openspaceman

Yes it is hard to decide from photos but the planting spacing and height of clear stem demonstrates the difference between British and French sylviculture. In england I think all the hornbeam woods I worked were out of rotation coppice. The french way seems to go for long clear stems whereas we tended to aim for short fat butts of oak with large canopies standing out as islands in a sea of underwood. I would thin it very gently as the crowns seem very thin and ideally should never get to be less than 40% of the height so it will take time for them to exploit any new space you give them. What is hornbeam used for in france?

Yes they were both great. They both looked up to me as the big brother but I bullied them relentlessly :-(. They were both very successful whereas I just managed to struggle through and they both helped me out on numerous occasions. Just me and the youngest left now out of four baby boomers.

Me on my first ride of the CBR250R in late 2017, the day my younger brother gave it to me, he'd only bought it a month before and never rode it. As I have a poor circulation in my arms the weight on my wrists gets bad after a few minutes unless I can keep above 50 and let wind pressure relieve the weight. It's relegated to be my shopping bike. I preferred the Kawasaki GPZ 305 he had given me a couple of months before. Better power to weight and riding position but the old tyres ruined the handling. The engine packed up on that so I reluctantly scrapped it and my youngest brother funded the MT07 which I use for longer trips.

That's right As I said I broke the HI screw limit cap to open it a bit more but no difference. This Zama carb seems to have a fixed main jet and the HI screw then provides a bit additional fuel through an adjacent hole from the diaphragm chamber. Yes all done and I shall fit a fresh fuel tank filter, even though the current one seems fine. I'm just wondering where the air is getting into the purge bulb from. Repeated pumping definitely pressurises the tank. I will have to check bulb housing for a leak too but why should an air leak here weaken the HI fueling?

How much is a bit, I thought normal was level with the base?

That's the only big one if you are confident about the others and they are common with just living in any case. 50 miles and back is a big bike journey for me and my first ride this year was only 10.

I have no ability to judge when a social interaction is going wrong

I skimmed through that but it mostly seemed to be a sales pitch for fuel cells, agg221 gave reasons why these are both delicate and a bit far from mainstream still. If I were to be forced off grid I'd plump for a mains changeover switch and running an LPG converted Honda EU200i for a few hours a day IF I could figure how to prevent the demand from the house overloading it when the 6kWh battery pack couldn't take up the slack. Shame there doesn't seem to be a water cooled option. The idea being that as my system depends on the grid for the PV to charge the battery I have to have a good sine wave present mimicking a grid presence at the consumer unit to keep it all working.

I can't say on @Baldbloke's dilemma, Gunga Din. I have hardly travelled outside UK at all but did hitchhike off the airbase in Finthen to home at 17. You can buy years back in but when I unexpectedly retired at 65 on full £150/week pension my slightly older friend hadn't paid in for 15 years but was still entitled to a £90/week pension. I've overspent the state pension by about £8k/annum for 5 years, mostly due to family problems, but picked up much of that from little jobs. I'm going to take some private pension from here on. So if the mansion in Scotland can pay for itself and you can live the dream for 2 years... I wouldn't dare but then I have social problems

A question for the experts; I have a ms181 on my bench, it had a split purge bulb which I replaced expecting that to cure any trouble but now the saw starts and ticks over but fluffs out when the throttle is opened. It successfully revs up if I put a finger over the stratification throttle body.All the signs of a low HI jet setting . I broke the limit cap trying to open the HI screw but this made no difference. I have opened the carb up and checked orifices and strainer and am about to put in a new, highly expensive, Zama gasket and diaphragm set. The one thing I did notice was that the purge bulb drew in some air and I am wondering if a restriction in the fuel supply could cause the purge bulb to suck air back out through the jets??

Sap is carried up the sapwood, nutrients that feed the roots travel down under the bark so ring barking will kill the tree but not necessarily make it dry quicker. Sour felling is where you fell the tree in full leaf and then don't immediately sned it, so the leaves continue to transpire and lose moisture from the stem

You naughty boy, go and wash your keyboard out with soap and water

Good luck and proper recovery means doing nothing that might tear the ongoing repair, never picking up high weights again is a start, let the fit people do it without straining.

This bears some thinking about; Dean says his genset only runs for an hour or so daily, it's 30kVA so he loads it with his current use in the buildings, recharging the battery and heating water. Presumably he has it for a high peak load. Either way it is such a short run time that doesn't suit CHP which tends to need high occupancy and a long run time to justify capturing the waste heat. As such it strikes me CHP needs to be working at an optimum load to give the best conversion efficiency to electricity. Nowadays this probably means running asynchronously AC and rectifying to charge a battery bank and an inverter running current loads. It's modern inverters that hold the key to this IMO as the IGBTs (insulated gate bipolar transistor) are so efficient with low resistance and capable of switching high voltages. Once you get up in the 10kVA plus range I think you are bound to fall back to a diesel using rebated fuel or a spark ignition engine running on gas. @Peasgood it may be worth considering one genset for when the workshop is used sized for peak startup loads and a much smaller one for when the house is occupied. I'd still like to investigate smaller chp systems using Stirling and smaller still Seebeck CHP devices once the solar isn't performing and heating is needed in the winter months. My battery only buffers one day's electricity usage so some sort of generation is needed to free me from the grid and the expense is not (yet) justified. I get the impression @Dean Lofthouse and @Justme simply have no access to the grid.

I agree on all points but it's often the fact that initial extra cost will never be recouped that militates against installing room sealed. My house is quite draughty and with solid walls so not well insulated and cutting through the wall and then 6ft of solid floor is not to be lightly undertaken.

Thanks for chipping in Dean, is the battery lead acid? That's 15kWh to 50% DoD. You don't make use of the heat from the genset either then?

I would go for room sealed once the stove needs be over the 5kW threshold for providing an air vent. Lots to like about the Burleys but I doubt I'll need to buy another stove.

There have been lots of suggestions to try out and I cannot add anything without seeing the saw but I do have a donor 266 with most of the engine bits (mice ate some of the plastic parts as it was put away with vegetable oil in the tank) if you are close.

Is this the one, like my grand daughter's, which has three air controls, a slider underneath for secondary air and sliders on or above the door for primary and secondary? I have never played with the controls but it is so different from what the Burley has, as described by @Stubby. Conventional wisdom is that the primary air is necessary for burning coal, a primary air control is part of the control on my Morso 11 but as it is never used because I only burn wood the airway gets blocked by ash.

@aspenarbwill know but often American hydraulic machines used JIC fittings, same thread as BSP but the cone seals are reversed from BSP. Also they tend to use a lot of tapered thread fittings.

Yours is room sealed isn't it @Stubby? I.e. all the combustion air id from outside and no air from the room goes into the stove? Is that bottom leaver what controls the air and is that full open when over to the right?

Bentamat is an alternative to clay and plastic liners though plastic geofibre is part of it.

I imagine they put a gear pump with an outrigger bearing to run off the auxiliary belt but if it's sucking air in its toast

Is it a gear pump? Could the hose burst have lost so much oil the pump ran dry? When the pump aerates the oil so much that the foam comes out of the breather it often means air is being sucked in at the input shaft bearing

Early November I bought 25ltr red diesel in a drum at the pump and had to give my registration, home address and proposed use. I could have lied about only the use as the car is registered at my home address,