gdh
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Everything posted by gdh
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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.
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I think it's the same everywhere, it's slightly better now but it's been a struggle to buy wood this year unless you were willing to pay very high prices which were being charged for a while.
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We usually put our prices up about £5 a year on our 1.8 cube load to cover increased costs, mostly buying timber. We always do it in September and advertise the fact to encourage people to buy in the summer. It does mean our load has gone from £99-£126 in 6 years but I like to think we sell a good quality product so we've lost very few customers and gained a lot of new ones. I think to a degree people are put off by the idea of a price rise more than the actual amount but I imagine putting £20 a load on would prove that very wrong.
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I call it a heated shed but it's the same principal as a kiln. It's insulated and there's radiators and heat exchangers on the walls powered by a chip boiler.
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We leave them in boxes in a heated shed, there's fans at the back to push air under and through them.
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I'm going with just under 2 ton if it's tightly stacked and fresh. 1.8cube loose fresh is around a ton from what I've experienced.
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What do you use to light your wood burning stove?
gdh replied to BowlandStoves's topic in Log burning stoves and fireplaces
Screwed up newspaper then kindling (just the small bits from in with the wood). -
Depends on the quality of wood, if it's hardwood etc. I'm looking for £65 a cube for dry hardwood collected loose as an idea. Probably be £60 if it's part seasoned.
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Presumably they're pushed up with a loader bucket. I wish we could get away with that, we cut a pile like that in the summer years ago but with our weather it was white with mold by the time it came to selling and we had to sort the whole lot by hand.
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Good choice in my opinion. I still think they're the best all rounder and good value. Only things we ever had to replace were the belt and oil pipe after a thousand tons and a few of the log support plates that got bent during use.
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We used to have that gun, worked fine for 2 years then every seal and spring in it seemed to have problems at once, it was taking longer to get it working each time than I was gaining over just grabbing a manual one. Have a milwaukee now and that's brilliant to use and well built (so far).
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Bit out of date but these are the Welsh averages for anyone interested. We got lucky and managed to buy a few hundred tons at £38 delivered last month but we were getting quotes at the same time for £50 so it's very unstable at the moment.
