openspaceman

If I can get within about 50metres with a vehicle I can drag them out and the cost in labour doesn't mean too much when you're retired. It's strange that what you did as a youngster for pay can be an enjoyable job when retired.

Me too but I only need a dozen boot loads and the OP hasn't said which area.

I agree but it's a way of selling softwood logs to the punters I suppose. Of course I was only meaning to demonstrate that the lignin got hot by the wasted energy pushing the wood through the die. Wear on the die and auger is high too and in Asia where the press originated they have to be resurface with stellite type material regularly.

It will have already have lost some dry matter depending how extensive the rot is, after all the fungus has been living off it and respiring. The thing to minimise dry matter loss to fungi and bugs is to dry it as fast as possible, below 17% stops all activity except termites I think. So cutting splitting and stacking in an airy covered space is the way to go.

Looks like it is, does it go a bit red in the autumn?

Yes that is my understanding too. Similarly when one steams wood in order to bend it it works because the cellulose fibres are the tensile strength of the wood and the lignin is the stuff that binds them all together ( like glass fibre in polyester resin). Heat the lignin and it loses some stiffness and can flow and reform as it cools. My boss sold his briquette making machine before I could see it working but that hammered a wadge of sawdust through a 2" die and, again, it was the heat generated from the friction of the sawdust binding in the die that caused the softening of lignin. If you watch pictures of the shimada screw press working you can see both steam and smoke rising from the emerging briquette from this friction generated heating, often the briquesttes emerge with a charred surface. About 2:30 below.

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I spent the first 35 years of my working life paying landowners for standing timber, sometimes I would do a clearance job in exchange for the timber, so it's a transaction like any other, it may be that someone might want the timber, your consideration would be having it taken away, theirs being not having to pay for it. The thing is arborists are a service industry and expect to be paid, forestry is sylviculture, the growing of trees for profit. You need to find where you sit on the divide between the two disciplines.

No way, it may break a window, a few battens and tiles, maybe a rafter/truss but that's about all. You don't know what trees were next to it before the development that caused it to lean because they are long gone. It doesn't look like there is an sign of soil lifting so , as Khriss says pick a spot about 10ft up facing the house and measure to a known spot on the house then monitor. There's not much scope with doing anything to the tree and the TPO means you best get used to it being there as once confirmed there is not much you can do. It looks like a Pinus nigra variety, are the needles in pairs?

I did a few, less now that used ones don't come my way, but I didn't get them as good as new by a fair margin, such that I would never expect a climber to use them again but fine for a bit of pruning.

I mostly try and avoid producing it at home by ringing up logs elsewhere, as a result I can often fill a plastic bag with it and put it at the bottom of the fire after removing ash and then start the fire on top. If I had lots as a result of producing firewood commercially and no space to dump it I would use a simple vortex burner in a 45 gallon drum with a paddle fan to suck it and blow it in. Maybe even dilute the flue gas with lots of air and use it for drying.

Enjoying the heady smell of gorse bloom in the warm air with the dogs. None of them mine nor arbdogs but I don't think any of us would get any exercise if I didn't walk with them.

Yes you normally have the pressure from rollers pushing a thin layer of sawdust through the die plus the heat from friction with the die locally softening lignin to bind and form a skin on the pellet as it cools. The actual bonding within the pellet is fairly weak hydrogen bonding of the fibres as the pressure forces them together. The fibres in newsprint are mostly held together this way but that achieves it by pulping the fibres in a wet process, then drying. Medium pressure briquettes can be made in a press using a wet process but would need a binder of smaller fibres or a glue like starch from boiled potato peelings. The Legacy Foundation promote blending various waste products into cooking briquettes for sub Saharan Africa, partly to alleviate pressure on trees. Here I would be tempted to add some dilute PVA and mixing well before compressing.

Yes, I have not kept up with the legislation but it remains a hazardous waste and rules have to be followed for spreading on land. Twenty or more years ago the water companies invested in Short Rotation Arable crops to provide a non food outlet for the sludge but I don't expect many farmers are still involved in growing it.

Yes it makes sense but most of us are plumbed into the wet sewage system, mostly for historical hygiene reasons, which means most of the fertiliser value goes out to sea. The solids do get put back on the land but there are issues with heavy metal contamination as there is no way of separating other wastes, like run off from roads, yards etc. from the crap and piss. Even cow slurry is not that rich as a feed stock; what it is good at is supplying the bacteria that have evolved to be in the hot, oxygen free, wet stomach that live on volatile solids produced from the food the cow eats and respiring methane and water. So if you want to produce biogas you need a warm, anaerobic soup of food and fibre and inoculate it with fresh cowshit. Maize silage is a good start but precision chopped grass silage is good too so is sugar beet. Basically the best feed for the gas production is the same as what the cow would eat. That is not to say there is no beneft in adding shit because that will produce some gas but the main benefit is in reducing the pathogens in it before returning the digestate to the land. yes, it looks like solar PV and battery will supply all my electricity needs for March through October but that still leaves a shortfall November through February. Wood does the space heating

I'm not at all sure but the crane looks like one I had on a new botex trailer in about 1989 when Gordon Hoy still ran botex from Devon. Mine had curved round pins I thought but I have no photos from the period.

What will you feed it with? I think a hydro scheme is still your best bet

Yes on second look the stems don't look hazel, and the leaves look more like lime, buds would be the confirmation

My guesses 1 Lawsons cypress 2 Holly 3 Pissard plum 4 Beech 5 Horse chestnut 6 Holly 7 Hazel 8 Ivy on a dead tree 9 Looks like two different trees, beech then sycamore butt 10 Maple covered in ivy 11 Robinia stump

The other thing that occurs to me is group killing by lightning strike. It's not the direct hit which normally blows off a strip of bark from the sudden evolution of steam but the ground current that kills the surface roots. The only time I saw where this was the alleged reason a group in a 30m radius area were killed but they all seemed to die at once.

That rules out chlorosis then, sp is very drought resistant too. If there is no butt rot then Fomes is unlikely the cause. What chance some sort of lawn treatment has affected them?

The blue stain is a fungus that has invaded the sapwood after it is functionally dead, so not a pathogen. The rings look very close suggesting the tree has been stressed for many years. What soil is it, this is similar to the effect of chlorosis on a thin rendzina soil

I'll raise you with clematis

Fascinating, thanks