openspaceman

I had a Jotul 601 for over 30 years but I cracked the back by stuffing over long logs in it. I wanted to upgrade to something cleaner burning and bought a morso s11. I like it and the radiant heat through the glass door is noticeable. I heat the downstairs rooms with it. My regret is in it not having a hob as I used to cook on the Jotul and now have to use electricity (which is only a problem between mid November to mid January).

Yes and spreading the labour needed for processing. I wonder about the benefits to a smaller producer who can fit a year's produce in a polytunnel as in SE England a polytunnel will dry wood sufficiently in a summer month. On the larger scale if you need to dry 1000 green tonnes for a year that probably means holding a processed stock of £100k for a year so the cashflow becomes a significant problem. If you have a 100% efficient drier I think you would need 14% of the dry weight for fuel and our dryer was 50% efficient, I would guess sawdust and scraps would amount to about 5% of the processed material.

I am no groundworker but what about installing a fin drain and shingle along my blue line?

I wonder if it is an effect of the oak reacting to the insect by increasing tannin production? we see this in lammas growth where a tree has been partially defoliated by tortrix caterpillars in spring and the replacement leaves contain more tannin.

@peds has answered this; the iron in staples react with tannin in the sap and this then carries the blue stain up and down the vessels staining the wood Quink blue, that is how ink was made from iron filings and oak galls. Once a tree is compromised or felled boring insects dive into it, after a couple of years they get into the heartwood, the valuable bit of an oak. On some soils oak trees develop internal cracks, shakes, which also devalue the timber. They cannot be seen (though can sometimes be predicted from the look of the bark) until the butt is cross cut. Thirty years ago I would have taken the job on if it were local to me and paid the owner for the butt whilst keeping the second lengths and firewood for myself. The second length would make knotty tiebeams or sole plates on the woodmiser. About 40 years ago my felling partner and brother had the job of providing roof shingles for the local church steeple, they had to buy clean butts like this to cut and split so even single butts were used. Generally forestry counts in large amounts so you need lorry loads (27 tonnes nowadays) of the same quality for the best prices. You are far north of the sawmill in Ferriby I used to supply but there must be other homegrown mills nearer you who would send a buyer to look. The bu

That is one area where vehicles are different from other property, moving things without doing anything else to them is likely to be a civil matter but moving cars may be interpreted as taking without owners consent and is a criminal offence although the law states it is "for use" so may not be applicable. If a timely warning has been given I'd do it and have done in the days before electric parking brakes and alarms.

There's a bit of a balancing act going on between those branches supporting it and the rootplate, once you have that sussed without squashing anyone then it looks like you have a clean butt of 8+' and 30" quarter girth, 50Hft. In my day that would have been a week's wages for two men so worth dragging to roadside. The only worry would be shake and pinholes and as it is a farm field ink stain and staples.

Just to remind you of your CSE; sulphur in coal burns to sulphur dioxide,SO2, if there is liquid water in the flue this combines to form sulphurous acid, H2SO3. This can, and does, eat through a stainless steel liner by reacting with the protecting chromium oxide layer and then attacking the iron content. Bone dry wood produces water as a product of combustion whereas coal produces little and of course wood at 20% mc produces much more. As you say as long as the dew point of water in the exhaust gases is not reached it will not condense and the sulphur dioxide will stay as a gas and be exhausted.

It would be sulphurous acid. My main reason would be I would not risk coal ash on the garden whereas I do put wood ash on it.

Before you start ordering parts take the exhaust off and have a look at the piston and rings. You could take a photo and post it here. Try and get both rings in view and a bit of the skirt.

Plus it is highly toxic if ingested

Yes we are probably too far down the road for food production to be immediately weaned off but I see no reason many pesticides could not be withdrawn for amenity use. I'll probably include utilities in that as my experience was that it was over used and outside of label by contractors ticking the paperwork and ignoring the instructions. The thing is farmers are cost conscious and use just the right amount to do the job with properly calibrated application. The same cannot be said of much amenity applications by knapsack spray or golf courses where cost is less of an issue.

Depending what one means by safe, probably none in environmental terms.

It worried me but the belt change on my 1.6d fiesta cost £750 with a service and it seems fine 10k miles since.

That article seems somewhat flawed: On the one hand we know glyphosate is inactivated soon after it hits a target plant or the soil. On the other they claim to find it post a sewage treatment plant. My concern is that they are confusing the original chemical with its metabolites, which apparently are common with those of some washing powders. As it has got cheaper farming has grown more addicted to it. I know we mustn't conflate cause and effect but much of the decline in insects seems to date from about the time modern herbicides came into use in the 70s, especially for no till crops of wheat and the OSR break crop.

Yes I find the same

Debateable

Obviously you need somwhere with enough space lest the heat damage nearby trees and you only need ~70C to damage the bark and cambium. Also it is best done so the ground is not scorched, in a burn barrel on 2 bricks or an old trough/iron bath etc.

bonfire by far the cheapest

So there was something else at the bottom front, that's a lawsons cypress, very unlikely to damage the house and not likely to be a reason you could not fell it unless TPO or conservation area.

Not a good picture but the leaves look pinnate at the bottom, grey bark too.

It's getting difficult to find mechanical fixings round this area, the two firms that kept me in odd bolts and bits, in Camberley and Guildford, both closed in July.

Have you heard of the saying about letting sleeping dogs lie?

Sort of right but but the fact it makes the carbon recalcitrant is the same whatever soil. Yes there's a lot of hype, especially about proprietary methods of making it. The much vaunted "flame cap" was in use to make half 45 gallon barbecues was known in my youth and John Evelyn even mentions making it on the flat as a method in his treatise sylva. Last I was professionally involved it was the EA that objected to its use on agricultural land, I don't know how their position has changed in the 8 years since.

About time too