openspaceman

Might be cheaper to use a 12 tonne digger to hook them out of the ground in a day and windrow them, then pass over with a plaisance mulcher, UK prices about £1200 plus diesel and machinery movement.

So the fan is just recirculating the air within the container? The dehumidifier then cooling the recirculated air to below its dew point and you are collecting the water? How much water are you collecting? The industrial drier we built removed 8 tonne of water from 18 tonne of fresh (60%mc wwb) 50mm boards/day What size and weight, what species? I reckon on as much as 300kg of fresh oak in a 0.7m3 builder's bag so in round figures that would be about 5.5 tonnes of wood with fresh oak or beech, will contain a bit under 2.5 tonnes of water and you need to dry it to 4.25 to average 30% mc wwb, i.e. your dehumidifier needs to dump just under 1250 litres of water.

Homewood have a website, they make in chestnut paling but their cutters will have other sizes. Homewood Fencing I haven't worked with Tony for 15 years or more and I last saw him at the Bentley woodfair, Allan Lang Forestry was at Liphook but he may well be retired, my first harvesting job was on one of his sites. I meant they all specialise in chestnut coppice in one way or another.

Tony Tyrell, Alan Lang or Steve Homewood are all around Haslemere and in the chestnut coppice line

I've not seen a Dunsley Neutraliser but thought it was a simple device that worked on the hot water density of the hottest supply rising. In effect it is a mini accumulator and as long as each heat source has a dedicated pump they can share the same accumulator. I have to be a bit circumspect here as I'm used to commercial sealed systems not pumped vented systems.

It's easier to maintain stratification of hot water sitting above cold water when the return circulation is cold. So an underfloor system that injects and mixes 85C water from the top of the tank to ~35C and then circulates this through the floor loops until it is cooled to ~25C, when in equilibrium, is returning much colder water to the bottom than a traditional radiator system that circulates water at 85 and returns it at 75C. I can't see what difference a specific boiler would make. An advantage of underfloor is that as the weather warms up the temperature difference between room and floor slab decreases so the slab looses less heat and this in turn reduces demand on the heat input. The other big advantage is the room feels warm at a lower temperature because most people are subjectively more comfortable if their feet are warmer than their heads. It's also less clutter on the walls. Underfloor is almost "de rigeur" with ground source heat pump and solar themal systems because they work best when the difference between hot side and cool side is least. Disadvantage is builders and plumbers don't like/understand it and it is best suited to buildings in 24/7 occupation because of the long time constant of heating the slab.

Yes returning cold water to a solid fuel heater is bad, not only because the cold metal quenches the flame but also because it causes acid condensate in the flue, this can eat through stainless because stainless depends on a chrome oxide layer to protect the iron underneath. It's normal to provide back end protection ( just like the thermostat opening on a car) at 60C. Most plumbers will be used to condensing natural gas boilers and look to getting a return at <56C to maximise vapour condensation, this is bad for wood burners ( makes no difference to coke burners as there is no water to condense). This is particularly a problem with underfloor systems which return at low temperatures. The other thing to look at is how the thermal store is filled, it needs to be from top down, which demands a pump rather than thermosyphon.

Traditionally it was used for dairy utensils and treen as it didn't taint the milk/food but inox must have put paid to that, It was also used for brush heads and paint brushes along with birch and alder. My brother made his kitchen with sycamore and very nice it looked too. It's a wood that needs careful seasoning, traditionally standing upright and being very careful to brush loose sawdust off to avoid stain. In larger sizes it was used along with other whitewoods like beech and sometimes lime for furniture framing. Nidd Valley Sawmills were the last big buyers I sold to but I suspect transport was relatively cheaper then. Joinery grade stuff was valuable and even veneered, post war sycamore was the wood panelling in British rail carriages, you might not believe it because it had turned a deep mahogany colour in 30 years. Of course the highest grade was rippled (aka fiddleback) sycamore and the use is obvious. I felled for a veneer buyer and I well remember his disappointment in finding the trees weren't rippled, it turned him into a vandal.

Treequip has answered this, the only realistic option is to fit a tacho, it's not too onerous as long as you remember to switch it to break when you are working on other things and don't drive more than 4 hours on a journey. I tend to forget on the rare occasions I do have a vehicle with one as I mostly drive a small van. You might enjoy the 100km radius exemption for forestry if you haul your logs directly from a woodland which is in your occupation. I expect the majority of people delivering logs in vehicles over 3.5 tonnes combination weight do so without tachos just as many arborists have a burn pile at their yards...

Yes, the new interpretation Peter found means that at long as the drawbar is rated for the load, the trailer is capable of handling the load and you are within the gross train weight of the vehicle you can do it. In the past the strict interpretation was if the plated weight of the trailer exceeded the allowed towable weight to use it was unlawful. The point I have not found out about is if driving a 6 tonne gross vehicle and towing a 3.5 plated tonne trailer but with the GCW less than 8.25 tonnes will my C1 +E with restriction 107 still be valid? In the past the gross permitted weights dictated the licence requirement. That depends on what you are doing, if for hire and reward then yes but if doing your own work then no operator's licence is necessary because the gross weight of the vehicle is less than 3.5 tonnes and the trailer is excluded from weight calculations because it is a small trailer. Tacho is again dependent on what you are doing and what the actual weight is. If your gross combination weight is over 3.5tonnes then you need to conform to european hours regs (tacho required) unless you are traveling to a worksite within a radius of 50km with only the tools to do the job or enjoy one of the other exemptions. One thing about English law is the business of precedents, i.e. has the law been challenged in court and has a judge's interpretation been made. I am not aware of precedents being set but our chipper supplier did get fined for having no tacho and driving to demonstrate chippers rather than taking it to site to use, he now has a tacho in the Discovery. As we know most arborists do travel to work with tools and a tow behind chipper, claim to work within a 50km radius and seldom get questioned, which is as it should be. What about the scenario as above with the Iveco laden with chip from the job and the greenmech 1928 on the trailer behind and no tachograph fitted, returning from a job 30km from home? GCW is pushing 6 tonnes with ~3tonne of the Iveco and woodchip and 2.5 tonne of trailer. Everything legal from licence point of view C1 +E and less than 8.25 tonnes but are the woodchips and logs part of tools of the trade? Luckily the nice lady from the Merton VOSA office, before it closed, thought it would be splitting hairs to say otherwise but... Apart from a driving test 44 years ago I have no transport qualifications so I'm not being prescriptive, just offering my interpretation for discussion.

Yes softwoods in general have a higher lignin content ( and higher calorific value as a result). The pellet one I was involved with was a Sprout Matador5 tonne/hour, first time they ran it they let the wood cool in the die, I think it took a few days to drill out the die. I went to look at a replacement for a lucas cuber I found and the firm that was producing the modern version was using a lignin additive which probably came as a by product of paper making. It did severely increase the ash content, I,m guessing it was a calcium ligno sulphite of some sort. It's the lignin platicising from heat released by friction in the die that holds a dry pellet together. Put it in water and it sinks and turns back to sawdust in an hour. When we went into the pellet business the intention was to trade off the extra cost of making pellets against the simpler, cheaper, automatic stoking burners. The world moved on and pellets have tracked the price of oil and are really quite an expensive commodity on the retail market.

Good find Peter A bit of digging and it seems they issued a new leaflet in December http://www.dft.gov.uk/vosa/repository/Quick%20guide%20to%20towing%20small%20trailers.pdf In the past their view was that it was the potential to carry the load that made the trailer plated weight the thing that decided the combination weight, There is a certain amount of ambiguity but as you say they will now only consider the actual gross weight of the trailer rather than its potential gross weight. I would have liked to see a definition of "small trailer" and whether it olny applied to vehicles as defined in B for licence requirements. Otherwise it would mean an unladen 7.5 MAM vehicle could tow a trailer greater than 750kg on a C1+E licence with the 107 restriction.

I'd be interested in knowing its actual unladen weight

It does in a round about way, the wording is " A trailer with an unladen weight of less than 1,020kg need not be taken into account in the weight calculation for a vehicle pulling a trailer. It therefore can be ignored for the purposes of adding up total gross weights or unladen weights to determine whether they are above the threshold for requiring an operator’s licence." Now how long would that take to find before google? Now don't get me going on nippers towing and tachos http://arbtalk.co.uk/forum/images/icons/icon7.gif Is that a smiley?

The rule of thumb for the pellet mill was the biggest particle shouldn't exceed 0.4 of the finished pellet diameter ( 11, 8 and 6mm pellets) so yes there is a big comminution cost if you don't start with sawdust. My old boss had a 50mm puck machine ( reciprocating rather than rolling) and that made some lovely briquettes from sawdust, he sold it before I could play with it as the electricity costs frightened him.

You don't need an operator's licence if the unladen weight of the trailer is under an old ton (+-). It's the plated weight of the trailer that counts for the combination weight, e.g. he cannot legally tow a trailer plated for 3.5 tonnes even if it is empty. Only dedicated trafic officers tend to know this. The 50km rule is only for workers carrying their own tools, not delivery drivers but again hard to prove.

IIRC we were getting that in 1978, bars were £19/tonne, it all went downhill after that.

It's just heavy gauge polythene I think, so not breathable, Tyvek roofing felt is the breathable stuff, great for roofs but pointless in a barn. A firm I used to work for trialled a fleece over their chip heaps, to get the mc below 45% for the power stationm but there were problems, I wasn't involved but the use was abandoned.

Dunn at Shredco but Southampton is out of economic transport for Slough Estates, a colleague is having a problem getting rid of arisings around Poole.

That's my view, the breathable stuff is for confined spaces which the vapour has to get out of or for covering heaps where the vapour would otherwise condense back on the top. Even then there are issues with getting it on and off the heap. I cannot see any advantage over a tented structure, like a polytunnel. Apart from when it's raining the RH is always below 100% so some ( even if insignificant in winter) drying will occur if the wood doesn't get re wetted.

I do but I was last there in Feb 2007 and it's all changed since then, especially since the firm I snagged installations for went bust.

I thought grey wagtail

Yes and it probably also includes wood based materials like pulp for cardboard and paper. This is why recycling had such a big impact on the lower grades harevsted, if you recycle 15% of imported timber products you wipe out homegrown pulp demand. This and having the import tariff removed with GATT was the deathknell of homegrown virgin pulp use in UK, Exports and firewood may have taken up the slack but at much lower prices in real terms.

It's a long shot but if there's a good %age of solid wood in it it may be worth seeing if the current IKEA facilities manager is as accommodating as before. I worked on the boilers there 5 years ago and we ran some arb chip through them. AJH

It is a subsidy dictated by the government but the mechanism that pays it to renewable generators is a tariff put on all fossil generated electric and then paid out by the electricity companies, most recently as feed in tariffs. So consumers of fossil electricity directly pay for the cost of renewable electricity ( 2-4 times the wholesale value) As I sit here UK is probably consuming 55GW of electricty and several times that as direct heating, 1 tonne of dry wood contains ~5MWhr of heat and we grow how much harvestable wood? Don't get me wrong, I've been involved with wood harvesting and wood burning for many years but...