gdh
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Everything posted by gdh
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Anything will burn if it's dry but it's best to give ash six months before burning.
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investment against return scale for wood processing
gdh replied to flatyre's topic in Firewood forum
There is some money in it, just depends on the competition, we average £65 a cube and get by on that whereas some people get upwards of a £100 a cube so if you don't mind travelling you can get a good price. Unfortunately that means other costs. Best of luck, if you ever want to buy some decent priced firewood let me know. -
There's a lot of threads on here about it but basically you need a biomass boiler (chip ones are more efficient but cost more to install), a heat exchanger /radiator with a fan blowing through it (or multiple ones) and an insulated shed or container. You'll also need crates of some sort to the move your firewood around. A lot of people using shipping containers with the boiler and radiator in one end but we use a shed with a few smaller fans and radiators. Where abouts are you based?
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investment against return scale for wood processing
gdh replied to flatyre's topic in Firewood forum
That sums it up for me. It's the step from small scale to large scale that's hardest. If you have to buy your wood in the margins are very tight regardless of scale. If you want to go into firewood and enjoy the work I would start off processing waste with a chainsaw and splitter and buy in any extra to keep customers happy. I would also try and buy from a nearby supplier instead of importing but that's just me. -
Looks like really nice stuff, bet you're getting some fast production. Are you unloading off a lorry or is that a long trailer?
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We're doing around 50-60cube a week which is our aim. Would like to do slightly more but we're not pushing it became we're at drying capacity.
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With the 560 I don't use the primer to start and I've run it dry a couple of times without problems. If you've got another saw it's probably worth swapping the spark plugs to test.
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We're paying £57 a ton + vat delivered in. That's up to 18inch mostly ash and oak.
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Yes, I think that's the main reason they're cheap. They're for sale on Northern arb supplies.
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We've got a few stihls as well, they always seem consistent and read around what I would expect. As others have said nearly anything will work if you're using it to get a comparison rather than an exact reading.
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Yes, I mean I've done 38 cube with a new chain before any sharpening, normally I would change around 30cube but there hasn't been much of a drop off in speed and I want to see how long it lasts. I tend to sharpen heavily to get them good as new but I would expect to get 5-10 sharpens out of any chain depending what it hits. It was 21tons of nice ash I cut by the way.
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Yeah, half the price of others roughly and the one I tried as a test has cut as much as I would expect from other brands so can't complain. Hopefully it wasn't a one off since I'm just buying another 10.
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We normally use oregon or husqvarna, they still last a long time but they're £22 instead of £11 for rotatech. We quite often lose teeth on a chain and occasionally have them snap.
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I wish we had your customers, tried everywhere to sell softwood and I can't get rid of it. Of the thousand tons we sold in the last year 3 were softwood. On the processing side of things we're still busy cutting, just tried a rotatech chain and it's done 38cube of 9 inch so far so I was really impressed.
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Yeah a couple of times, once when the boiler for our shed broke and I struggle during February, March time while we're busy lambing. I also made the mistake of having a few days off over Christmas last year just as we had a rush on orders. We stockpile in the summer about 250cube which fills up our space and we can dry 50cube a week in the winter so sometimes we get busy periods but at worst we've just had to apologise and say it will be ready in another week. Before we had the drying shed we would sell out all our stockpile by January then it was a matter of trying to find dry logs in the winter so I won't complain now.
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Some quick figures... Google puts the costs at 7p a kwh for wood (sounds expensive to me but probably correct as an average) , 3.5 for chip (sounds cheap, I expect thats skewed by commercial users and I would charge 5p to domestic users) and oil at 4p. That's from April. Our biggest 5cube load of less than 20% moisture hardwood is just over £60 a cube delivered if someone knows the figures to work that out. I've confused myself trying already
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A lot of that is because oil went down in price while wood is creeping up but steadily. It will also depend on how much you're paying for firewood which is the key thing. If you really wanted to use a wood fuel source you'd be better off with woodchip since it's slightly cheaper to produce and burns much more efficiently.
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Bit slower here as well but we got lucky with some wholesale orders and we need to catch up with drying the logs anyway.
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Vat rate for firewood sale to pubs - recent changes
gdh replied to Bustergasket's topic in Firewood forum
As far as I knew it's the fact that it's not being sold on that's important, otherwise all sales to businesses would be 5% which I didn't think was the case. Be interested to hear what you learn though. Edit:https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/vat-notice-70119-fuel-and-power#P278_29712 It seems like no changes but section 3 makes things more confusing. -
Good idea but from the way they're popping apart I think a light hit with an axe would do it.
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Kiln dried wood burning too fast/expensive for some people
gdh replied to cessna's topic in Firewood forum
I would have thought dry seasoned would burn just as fast. Haven't had more than 1 or 2 people asking for slower burning wood ourselves, tend to find it's just a matter of putting the next log on the ash not keeping the fire constantly full when burning really dry stuff. -
Is it regarding smoke or the location of the building. Not much you can do about location other than blend it in if it's already built. Most smoke is worst (darkest) when it turns on so you could either get a larger buffer tank so it stays off longer or a very small one so that it's constantly on at a low use. Also worth considering a higher flue and making sure everything that goes in is dry to reduce smoke. That's just a few ideas but it depends on the problems you're having and the type of boiler / it's use.
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Thanks, 8/9 cube an hour makes more sense as a manufacturers guide
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Cords is tons right? That's a weird machine because it's very big but it's missing obvious extras like a coveyor and has a low output. Also they don't list the splitting force and the splitting wedges would make very chunky wood.
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It's been a weird month for us, you get a couple of days without orders then the phone doesn't stop ringing but it's averaging out to our target sales thankfully. Hasn't got below -4 here but it felt freezing in the wind today.
