briquette_seller

Depends if you apply for a building warrant.

They usually want floor vents, that can be a pain.

Fitting the stove with double insulated flue ain't too hard really.

made a deal with euroforest about 6 weeks ago for all the hardwood on one of their clearfells due to start soon, drove past the site today all felled and cleared without a stick appearing in our yard.

also discovered 2 new merchants in the area yesterday, think that's 5 new firewood merchants this year alone within 20 miles of us, all chasing the same timber 2 estates and 3 farms.

5 within 20 miles, holly crap.

Doubt they'll last, can do damage between times though

Not a great fan of drying floors due to contamination issues. Have looked at most systems and concluded a modified LENZ system would be our best solution.

Fair point, but does depend on the installation.

E.g. If you use a 40 yard hook lift skip with a drying floor, chip straight into the skip, dry it, then deliver straight to the customer, the chance of contamination is low to nil.

Chip on top of mud, scoop the chips off the mud onto the floor in a shed installation, and drive over the floor with muddy tyres, then contamination will be an issue, but surely this is plain and simple bad practice?

We have just started to look at the possibility of a drier. What would you consider to be the right machine.

It depends really, what is the main purpose of drying the wood chip?

To reprocess into pellets or briquettes? Or simply to produce dry chip?

If you just want dry chip with an "average" moisture content, I would say a biomass boiler and a drying floor is the best.

If you want a constant moisture content, sub 15%, I would say a rotary drum drier was the best.

I run a rotary drum drier, to get down to 6% moisture, to produce briquettes. This gives me a consistent 6%, and this is what I need.

A drying floor will give you an average of say 20%, with the chip at the bottom being 15% and the stuff at the top being 25%, which is perfectly acceptable when selling dry chip.

Fair point.

 

I wouldn't like to pay the maintenance costs etc.. on that sort of equipment plus the rest of the expenses.

We have our work cut out just keeping on top of our kit.

Timon

Drying isn't that expensive, about £9 a tonne using the right machine.

A shining example of our heavy duty 15" drum chipper delivered this week, don't see too many of these especially with radio remote option to operate the feedwheels

Does the chipper have a screen in it?

Can it produce consistent G30 and G50 chip, or is it more for volume reduction?

Does anyone use a log bundler?

How do you move/handle the bundles once you have tipped them out of the bundler?

thanks for the replys so far we like the look of the duun machine but dont know if the 11ton splitter is up to the job as the bulk of our firewood is 50cm long maybe better off looking at a taifun or another hakki

Hakki Pilke 1x50, looks the business.

30 tonne splitter.

Dunno the price, but iam guessing it will hurt.....

I see they are advertised on ebay. A lot of machine for the money. Shame about the seller and poor service.

I knew a guy who had one and he swore by it. He thought it was a very good machine.

He never had a bad word to say about the machine.

I run a Pilke 1x42, very similar machine, but he recommend the Duun would take a larger diameter stick, and easier, due to the generous shape of the guards.

Back up from the company he bought it from was pretty poor though, he used to say.

round or square?

Raw material?

I have used several pallet couriers throughout the years, and Pallet-Line have always provided the best service.

Cheaper couriers provided no end of hassle, and therefore at the end of the day, not any cheaper.

has a train weight of 6.5t so you can legally carry 6 x 0.75m3 bags on the trailer and 2 on the truck

Ok, I think I get it....

Because your plated weight doesn't exceed 3.5t, your Operator License exempt, but your train weight allows you to exceed 3.5t.

Crazy really.

I looked at a 6t little Issuzu, but would need tacho, operators license and a cpc to drive it.

Stuff that

it has a tacho but operator license isn't needed it's 3.5t

Oh right, i thought if you had a loaded trailer and truck, you would be over 3.5t all in?

Nice set up though, very impressive

Nice trailer. Will that take two bays of 3m? Do you use the fast trac in the woods or just on the road?

Yeah, two bays of 3m, the guys at Riko extended it for me.

Never been in the woods with the Fastrac, its not very maneuverable, too heavy and clumsy.

Ideal for roadside collections. She can pump oil fast, which is ideal for operating the crane.

4m palfinger crane on the back of 4x4 sprinter

 

Do you need a tacho and operators license to tow a trailer with that?

JCB Fastrac 3230 with an Oniar 14T trailer

At the black isle show this year a local supplier of kiln dried logs decided to put hundreds/thousands of flyers out in the car park under people's wipers. Not sure if they had permission from the show organisers, doubt it.

 

Unfortunately they used cheap double sided flyers, there was a little rain during the day and half the paper stuck itself to the windscreens!

 

The car park fields were full of people at 5pm trying to scrape the cr@p off. Not the best advert for your business!

Legend:lol:

What's the price of the pack fix system? Does anybody elsa make them

Its about 6k for a new Packfix.

The net is around £80 to £100ex vat.

A pack works out at approx £2s worth of net wrap, plus the price of a decent pallet.

Good to hear differing views.

 

What machine do you use and if you went for an upgrade from your present machine, what would you choose and why? Thanks

I run a Hakki Pilke 1x42.

Had it for three years, and do between 600-800 tonnes a year.

In all that time, the only thing that has gone wrong, recently, is a valve stuck, that's it.

I have never had any problems at all with the machine, and is still as good as the day I bought it.

If I were to upgrade, I would buy the 1x50, bigger cut, and the bigger the better in my opinion for hardwoods.

I cant rate this machine high enough.

I also have a Posch tilting saw, and its always got wee niggles, bits breaking off, bits bending or twisting. Pretty flimsy.

Same with the Posch Packfix, its not the machine I thought.

Again, pretty flimsy and expensive for parts.

I personally think Posch is massively over priced for what it is. The machine have pretty small cutting diameters for the money.

Just my opinion.

SG Baker wont be beaten on quality.

They may be beaten on price, bit the service and quality is brilliant.

Fines are a real problem in a wood gasification plant but if you know the client spec you can easily screen them out.

I assume this is due to lack of air flow? Or poor air flow?

Depending on the feed system fines could cause a problem with chip flow or machinery if they build up.

Reduced air flow through the chip due to too many fines.

Fines becoming airboure and burning in the wrong place.

Its not a problem we have so others might add to this.

Ok, makes sense.

I only ever produced material for making briquettes, and the more fines the better really to improve the overall briquette quality.

I see the problem with over sized material, but whats wrong with fines in wood chip?