobs needed. We are BSL approved as a producer/trader, we get tier one RHI at 7.6p and will manage to get the full tier one payment before the end of our first year by some margin. So my incoming material costs nothing, my staff costs are nothing, I will get paid RHI which will cover the investment in 2.5 years and will receive it for 20. The product we produce is clean kiln dried logs which we sell locally at prices that are competitive with seasoned. If I sell a bag for £40 my costs are about £3 for the bag and the rest is profit. From a business perspective, it was a complete no brainer. It has also secured the employment of my staff through the winters now.

Yes sorry, wrong dimensions...0.9 x 1.2 x 1.8 = 1.95m3 Cut the tops out so we can load through the top and the logs are then above the top section when full. The wheels save a hell of a lot of time shifting the logs about in the kiln, and we can rotate the stock easily so as we sell stock, we can move new stuff into the kiln and rotate everything up by the fans for a period of time. Before, with potato boxes, we had to unload the whole kiln if we needed stock and the dry ones were always at the end near the fans, the furthest from the doors.

We open the top door and load by hand into tall barrow bags. 95% of what we sell is in multiples of barrow bags. Then open the bottom door and do the same. If need be we could tip it onto its side in a trailer and then lift it out with the forklift loader but I hardly sell any loose logs. Or just put cage upright into trailer and open doors! It all just falls out then! Handy things, doors! Lol

I've got parcel cages, three fixed sides and two "stable doors". They are on wheels as well. Split logs straight into them through the top, load them into my 40ft container kiln with a forklift and push them around on the wheels. They hold about 2 m3 per cage roughly .9 x .8 x 1.9 high and we stack load them out the top. Cost me £45 each when citilink went bust. Got 40 of them and the kiln holds 20.

somewhere in the small print there will be requirement for you to produce a minimum level of heat output. RHI is paid for metered heat output, so you have to be able to consume the heat in an approved manner. If you don't fire up the boiler for the required amount of HEAT OUTPUT/CONSUMPTION then they wont get the RHI level that they need to fund the boiler, every year for seven years, if that is what your contract says. If the boiler is ineffiecient, and does not produce the fully rated output of kWhr, then you will be consuming more fuel in order to reach the target. That is not exclusive to any company doing this type of deal, it is how RHI works. Just becasue your boiler says its output is 50kW it doesn't mean that you can achieve it. If you can only get 25kW out of it then you will use significantly more fuel and will take much longer to achieve the figures. If the boiler heats a water tank, then you still have to use the heat somehow (in an approved manner) to provide more capacity in the water tank so that it can consume some more heat. RHI is not quite as simple as it sounds! Make sure that you speak to someone who has got one on the same deal and has been operating it for a while and that it is meeting the output targets and the consumption targets.

I have a dragon D20 and we don't have any issues with starting it? Really easy with a few pallets, or if we don't have any of those we use the bark/small split waste from the log processing as kindling and away it goes. I'm of the opinion that once it is going, that to use a telehandler to reload is not worth the risk to the damage to the machine, hydraulic pipes, ram seals, becasue when you are sat in the cab you have no idea what heat is pouring out of the open door. Realistically, you wouldn't stand there for a minute would you? So if you were carefully manoveuring the telehandler not to bash the boiler, to get the load into the boiler properly and fully, as if you drop it and it protrudes out the door, you cant move it by hand can you? So you stay too close to the heat for too long and stuff melts or worse, catches fire. Use the telehandler to get the stuff close to the door, and take 10 minutes to load it!

You are talking about the Biomass Suppliers List (BSL) and fuel which is BSL compliant. From Nov 2015 it will be a requirement for anyone claiming RHI payments that the fuel they use in their biomass boiler will be an approved BSL fuel. This will apply to both Domestic and Commercial RHI. At the moment, there is no control over what is used for fuel, you can burn pretty much anything. The scheme will, as I understand it, require that a claimant for RHI will require that they can prove the fuel they have used is a BSL fuel for the amount of RHI claimed. For example, if you say that 1 tonne of dry logs produces 4500kW of heat, and you have claimed in a quarter, RHI for 100,000kW, then you would need invoices that show 22 tonnes of fuel purchased as a BSL fuel to remain accredited for RHI payments. To become a BSL approved fuel, you have to jump through a load of hoops to show that you can prove the origin/source of the fuel, the distance it travels from source to depot, the processing system, the moisture content at start and finish of the processing, delivery distance to other depots for distribution to the end user and the approx distance to the end user. If this is under a certain final figure in their formula, then the fuel will be BSL compliant. Personally, I would think that a fuel which is imported, say from Eastern Europe, would have too great a distance in transportation for it to be compliant as a BSL fuel. So, if you can get your fuel approved as a BSL approved fuel, there will be a significant number of people who will HAVE to source their fuel from approved suppliers in order to continue to claim RHI. If you supply fuel to people with open fires and woodburners who are not claiming RHI it wont be any different to what you do now. Once you are compliant as a BSL supplier, there are quarterly compliance reports to complete to remain compliant as a fuel supplier. Sounds worse than it is, but it is all about being able to prove the source and the destination and the processing.

Therin lies your problem with the suppliers. There are so many variables in each different product/supplier and you are asking them to trust you to input all the variables correctly for their products and do the same for every other supplier. I cant see how you can put all suppliers in there......dodgy dave and his wet logs is not going to appear is he? Even once you have created the database of suppliers/products, how does the comparision weight each variable? If the supplier does not understand it then they wont participate in fear of letting someone else damage their business? Developing apps is the easy, albeit costly bit. Getting people to use them and suppliers to support them, particularly if you are asking suppliers to pay to be on it.....and if you are not asking for payment and its free, then people don't think its going to be much good! Life''s a bitch!

I will have a close look at them then thanks for the heads up.

I only made the point on 25% MC as the OP wanted to build a kiln that dried wood comparable to the biomass ones. It is all relative as if your wood was 50% + to start that's not bad going. It all depends on what you want the finished product for, and if it is for resale then 25% isn't going to hit the well enough I don't think. The space heater, if it paraffin, propane, operates with a live flame and a blower and then left unattended to run in a fibreglass area could be very bad. Like I said, I'm not trying to defeat the objectives here, simply put a word of warning that any DIY system needs to have safety considered. In the same way that most DIY things get over engineered, the same should apply to making sure its a safe job as well.

yeah its the cutting up bit that is not good!! A lot of the pallets are already broken but it would be nice to chuck the large chunks in one end and get a nice bag of kindling out the other end!

Is there such a thing or is it a split/saw it by hand effort? I have seen the kindling processors which split round logs, but I may have access to a large and regular stock of pallets and I would be interested in utilising some of that for kindling if possible. Any suggestions would be good.

Under 25% in 10 days is not exactly dry though? All the stove manufacturers manuals cite under 20% moisture content as being the benchmark. Also, putting a stove which might overheat into a fibreglass body which will burn like hell and release toxic fumes if it goes up, is not a great plan if you have neighbours! The "space heater" is a bottled gas job? Where is the canister for that then? Just outside the fire hazard kiln? I'm not trying to knock the principles of what you are trying to achieve, but if that does go up, and you have the fire brigade in attendance and you have neighbours nearby, you have an obligation to ensure that your installation is safe and a gas bottle in close proximity to what you already accept is a potential fire hazard is unsafe. If you are drying the wood for resale, ie as a business, then you are putting yourself at risk as you are responsible for the safe working practices.

Application waiting final approval at mo from Ofgem. I had it preaccredited in March and it has finished in the technical areas, just providing photos of meters and readings to finish off and be approved. Also had the arb arisings from which we fuel the boiler and provide the source of the logs for retail approved on BSL as virgin seasoned and virgin foce dried so we can self supply our own fuel as well as having an approved log for other RHI boilers (which will be required after Nov 15).

Boiler heats its water jacket which is then circulated to the accumulation then pumped to heat exchangers in the kiln and then returns to accumulator. Mine has pressure vessels to maintain the system pressure and to stop the water boiling in the system. If you don't have an accumulator the boiler feeds directly to the heat exchangers but as soon as the boiler needs more fuel or goes out the temp in the kiln will drop. The accumulator allliws the kiln to run 24/7 almost. Valves and meters are so involved fir RHI

Yup it does what it should do. I have got a 10,000 litre accumulator heated by the dragon and then fed to the kiln. 4 x 650watt fans/heat exchangers. Depends if you are into RHI? The RHI way outstrips the cost of electrics etc. Been running it for a month and it dries a load of split/processed logs down to 11 - 18% depending where it was in the kiln in about 6-7 days. Up by the fans is the lower end. We are looking at how we can load the kiln better and maybe circulate the stock so that we have a continuous load of wood coming ready instead of a complete kiln every seven days. Early days for us but it works fine. Where are you based you can come and have a look if you like? Or have a look at my website there are some pictures on there? Tell Phil I told you about it.....I told him he needed me to sell them for him!! LOL

why don't you buy the kiln completed from Dragon then? They have a container kiln now. Running one off my D20.

Not specifically around a processor, but made several "barns" from telegraph poles, 2 uprights and a "crossbar" make 3 sets and set each set of "goalposts" 8ft apart, with a slope for the roof. Roof Steel clad the roof (and sides if required). Easy!

Why should there be any link between the cost of oil and the cost of cord? Other than haulage should be cheaper and the chainsaw oil as well for the guys cutting the trees down...... When oil was shooting up through the roof, cord prices didn't particularly mirror that? The fact is that if other sources of fuel are cheaper, then people who have multiple options for heating their house, can choose which they want to use. Those that have woodburning stoves as an aesthetic improvement to the ambience of their house will still burn the same amount of wood irrespective of the outside temperature as their central heating will just have less to do.

Nope....Retail is about selling.....even if the incoming stuff is free, if you don't/can't sell it you don't make anything..... stockpiling is no good either.. Profit is made on turnover of stock, not how much you have. If you have £50,000 worth of stock and you sell it in a year and it cost you £20,000 to acquire/process you made £30,000. If you have £10,000 worth of stock and it cost you £4,000 (same %age) but you sell and replace the stock every 2 weeks through the year, you never hold more than £10,000 worth of stock, but you sold £260,000 worth of product and made £156,000! What do you want then? £10k of stock or £50k of stock?

a currency that is used and traded in cyberspace....don't ask me how you get any or how you spend or exchange it into cash.....or cheques....

Depends where you are based. The link I put up is for the Herts/Beds/Bucks/Cambs/East Anglia region. Outside of that area I would have no idea. The grant I achieved was not based on any particular industry, it simply required me to be investing in the business myself to create or to secure jobs.

Contact Judith Barker @ Grants4Growth If it is not her area she will know who can help you. Judith helped me get a grant for a processor but it is basically any equipment or capital investment, and I think polytunnels more crates to expand the business/secure jobs would be acceptable.