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gdh

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Everything posted by gdh

  1. gdh
    Ouch, they're big nails. Was the wood left over from hedging or just unlucky?
  2. gdh
    Yes an example of that is in this country a sheep is worth £120, it gets ill and you spend £10 on medicine and an hour treating it. It then dies and you pay £20 to have it disposed of and go and fill in the medicine book and movement book. In new Zealand a sheep is worth 50 and if it gets ill it stays on the side of a mountain. Note that I'm not particularly knowledgeable on new Zealand systems, things could well have changed recently, that's just an example.
  3. gdh
    New Zealand has 30 million sheep and only 4 million people (I might be corrected on that) so the average flock is much bigger than the UK. Also sheep are left over huge areas of land, it's a very low input system but unfortunately not practical in the UK where farms and fields are smaller. I'm all for an end to subsidies if the price would go up but a combination of free trade with Europe and continued support for European farmers would make it impossible to compete with them. As said already farms can become more intensive to make money or stay as they are and maintain small fields and hedges etc. As with all industries it's tough to find a balance.
  4. gdh
    We've stuck with arrow and like them, we have a 20kW and a 5. Only problem with the 5 is the steel handle gets too hot to open the door without a tool whereas you can do the older ones by hand.
  5. gdh
    That's quarterly figures for gdp I believe, so subsidies would be around a fifth of the total. I wonder if all the people doing the subsidy paperwork/inspections are included in agricultural gdp
  6. gdh
    We aim for a year for oak but the ash in the picture is only just over 6 months.
  7. gdh
    I think that depends on the cost of firewood. Around here where a lot of people just have a log burner and an oil or gas rayburn it can be cheaper to use wood when the oil price is high.
  8. gdh
    I think that depends on the cost of firewood. Around here where a lot of people just have a log burner and an oil or gas rayburn it can be cheaper to use wood when the oil price is high.
  9. gdh
    Yes, seems like most new machines have auto off when you lift the guard. Not that it can't be bypassed. I've been doing one of my least favourite jobs today - picking up all the small bent bits from the end of a stack. Every time I straightened one it moved another...
  10. gdh
    Yes,we've had a few requests for 6inch logs. I hate cutting them, they go everywhere in the processor. It's normally from people with rayburns who can fit in 9inch after you can give them a bit to try so it's worth double checking with people.
  11. gdh
    Looks very useful how you can move all the guards to do big stuff. We did a rare bit of contracting yesterday, it was horrible wood so we did 18 tote bags in 4 hours.
  12. gdh
    Click on your name in the top right where it says welcome. Then there's options just above the box for visitor messages.
  13. gdh
    I agree with those numbers but in my experience the moisture content is usually taken on the surface of a log if it's 15% on the outside but wetter in middle it will still burn well.
  14. gdh
    Out of curiosity if I bought wood from you and then split it with an axe would it still be 10-18% on that split face? I don't know anyone who can get it that low internally around here without a lot of time and work
  15. gdh
    We had a slow start as we often do but we're very busy now. Must have done 40+ cube already this week and alot booked for the weekend. We usually put our prices up £5 a cube each year (to about 67 now) depending on the cost of logs which slows sales at the beginning of winter but we still have a lot of regulars and then new customers once others run out of dry/cheap wood.
  16. gdh
    No, it's in potato boxes so there's plenty of airflow. We used to have issues with mould when air drying in large amounts in the winter which is why we went towards this system.
  17. gdh
    A drying floor is usually vented panels with a pressure fan underneath which forces hot air through the wood. Since heat rises it takes the moisture out with the air. In theory.
  18. gdh
    Yes, we dry ours and it's hard to get the inside dry. It's very satisfying when the oak all cracks open though. We went the opposite way to most people and we dry slowly at a lower heat. It takes 3 weeks at about 30 c but we do 160 cube at a time.
  19. gdh
    Ah, there's always a catch. Basically £60 delivery so ends up expensive unless you're local.
  20. gdh
    I'm not sure if it's changed recently but rhi was paid at a higher rate on boilers under 200kW so while a larger boiler would get more money overall it would cost a higher percentage to run which is why some businesses run multiple smaller boilers in sequence. In terms of efficiency I was referring to getting it under 20% moisture not peak temperature.
  21. gdh
    Yeah, I don't understand the logic behind the delivery either. They must have a huge amount of boilers there to cover it with RHI though because you can't just run 1 boiler non stop. It's limited to, I believe, 1300 hours at maximum capacity and the higher rate was only paid on boilers up to 200kW. That's 'only' around £20k a boiler in RHI per year and that's before the cost of chip and paying a 50k+ boiler off. It's possible they've got a very efficient drying system by doing it with false floors instead of a traditional kilns and on that scale they should easily be able to produce at £60 a cube but as you say pallet delivery just doesn't add up.
  22. gdh
    I think the biggest advantage with force drying wood isn't how dry it gets (as long as it's below 20% it will burn well regardless of how it gets there) but the fact you can sell more wood. Unless you have masses of storage space you can only sell what you cut in the summer, with a drying system you only need space to cut and dry so you can cut right through the year.
  23. gdh
    We're pretty much the same as lancer said, we pay £58 + vat a ton delivered in but if you're using an axe and chainsaw you might be able to get lower quality cheaper stuff. Then we get around 1.8cubic meters from a ton which we deliver in a loose load for £120 (location dependant for others) If you're not already it's worth getting vat registered as you'll be able to claim back more than you charge.
  24. gdh
    That's a really clever design. I wonder if it will cope with bent pieces or if they would skip over the knife.
  25. gdh
    Welcome to the club. It's a brilliant machine.

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