openspaceman

You are in much the same position as I but I wouldn't expect a firewood merchant to let me have stock cheap, indeed it is the wrong person to ask, a firm that does tree work but doesn't sell logs is where you should be looking. I got short last summer but a chap on arbtalk let me fetch a few boot loads off one of his jobs. Yes they'll get there eventually but through airflow is probably more important than direct sunlight

Cashflow is one of the reasons kilns pay.

Let us know when they are rooted, I've only struck cuttings from simple things, like bay. As it was very red it is probably the variety elegans and this is selected because it has juvenile foliage throughout its life. I imagine in its native environment it sits as a juvenile under the parent trees waiting for them to fall over, then takes off but this "sport" never learned to grow up. A bit like me apparently.

They are cheap enough to replace https://www.aliexpress.com/w/wholesale-peltier-teg-module.html The important part is the bimetal strip on the bottom, this decouples the fan heat input from the stove by lifting one side as it heats, creating a small air gap.

As I said Caterpillar failed to get it to market yet. My ex colleague went on to work on solid oxide fuel cells in conjunction with gas turbines and told me they were months away from the market producing electricity at 70% c thermal conversion efficiency, RollsRoyce made him redundant last week and the business was sold to LG in Korea. My £25 one is still going fine after 3 years, not sure it distributes much heat though. The thing is the little Peltier effect devices they use were developed for cooling as they have a big market for cooling electronics (and beer ;-)) thus they became available cheaply. The problem is they break down at 200C, so if you get them too hot... Dedicated heat to electricity ones use much the same effect but named after the bloke who described it, Seebeck, and presumably survive higher temperatures, but probably much more expensive. These semiconductor TEGS convert about 5% of the heat passing through from hot to cold side into electricity, metal to metal ones less than 1% but withstand much higher temperatures.

Is that exclusively your province then??

For those that have ecofans on their stoves here's a step up http://he-energy.gmbh/en/seebeck_eng.html It actually knits in quite well with solar PV for off grid as it would provide light and IT if you use a laptop and LED lighting and at this time of year the PV gives very little. I was following Caterpillar's development of a truck which had no alternator but derived 5kW of electricity from heat passing through the exhaust using Seebeck TEGs but that has gone quiet. TEGs seem to be an order of magnitude mere expensive than PV for a given installed capacity.

When I started buying pine thinnings from FC the contract specified no timber bigger than 2" and longer than 6ft to be left on site (phytosanitary reasons), now I find I cannot even walk through sites mechanically harvested for the debris and would love to have the gleanings as firewood and a branch logger to cut them.

They're pingf*kits but if I caught them I used them again.

Cryptomeria Japonica?

I think all materials handlers are classified as mobile cranes/digging machines, as such they cannot tow trailers or carry loads, apart from own equipment or when actually working, as opposed to travelling between sites. Some seem to be registered as agricultural tractors and would be allowed to use red diesel and tow trailers etc when on an agricultural job but for the SpecialTypesGeneralOrder and Construction and use regulations. My view would be that if DVSA have allowed the registration as an agricultural tractor and If the manufacturer has specified a towing capability then so be it. However it's one of those things that would be decided in court and I don't know of any cases, perhaps it should be subject of a freedom of information question?

Let me guess; there will be something green about it and it may have funny circular things instead of straight cutters

If you are delivering a load of wood they will will still require a covered space to store it prior to burning. With my experiments this year it's plain that uptake of water if exposed to rain is significant and much more so with softwood.

One thing that caught my attention was the FAQ which appears to say that the water abstracted and returned was not longer charged for in water power schemes.

Interesting, it seems very similar to a Kaplan turbine which I thought harness the kinetic energy of the flow plus the energy from the smaller height potential.

Very pleased for you and you are right, glad you pursued it and posted.

I missed this earlier; yes finding the actual costs and profits seems difficult but if your mum has shares she ought to have access to annual reports. I'd be fascinated to know, especially how much they have to pay EA for running it.

Do you have any particular reason for that thought? I think an overshot water wheel is one of the most efficient, trouble is it cannot utilise water from a higher head than it's diameter, that's when reaction turbines, like francis and kaplan turbines, take over. Once you get to very high heads of hundreds of metres the impulse type pelton wheels are more efficient. It's the high flow, low head like weirs with only a drop of feet but tonnes of water per second that the Archimedes screw becomes worthwhile but it doesn't have the efficiency of the others and because it passes a very high flow it itself is massive (and cost tends to rise with mass)

I said I knew how to leave fruiting spurs, not that I knew it well! In any case I bow to your seniority, I only got about 30 years in solely on the tools, the rest I was mostly a deskjockey and have several scars.

Yes two apples and a pear next door and several apples (including at least one Bramley and I don't know if they can pollenate) within 300 yds. There never was a lack of fruit, it's just that it didn't survive to ripen on the tree. All done as best I could. I've pruned apples before and know how to leave fruiting spurs. I also did a pear a couple of years ago which subsequently fruited so heavily it snapped branches ;-(

Licensing is the big issue, EA will charge both for the abstraction and then the return of water to a stream if it is one they or a drainage board control I'm told. I'd definitely play with this if I had the opportunity, guerilla style. I queried a scheme local to me where EA are rebuilding a weir and adding a fish ladder (wholly good thing IMO). Originally someone considered putting in a 150kW Archimedes screw generator ( they are more fish friendly than conventional types) but that was abandoned and EA will not explain their reasoning, two similar ones were put on the Thames at Romney weir by the crown or their agents and seem to work well.

I tried to but it was quite a heavy infestation which is why I thought preventing fruiting might give the tree a chance to recover. It is an old tree, it looked old 40 years ago when we got here but I was busy so didn't give it any attention. The apples never kept well but had a pleasant taste , over the years the brown rot caused most to fall prematurely and any that remained were damaged. Yes I should fell it and it would give another parking space plus when I'm gone the site will get redeveloped into a 5 bed house owned by someone with a good job in London and young kids wanting to be sent to the sought after local school but for now I like it and cannot replace it with anything I'll benefit from.

You've started an interesting thread (or two if we include food from the wild) and I will be looking at it. I posed a question about my ancient apple tree a while back and got no response; it suffers from bloom wilt and associated brown rot plus an infestation of codling moth. I pruned out what affected branches I could see plus removed all the blossom in an attempt to break the codling moth cycle.

I agree you should not use a support fuel for drying but there is also no point in trying to make char directly from wet material. In principle there is easily enough energy in wood to make char from freshly felled material but it will require a bit of kit as mentioned earlier. Coupled with a bit of summertime air drying I can see even things like hedge cuttings could be done but note these may be better as a source of organic carbon and nitrogen which is otherwise lost in the carbonisation process.

Nope, I'm not that well organised. Apart from anything else all my ventures have been commercial failures and it's commercial success that drives economies. That's fine, the alkali effects of a high temperature char can start addressing that but a bit of lime wouldn't be amiss. I wonder what crop would take off excess iron? On heathland restoration they attempted to grow cereals when reverting marginal arable land back to heath, the idea being cereals take a lot of minerals off site when harvested. Sounds good, the legumes will put a bit of nitrogen back in but won't overcome the oxygen and nitrogen deficiency of poorly composted wood chip, again compost tends to tend to the lower pH so you need to address acidity/ Retort char tends to be made at lower temperatures (<450C) and still contains pyroligneous compounds which are themselves acidic. Also Cation Exchange Capacity seems to develop as the amorphous char develops graphite like structures above this temperature, char directly exposed to fire reaches higher temperatures but of course the yield is less. I'm not at all sure about what size is best but I would want to avoid dust lest it be carried off into the water course.