Mike H

These logs are still available...

Here's a pic of the Kestrel. The box was intended for an owl... sigh. Girlfriend took pic.

80m3 of wood - Oak and alder. I believe its good access and been lying for a couple of years. Its my brother in law selling it so if interested I can forward his email address. £40 per ton. Sorry images upside down!

Can I borrow your cat?

A pair of kestrels have just set up home 15 feet away from my processor. This would normally not be a problem and I would just move the processor elsewhere, but I have just built a new shed and set everything up for maximum efficiency!.... sigh. Anyone had experience of Kestrels being near machinery and are they tolerant of noise?

It must be an accident waiting to happen. Do they do a safety check on the ground as the tree is being cut? Probably not.

The future!....

I think focusing on one or two companies is a good strategy. Knowing them inside out can help you make money when their share price goes up or down. However, it takes a lot of work to beat a decent fund manager. Recently I opened a Hargreaves Lansdowne account online and invested in Fundsmith and also a fund run by Neil Woodford. Both have impressive track records and seem to be a good steady bet..... fingers crossed.

Her fears about her granddaughter are real to her, even if we think she is bonkers. It doesn't look like she will change, so a degree of acceptance may be the way forward. Perhaps you could say you accept her concerns and will keep the tree pruned, but could she let you take responsibility for the pruning.

I think increasing the tension is best avoided and for all concerned being able to talk it over would be the best result. Go talk to him face to face, express your frustration calmly and just be incredibly nice...

Andyd1606 - Re getting links in. Part of googles original algorithm put a lot of importance on links from other websites. The reasoning was that if someone links to another website, then that website has to be quite good, so it got bonus points allocated to it. Google also looked at the text (anchor text) that was used in the link. This was all many years ago and SEO guys started making 'link farms' and using every trick in the book to artificially gain links. So google had a rethink and began to make algorithms that could detect people just swopping links for ranking purposes or 'link farms', as opposed to genuine 'natural' links that were honest recommendations for that website. Now it is difficult to fool google and they can easily spot anything unnatural going on. In my opinion... the golden rules for linking are as follows: 1) Never join any scheme promising links to your website or randomly exchange links. You could start linking your website to websites that have been banned by google. That will have a negative effect on you. 2) Never buy any links from another website. 3) Link naturally to other websites IF it makes sense and could be useful to your readers. Remember, google wants to rank websites that are good for visitors and helpful. So if you are writing about types of chainsaws, linking to a useful review page or reference page will tick that box. Even if they don't link back, google will appreciate that you are linking and being helpful. Don't go mad, but a few links here and there I'm sure is a good thing to do. 4) If you do make a link to another website, make sure that the website is a decent one. A good test is to search for it in google just to make sure it hasn't ben banned. 5) Every few months, make sure your links are still working. Dead links are not good. 6) Only links from pages that are related to your topic have any value as far as google is concerned. So a link from a page on your wife's website about 'Alcohol Addiction' will not help your page about 'Logs for sale'! The best links are from a page related to the same topic as you and are in the middle of a paragraph. For instance, this would be a good link to have.... "I recently bought some logs and found a new [link]Firewood supplier[end of link] in Perthshire." 7) Always ask people to link to you and jump on every opportunity, but if you write really good informative stuff, people will link naturally anyway. 8) Don't forget that links from one page on your website to another can have a lot of value. For instance, you do landscaping and sell logs. On your home page, if you have two links, one to a landscaping page and one to a logs for sale page, the 'anchor text' you use for those links is very important. Whatever text you use, google will take as an indicator of what that page is about. So, think what people may search for and use that for the text in the links. E.G. Don't just use "landscaping' as the link text, but use "Landscaping in Surrey". This will really help you to rank for that phrase. Links used to be very important, but not so much now, because SEO's can easily fake hundreds of links in. One or two links from quality websites can do more for your rankings than hundreds of low quality links. My advice would be to write quality pages and let it happen naturally. Having said that, if you have a friend who has an on theme website, asking him to link to you from a quality and well written page is bound to help.

Not sure about biomass but I remember looking at Klover woodburning pool heaters. Air source heat pumps are relatively cheap and you can get specialist swimming pool ones that are very simple to install. They can be noisy though, so position has to be given some thought. I think wood is the best option if your mate has a good supply and 'Woodworks' is right about solar tubes.... perhaps a combination of the two could be a really good system. I would also buy a good cover and I think you can get special solar heating covers, which must be worth investigating.

Solar thermal tubes are excellent, but you will need a lot. Spending extra money on the pool cover, reduces dramatically the amount of heating required. I reckon a heat pump and large wood burner (specially made for heating pools) would make a good combination.... if you have a supply of cheap wood.

Air source heat pump works well.

GardenKit - If you open up an adwords account and go through the process of preparing an ad, google will suggest keywords you may want to bid for. You don't have to go on and do the ad... but you can take all their suggestions of keyword phrases. This info comes from their huge resource of what people have searched for, in relation to your topic. Another place to find potential search phrases is to do a search on google and then scroll down to the bottom of the page. There are sometimes 'suggested searches' listed there. Another really good test is to get friends to search for your products... see what they do. The final test is to get your granny to navigate your site and ask her to buy something. It is amazing how we think our sites are clear and easy to use, when they sometimes are not. Writing lots of fresh content is really good, but be careful with the 'keyword stuffing'... In my opinion, if you pack a page with too many known keywords and phrases, it may trigger suspicion. I think you could be seen as writing stuff for the search engine spider rather than the user, which could be frowned upon by google. They will notice what you are doing... they are really smart! In my opinion, write natural, informative copy and slip in the odd phrase where and when it makes sense. If you write really good informative stuff around a topic, people will naturally find it and may link to you. This 'natural' growth of links to your site will seriously impress google. It all takes time though.... sigh. Its difficult to generalise across all the different sectors, but generally a new website will be monitored and if everything appears genuine, then google will get more confident in ranking it higher. Having said that, some sites will rank well from day one because the phrases they are targeting are not very competitive. For what its worth, I think you are doing exactly the right thing by building up content and keeping the site fresh. If you can encourage some other sites which are on the same theme as you, to link to you, then that could help. I think the title tag is still very important. In my experience, a short title tag, with the phrase repeated in moderation throughout the page, works well. Broad match words to reinforce the title is a bonus. The description tag is also good and tailor made for each page. Make sure keywords in any of the metatags are also on the page as well. Keyword tag is hardly used these days, BUT if you have hundreds of keywords in it and many are not even on the page, then you could flag up a penalty. Just my 2 pence worth, hope its of help.

I was an SEO guy for 10 years, ran a seo company and hopefully can now provide some information that may be helpful in return for info you've given me! About 15 years ago, SEO (search engine optimisation) was born because google ranked pages according to very simplistic algorithms that could be fooled. If you knew what you were doing, you could make website pages that had just the right density of keywords, links, bold text, images, etc etc. to make that page rank number 1 for a specific keyword phrase. You were basically fooling google into thinking you were the most relevant site in the world for that specific keyword. If you could get number 1 position for something like "Car hire in London" then you could be getting in excess of 1,000 visitors a day wanting to hire a car. It thus became big business. We had websites pulling in 40,000+ people per day. The big irony has always been that if you can really do SEO.... then you don't tell anyone! The big money was made by making your own website rank number 1 and selling the advertising on that page. So there is an argument that if someone is selling you seo services.... they are probably (not always) not very good! We had 40 websites covering 40 different sectors and for around ten years we let people put their ads on our pages. For instance, we had a car hire site that came up number 1 for every car hire search for every airport in the world. As a consequence, we had every car hire firm wanting to put ads on our pages. BUT.... google did not like the way we, along with many others, were just 'middle men' swamping their free search results with our websites and then making money from it. They wanted to get rid of us and improve the 'quality' of their search results. As a result, 10 years on and SEO is more or less dead. Google has become very clever and it is impossible to fool them anymore. The key to getting high rankings is now dictated by google monitoring the user experience. Rather than ranking websites according to 'on page' factors, they watch to see if a page has been useful to the user. For instance, if a user searches for "Cheap insurance" and they put your website number 1, they will then monitor what they call 'bounce rate'. If the user clicks through to my site and within 30 seconds returns to google then that may be an indication that my website is rubbish or not relevant for that search phrase.... so next time they won't rank it so highly. This is a very simplistic way of describing 'bounce rate' but it shows how it is now more about the way visitors experience your website that determines how well you rank, rather than clever on page tricks. Today's SEO is all about making original, interesting and efficient websites that people can easily navigate and use. There is no longer any short cuts or tricks. However, there is a few basic principles that you need to follow, which will make sure google can index you properly. Here is a list of things you might want to consider: 1) Make your website your hobby. It is not rocket science and can be very rewarding. Simple websites load quickly and work, so you don't need anything complicated. You can buy a domain name for £10 per year and website hosting for a small website should not be more than £25 per year. Look at http://www.cali.co.uk. You can then edit your own pages and you don't need to keep paying someone. 2) If you already have a website, is it indexed properly by Google? Google is by far the main player in search engines and if you are not in google, then you are not in the game. The way to check is do this search.... site:http://www.yourwebsite.com Google will then list the pages they have indexed from your site. If you don't have any or many are missing.... something is wrong. 3) Look at the list of pages that are indexed with google (site:http://www.yoursite.com). The title for each page listed is taken from what is called the meta title tag in the code. This is very important and should be effectively a short potential keyword phrase. If you have a page with the title "Kiln dried firewood for sale" then you are more likely to rank high for a search containing those words. So each page should target a different potential search phrase. If all your pages have the same title, then you are missing out. Remember that every page on your website could be the 'landing page' for a first time visitor. Make sure they can easily navigate to the information they want. e.g. prices, ordering etc. 4) Each page should have original content. It should also be relevant and user friendly. In short, make your pages for your visitors, not for search engines. If the page loads quickly (test this on different computers that have never loaded your website before) and the content is relevant then the 'user experience' will be good. If the user experience is good, then google, one way or another, will notice this and mark you down as a good website. Write as much as you can, because 'broad match' words will help reinforce your 'theme' for each page. e.g. A page about logs should contain the words trees, bark, firewood, etc. This helps google be certain that you are talking about logs from trees, rather than logs from ships! If they are not sure, they won't risk ranking you highly. 5) Get friends to test your site. Get your granny to order some wood. Sometimes we take for granted what we think is obvious, but others get lost. If you have website statistics, they can be very useful for showing you problems. For instance, if only 1 in 30 people are navigating to your ordering page, perhaps the link is not clear enough. A good rule of thumb is get all the important info near the top of the page. 6) Consider buying traffic. You can buy ads on google search pages very easily. Go to Adsense (search google) and all will be revealed. In short, you decide which google searches your ad will appear on and how much you are prepared to spend each day. The trick is, only appear for very local and very specific searches e.g. "Firewood for sale in Exeter" and not jus all search worldwide for "Firewood"! If you are not careful you will waste money. You will only be charged if someone clicks the link and because it is an obscure search, you will only pay 10p or so. Also, make sure you only appear on google search pages and not 'partner sites'. Anyway, the result could be that you get 30 visits and one of those orders a bag of logs. £3 per new customer.... not bad? 7) Keep updating your site with new content and pages. The more pages you have, focusing on specific keywords, the more chance one will appear in a search result. The more times google sees fresh content on your site, the better. 8) Make sure images are quick to load and avoid anything which is slow loading. It is tempting to put all sorts of clever graphics on the pages, but people like quick loading simple pages. 9) Keep every page on your website within the overall theme. Don't start writing about swimming pools on a firewood for sale website... it confuses google. 10) Consider making your website mobile friendly. There is a lot of information about this on the web. In short, if it is mobile friendly, then you will rank better on searches done on a mobile device. 11) Explore the web for tips on how to make your pages search engine friendly.... but make sure the article is recent. What worked 2 years ago may not work now. 12) If your business is a local one, then make everything about your website focused on your area. There is no point in diluting your ranking potential by not be specific about your location. Dangers of SEO's... 1) You will get emails saying they can get you top rankings for specific keywords. However, the keyword phrases they mention will probably be non competitive so you should rank for those anyway. 2) Don't be convinced that buying links to your site will help. It doesn't mean much anymore and if google thinks you are trying to fool it, they will ban you. Emails saying they will help you get links or provide content for your site are to be avoided. A few good links is beneficial, especially if they are from a serious website and 'on theme'. Links from links pages, forums or directories are pretty useless for helping your rankings, though may be good for other reasons. Google wants to see a website naturally grow and if they see something being forced or 'unnatural' they may well ban you. 3) The worst seo guys will put hidden text on your site and other 'black hat' tricks. You will get banned. My advice is just make your site the best you can for your users and let google do its stuff. Google wants honest, good, user friendly and informative websites. Give them that, make sure they can index you properly and you will be fine. Don't expect to rank number 1 for "Logs for sale" but instead try and focus your pages on "logs for sale in Bristol" or local place names which are less competitive. Google has many of the best brains on the planet writing code to weed out anyone that tries to fool it with SEO..... if someone says they can beat the system then they are probably dodgy. There is no need to beat the system and those days of cheating are over. Also, consider other forms of advertising beyond search engines. Promote your site every way you can, because the more visitors you get, even ones from a business card, you will be noticed by google in a scary big brother sort of way. If they see your site is busy, they will become more interested in you. Also, don't depend on Google.... it could always dump you, so keep other avenues of advertising alive. There's probably lots more to say but I hope this sparks some ideas.

Well, I have tried to do the tests and as the wood gets below 10% the meters start to agree! Above 10% there is no consistency or logic. So I tried burning some wood which showed, when freshly split, 15% on the inside with the brennenstuhl moisture meter and 40% with the Stihl.... burns well with no hissing and lots of heat. I think I will stick with the Brennenstuhl!

Many thanks for all the help and advice. This forum is amazing. Open spaceman - I'll give it a try. Best wishes, Mike

Stubby Ashes_firewood - I agree, but you are experienced and I'm new to all of this! I'll hopefully learn the right sound, weight and general 6th sense of it all. Kev7937 - Cheers Kev, I'm now full of holes and if I pushed really hard got around 20% Alycidon - Good idea. Woodworks - Whats the oven test exactly? I could take a 25% log and put it in the aga for 24 hours then test both meters again. I suppose that might reveal any faults if the drop is not the same for both.

I have a stihl and a brennenstuhl moisture meter. The Brennenstuhl always reads about 20% less moisture than the stihl. Is there a simple calibration test for these meters or is moisture content a bit of experience/guesswork?!

Agree with a lot of what TTS North says. If you buy the plot, what is the land worth to anybody else? Could be worthless? I would be thinking of offering around £4k with a view of getting it for £5.5k.

Heard on the news that El Nino is forming down south which means a hard winter forecast like 2010.

Logsnstuff - Its crazy....... ".....The Citroen Berlingo was a van before it was a car, therefore it is not a car-derived van and must comply with the same speed limits as for larger vans." Car Derived Vans | SSRP

Arrr.... Seems speed limits are more complicated than I thought. The key seems to be that if the vehicle is a dual purpose, then normal speed restrictions apply. Here is the legislation: A dual purpose vehicle is defined in regulation 3, Road Vehicles (Construction and Use) Regulations 1986: 'A vehicle constructed or adapted for the carriage both of passengers and of goods or burden of any description, being a vehicle of which the unladen weight does not exceed 2040 kg, and which either— (i) is so constructed or adapted that the driving power of the engine is, or by the appropriate use of the controls of the vehicle can be, transmitted to all the wheels of the vehicle; or (ii) satisfies the following conditions as to construction, namely— (a) the vehicle must be permanently fitted with a rigid roof, with or without a sliding panel; (b) the area of the vehicle to the rear of the driver's seat must— (i) be permanently fitted with at least one row of transverse seats (fixed or folding) for two or more passengers and those seats must be properly sprung or cushioned and provided with upholstered back-rests, attached either to the seats or to a side or the floor of the vehicle; and (ii) be lit on each side and at the rear by a window or windows of glass or other transparent material having an area or aggregate area of not less than 1850 square centimetres on each side and not less than 770 square centimetres at the rear; and © the distance between the rearmost part of the steering wheel and the back-rests of the row of transverse seats satisfying the requirements specified in head (i) of sub-paragraph (b) (or, if there is more than one such row of seats, the distance between the rearmost part of the steering wheel and the back-rests of the rearmost such row) must, when the seats are ready for use, be not less than one-third of the distance between the rearmost part of the steering wheel and the rearmost part of the floor of the vehicle.' As long as their unladen weight is under 2040kg, Landrovers usually comply with part (i) - four wheel drive, and so would not be limited by schedule 6, Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 - Speed limits for certain classes of vehicle, unless they were adapted to carry more than 8 passengers. Moral: Best 4x4 to get should have an unladen weight below 2040kg or you may be asking for complications regarding speed limits.

Slight deviation..... but I was amazed to learn that my landrover 110 is limited to 50mph on normal roads, rather than 60mph, because of its weight capacity, irrespective of any load in the back. I suspect many other 4x4's are also restricted. The number of times I have carefully kept to 60 whilst being followed by the law.....