openspaceman

Length of a piece of string question, when I packed up as Sudbrook closed I was forwarding 2.5m hardwood pulp onto trailers at 58 tonne/day over 1km for £4/tonne and using about 30 litres of diesel. It was OK if nothing went wrong. I can get woodchip to you for cheaper than you could fell and chip it if you take it in the summer and in 25 tonne loads.

I dug mine out on Monday and the rope and harness, all worked as I remembered it, section felling an old Lawsons, rope management left a bit to be desired but it's been 10 years or so. I always found it a bit low powered for anything but early softwood thinnings, preferring a 262 for most work.

Yes but never is a long time, highways authorities change and lose records which is why my advice, and that of the NFU last I heard, is in addition to yours and is to re affirm regularly.

Arrgh! Not in my bailiwick if I see the application. I won't oppose a sensible diversion round a headland or away from a yard or dwelling but hemming in a prevously open path will get me going. In fact when a land owner wishes to change the route of a currently fenced in path one of the conditions I strive for is the open aspect. Now where are you

Yes and the 18 ton trailer bit is a bit hard to achieve with regard to axle spacings and it means the tractor must weigh less than 6190kg What taxation class are these mogs used under?

This would then be a permissive path as opposed to a right of way. Anyone happy to allow public access by this sort of arrangement but not intending the route to become dedicated as a public right of way should lodge a map and statement with the highway authority to say there is no intent to dedicate the route AND renew this statement every 6 years.

Yes Open Spaces Society and Ramblers Association are both statutary consultees. You'll need to make the application, advertise it for six weeks and if there is an objection deal with that. If the objection is not withdrawn then it can go to public enquiry.

Traditionally November through to March, the idea being to not exhaust reserves in the of food in the parenchymous tissue of the stool as these are necessary to support the new shoots in the next growing season until new leaves can. Unless your coup is a large one you will need to protect the new growth.

So you can demonstrate a legitimate use for any material received I paraphrase a note from someone in EA: Virgin wood chip is not waste and therefore does not require a permit to store/treat/produce. Virgin timbers are not waste and are not subject to waste regulatory controls provided they are certain to be used for purposes to which virgin wood is commonly put. These include use as: 1. woodchip in gardens or on pathways; 2. a raw material for composting; 3 fuel There are other regulations and planning permission to consider but for small scale I wouldn't worry. The same does not apply to other plant waste, like grass mowings or hedge clippings, the definition of of virgin timber seems quite precise. There is some ambiguity in the EA position because they still seem to have kept exemptions for processing and storing woodchip, whether this only applies to "clean" waste wooe. things like unpainted untreated pallets containing no chipboard/mdf isn't clear to me.

are they hanging from threads? Looks like tortrix ( leaf roller caterpillar)

Have you any idea how different wild flower seeds stay viable? I have a commercial mix which didn't get sown this year and wonder if it will be good for next season.

Hoe does one tackle a mixed heap like that? I'm looking at having to move on a similar looking heap that's been rucked up by a telehandler, 'cept it's 10 time more.

It looks like you've found one elsewhere; I have an 1164 with 8tonne farmi which could do with an excuse to take to Crediton, it's taken a lot of damage where I have it parked up. Aside from that my brother could do with some logs near crediton if anyone has some.

I'm certain we didn't achieve the target figure of £10/ tonne of water removed. That was the best we expected to be able to do with the system built as conceived. In the event the customer dictated gasoil as fuel with little concessions to efficiency other than cladding it in 6" of rockwool. In effect they bought half of the dryer I intended but theirs was a very commercial decision and by all accounts worked well for them. I had two linked goals 1 to keep running costs below £10/tonne of water removed and 2 to "spend" less than 4MJ/kg of water removed. I cannot remember exact figures but we would have been working on £0.04/kWhr for input energy. The trouble is an off the peg woodburner at the required 400kW put the capital cost up to0 much and the customer wouldn't accept a home brewed stoker burner. As with all plant the operating cost would have consisted of capital expenditure amortused, operational cost and fuel cost and charges on capital cost were the worry. All the detailed design was done by a colleague who was familiar with wood combustion, his degree was in a gasifying corn dryer. Incidentally while this was going on another colleague (three of us formed the company) was "managing" the construction of the first dedicated pellet mill in Britain. As I recall, never having any hands on involvement myself, they used wood at 12% without the steam nebuliser and the pellets lost 2% through the die. At the time they expected to have a zero cost supply of waste sawdust which never materialised.

The firm I'm doing some work for have a glut but 50 miles from you, if you get desperate and can take 25 tonne and pay thee £11/tonne haulage let me know.

Leaving aside reckless disturbance of nesting birds; the reason hedge laying is a winter activity is because the stem must be dormant, in the summer the layer just under the bark is constantly dividing with new cells forming phloem and bark cambium, these cells have not properly formed vessels and bending them will cause the layer to rupture. That's how one can make a slider whistle from a piece of ash at this time of year, the wood can be made to slide inside the tube of bark. Pick a 1" diameter shoot and bend it whole now, you will see the bark ripples on the compression side before the tension side snaps. The aim of the plash cut in winter is to form a laminate of a thin layer of wood and the outer bark with the intact cambium in the sandwich, this can then be bent through 60 degrees without buckling and the sap can then flow next spring in the thin sapwood layer and keep the stem alive plus the bark cambium can send food back to the root ans sustain it.. I'm by no means experienced but the limit is in making the cut and still supporting the tree as it is laid over without tearing any fibres, plus leaving enough intact viable conducting tissue, 6" seems a reasonable maximum.

Good point, I have a skip depot just up the road from here, they reckon to redirect most skips containing just inert brick rubble, soil etc and screen it into hardcore, the fines do get mixed in with soil and sold as top soil. The give-away is the musty smell as you rake it in.

That would be a good benchmark for comparing drying costs, we can assume the full capacity and a single use (as the poly tunnel is probably cheaper than other covered storage before the customer puts it in their storage). Correct me where I am wrong So: £1220 amortised over 5 years and 250 bulked m^3 which is 125 solid m^3 and 50 tonne of oven dry wood per annum. In UK under cover the best equilibrium moisture content we can expect is 10% and in the winter 20% is probably realistic in an unheated store. Let's say we end up with 62.5 tonnes of firewood On a simple rate of return calculation ignoring interest that's £3.9 per tonne of product and represents a cost of £6.50 per tonne of moisture removed. In 2000 my target cost for the fast dryer was £10/tonne moisture removed on a 24 hour cycle. The production cost is a bit irrelevant to the drying equation unless you have to either borrow or allow for the cash flow, i.e. how much do you charge for the labour and wood cost which you may not see a return on for 6 months. If it's waste wood and wet weather working when wages have to be paid anyway you may ignore it. On the other hand if you buy in wood at £50/tonne wet and process it using staff employed for the purpose then it is significant. The real question is how much more is a 1m^3 bag of seasoned wood worth to you than the same unseasoned and then what is a 1m^3 bag of seasoned firewood worth to you on the day before Christmas eve when you only have unseasoned cordwood left in stock.

They did, it had a folding bottom wheel and was 36", VXF I think

I cannot directly make the comparison but a 7 plate 350 rwd transit crewcab chassis has a maximum payload of 1652kg, with a very lightweight body and 3/4 tank of fuel it weighed 2100kg. A substantial toolbox is about 75kg. There's not too much to worry about the back axle as it can carry 1829kg including the body. Front MAM is 1750 rear 2450kg There is far less latitude with single wheel FWD as the sum of the axle weights is 3500. IIRC the crewcab with seats weighs 150kg more than the same LWB single cab. The brochure including weights is available on the ford website, I don't have a copy at home but can check if you want more info.

The initial combustion is as a pyrolysing fire, only enough air gets to the pyrolysis zone to sustain it, the pyrolysis offgas from this is what burns in the flame. As the pyrolysis front gets to the bottom then it works as a normal updaraught fire, to keep it in gasifying mode the primary air velocity and hence volume has to increase significantly. The problem is that the temperature in the can goes up from about 600C for pyrolysis to over 1100C. Steel cans can just about survive the lower temprature but will spall off iron oxide at the higher temperautres and even stainless won't do much better. The interesting thing with these TLUD devices is that they won't work with wood withmoisture content of more than about 25% but with dry wood they produce charcoal if the fire is snuffed as the pyrolysis zone reaches the bottom.

Yes, any wood burns well dry, Turkey Oak is drought tolerant and I think this is because it can store so much water in the stem, and draw on it, This is possibly the reason it shakes badly and has such a high tangential to radial shrinkage . We found it would rot insiode it's bark before it dried, a bit like birch if left out in the round.

I don't know but it was the peltier coolers that drove down the cost of the bismuth teluride devices. I know purpose designed TEGs will have a higher conversion than reverse driven TECs, Caterpillar built a 5kW pile running off a large truck engine exhaust. I've looked back at the discussion when this stove was developed by people visiting Aprovecho, there was a presentation around October 2009. Looking at the website and diagrams it seems the two models are based on different principles, the camping stove is a development of Tom Reeds fan powered TLUD stove which I think is still in production in India, this was itself a developement of the Reed-Larson natural draught device. I did miss one vital point about this and that is it does recuperate heat passing through the TEG. It still lacks the secondary burning/premixing area noramlly associated with TLUD stoves. The other ( home stove ) is simialrly a modification of the Aprovecho Rocket stove.