openspaceman

Woodpecker's larder?

AFAIK the HETAS registered installer can self certify his work but not that of others. Building control could certify it for a fee if they have someone competent to do so (unlikely).

Moisture in the wood and surrounding soil makes it difficult because until you can get the wood up to about 300C it won't pyrolyse. Moisture holds the temperature down to 100C. So if the mass of wood and soil conducts the heat away from the fire faster than the fire heats the wood it won't work. My device was a 12 by 38" tractor wheel with a cast iron hub in the middle. An exhaust pipe slid inside the hub onto a chainsaw bored hole into the stump. We tried it on the stump of a dead pine we had felled in a garden of a posh new 4 bedroom house. A very old vacuum cleaner blew air down into the hole where the fire was lit. A car wheel with a 5' flue pipe welded to its centre was placed over the exhaust pipe so the exhaust from the fire was via the flue pipe, this pre heated the combustion air. The fire burned through the middle of the stump til it reached the sandy soil underneath the stump. It worked but as it took many hours to get up to temperature and then it became uncontrollable it was deemed far too dangerous. I wrote about it here years ago from memory, it happened around 1980. The house holder was wakened in the early hours by the roar of a jet engine and the bedroom lit by bright orange. A long flame was flaring from the flue pipe until the vacuum cleaner hose melted. Then it subsided and he cut the power. He was a patent agent and immediately lost interest in my invention. The fire was out by the time I arrived in the morning and the laterals had burned out to the edge of the tractor wheel. I tried it once more on a freshly felled oak stump but it hardly got going during a day because the wood was so green, it would have needed a support fuel to get it up to temperature, so that was that and most firms earn extras by stump grinding now.

I'm sure I posted the longer version somewhen

Yes, motor manual felling was short lived, about 30 years. Like the pony express. I enjoyed doing it though.

It will be interesting to see a picture of the cut stump when it is felled if you would oblige?

I'd use a length of 6mm clear plastic fuel tube. If you make a U with water in the bottom you will probably only see a few mm difference in height if you have the leg to the flue vertical and the leg open to atmosphere at a shallow angle this will accentuate the difference. I have one that was cast out from a university lab [1] but you are a bit far from me. [1] a nice old microscope too

The fruiting bodies look like Meripilus giganteus and could be very significant. You could get a contractor to test the tree with one of the devices that sound out rot but from your description of the rotten root I think the rot is advanced. The white dots are a scale insect and ordinarily not to worry about but in this instance they may indicate a tree with lowered defences. It looks like the tree was reduced a few years ago. what was the reason? Has it lost leaves prematurely this year compared with other beeches locally?

Of course but not in hay fields. Silage I'm not sure about, whether the toxin survives the pickling

Take the plug out. The inlet is the one that opens as the piston goes down and the exhaust opens as the piston comes up as long as the engine is rotated in the right direction.

That's right, when standing and green it is unpalatable to animals but dried mixed in with forage it gets eaten.

Yes that is how they keep them in an area, I thought it was a sound that they associated with the shock but don't know.

I was told similar about ragwort, that it was more significant in breeding cattle and horses because it took longer to have effect.

It is and most cattle won't eat it, which is why the trampling was referred to. There were liver cancers found after people had been eating it in Japan and even Wales during WW2 IIRC.

whitebeam

Maybe Rigidoporus ulmarius

I cannot help with a company that refurbishes carburetors; it would be interesting to see what causes them to fail beyond needle valves, diaphragms and pumps, all of which are replaceable. For my part I have seen worn butterfly spindles/holes, throttle pumps and check valves cause air leaks that stop the engine running with either weak mixture or failing to draw fuel.

There's no choke because the primer bulb squirts petrol in the intake to richen it. When you press thebulb your finger covers the hole that allows fuel to drain back when running. The screw at the bottom of the float chamber is just a drain. I think the silver screw opens the butterfly to increase tickover revs. The other is probably the slow running mixture.

Yes I used to swap every year, now it's an addition to car insurance.

yes there's a dilemma in that during the nesting season if you have enough cattle to trample the bracken you increase the chances of trampling eggs I suppose. The nesting season is the only opportunity to cut and collect the bracken.

Galloways have been used on all of Surrey Wildlife trusts sites for about 20 years and there are about half a dozen on the site in question. They don't seem to have much effect on bracken. The are using the gps neck collars on their Chobham common reserve which is much bigger.

I do much the same but you need to be aware that if the cord is too thin it can spool on side by side rather than on top of the previous layer and when you pull it to start it wedges the plastic pulley apart.

Big problem which we have discussed here before, Asulox, the selective herbicide that was used is not licensensed anymore, glyphosate works but only in full leaf around August. Dicamba which had a specific application method, that was not often adhered to, is not licensed.It was applied in winter and was particularly effective but needed a summer follow up spot weeding with glyphosate. Cultural methods work and cut and cart three times in the summer probably the best where it is a monoculture. As I said the site is an SPA so no intervention in the nesting season is allowed. This is daft because it is spreading and nothing of interest nests under it. If it is cut for 3 years ( in the growing season but off the SPA) the re establishment of heathers is good, tussock grass on the more fertile bits. The thing is the SPA has three indicator birds that they judge the health of the heath by ( although it is a proxy as the insects and reptile/amphibians are a major interest). Dartford warblers nest in gorse so are relatively unaffected by cutting, Woodlarks will prefer the short sward produced by this recent mowing, the nightjars, which arrive in April and gone by September, will nest in the more mature heather and grass. There should be a scheme of cutting and hand roguing blocks while the nightjars have the rest of the , relativity, unaffected heather. Nightjar population is growing thanks to the reversion from plantation/woodlands on these sites generally plus asking owners to keep their dogs to major paths in the nesting season probably has an effect.

It's an interesting question, I no longer have dealings with the landowner but was told they would be bonfired off site. I was flabbergasted. I suggested there were green composting alternatives locally but thought I knew a tip site (from here)that might take them if they would like me to enquire. I have been told by a local that they felt I was criticising.Anyway after a few exchanges with @Woodwanter on here he was willing to take a punt but was worried about the moisture content. By the time I had got back and asked whether they could load them they said they had instructed their contractor to dispose the bales to a green waste site. I have asked for the contractor to contact me but they are no longer answering my email. Heavy rain today won't have helped.

There is an old saying which indirectly tells about soil fertility. " Gold under gorse Bronze under bracken hunger under heather" so heather grows where the fertility is low, it has a way of locking all the available nitrogen into the plant. Bracken thrives where there is a bit of potassium, I often notice it along one of the trees we left as standing dead when it has fallen down and started to rot. Gorse grows where there is available potassium and Phosphorus and can make its own nitrogen as it is a legume. It's more nuanced than that in reality as there are lots of other things that influence but the old farmers knew a bit. Heath developed where much of the available minerals for growth had walked off the site into the farmers adjacent fields after a bit of free grazing.