gdh
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Everything posted by gdh
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Has anyone seen a woodchip boiler on the market yet that can be used as an oven? I'm thinking the equivalent of an oil fired rayburn that will do hot water and cook. I know you can get one for logs but that will be less efficient and I don't think there's an auto feed one for when you're out.
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I used abbey garden sales but they took ages to deliver so wouldn't recommend them based on that order. They do have the parts diagrams for every saw though if you want to look up bolt sizes etc.
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I think leegray is right about bedding, a lot of farmers will really struggle this year so I can see them trying out sawdust if it works for their system.
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It can work well with livestock, even with quite dense cover. Unfortunately the Welsh, and presumably UK, government have made it a condition of all our planting schemes to keep animals out. I remember when we used to graze woodland there were flowers everywhere but it's mostly brambles now...
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We supply billets for biomass boilers so it's different for us but I would probably rather put chunky billets through the processor than split rings multiple times. I doubt there's any real difference in time, just nice to take advantage of the processor conveyor and maybe less lifting?
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Do you mean off the same tractor? I think the only way to do that would be to run the splitter through the log deck lift pipes. I tend to wait until we get a stack of 20tons or so of oversize before splitting and put it through the big splitter for billets as a separate job. The 35x tractor probably would run the 8ton but that's only used for making stakes and I think the cost of converting to pto (it's only hydraulic couplings and the 35 hasn't got working ones) would cancel any gains.
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Ah I hadn't considered the friction as a major factor, I've been tempted to run our 8 ton stake splitter through the valtra which is 180 lpm and see how it goes. I think pto is the way to go through, we've got a 40ton ryetec which goes 8 ways for oversize wood and that will easily run on a small tractor, I know ryetec like to use their vintage tractors for demos. They usually have one at the royal Welsh show next week but I'm not sure about this year.
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Ryetec are probably worth a call as they'll build to spec. If they're huge rings it might be faster with more power and a 4+ way splitter but that's a trade off with pure speed of course. It would be interesting to know how much oil flow you could put through a small splitter without causing damage.
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560 has done well for us, revs up fast so great for snedding to. Edit: I'm only just outside Llandovery if you want to test one. Got to keep anyone who works for Pontrilas happy so we get more tidy wood.
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The woodland mills is galvanised and available on a trailer, they also do a cover for the saw head for just over £100 although I would personally get a cover for the whole thing. Random point - for some reason there's no vat on their mills.
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Very happy with our woodland mill hm130. Was a lot of work to build but it cuts very tidy planks and is reasonably fast.
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Our aarow, I think it's 18kW, has done 20 years with only a few glass clips and bits of rope replaced. We tend to run it all the time in the winter so it's done a lot of hours but I see no reason to replace it anytime soon. -
I would have to take a look at costs, we used to have a kindla machine but could never sell any.
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Nice idea. Might take a while turning 100tons of this into kindling though
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Yes, 1.8 went to 1.7, maybe slightly less. That's about the worst I've ever had so had to top some up again, it's normally only a very slight drop.
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Just for reference here's some fresh cut and some at 15% moisture. The ash in the second picture hadn't been down more than 6 months when we cut it which makes it worse and the first picture is beech just to show how much we fill the boxes before anyone says.;)
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Is this a trick question? It should be the same but in reality you can get up to 10% shrinkage although 6000kgs on that amount wouldn't be a massive difference I wouldn't think.
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I meant softwood prices rather than literally, that's what's putting me off is saying to every customer that I've got poplar available at softwood prices which makes it sound bad whereas I don't want to put it in with hardwood. Absorption shouldn't be a huge issue as all our logs are stored undercover - for what that's worth with our winters... It's a shame no one wants to mill it either as there's some decent pieces. I assume the central heating system was low on water as well? Not just from poplar
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Thanks, we don't sell much softwood, despite my efforts it's still only 5% of sales. The problem is although poplar's technically hardwood most people wouldn't be happy to see it in a load so I'm either going to have to take a hit and sell it as softwood or try it as chip which should work out better as we charge per kW but seems a waste of 2ft plus logs. Or try and convince people it's a good hardwood but we haven't tried any ourselves yet.
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Does anyone sell poplar as firewood? I've got a lot of oversized stuff so either way I'm going to have to billet it first, just wondering whether to chip it or process it. I can't see it selling as hardwood or softwood and I don't want to have to explain to 100tons worth of customers.
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Mixed feelings, a lot of good features and much cheaper than a farma but a few drawbacks. The electric controls are really nice and being an 8.5m there's plenty of reach. In all honesty I don't think the build quality is the same as a farmi though (or at least our old one) - there's a lot of flex/bounce in the crane and chassis. The extendable rear bolster is useful but realistically it's for long logs as you can't double stack anything over 10ft. It's also surprisingly narrow, that's obviously good on smaller tractors but personally I would rather load wider than higher. Or both and get more on. That's come across a bit negative, I would still recommend it as a decent mid range trailer, especially given some other makes are 45k plus for the equivalent which I couldn't justify.
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Almost at the end of our nice straight beech, it might blunt chains fast but I'm going to miss it when we get back on bendy oak and alder.
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We just started bagging ours to sell as animal bedding, it's not big money and has to be stored because sales are inconsistent but it saves dumping it and every little helps.
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That's true, like us, it's probably cheaper to gather round a fire in one room than have oil heating everything.
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Just doing a few sums out of interest and heating oil is around 5p a kwh at the moment, that's the same as we charge for woodchip for boilers. Firewood is less efficient so would be considerably more expensive so although we have a lot of customers who rely on fires I can't see many others switching away from oil soon.
