Ernesto

Hi all, doing a late thin/coppice on a shoot so will have 200 definitely (maybe more) 5'6'' hazel stakes available from Thursday next week (28th). £1 each inc vat. I know its late for hedge laying, but if anyone needs them let me know before Monday, Otherwise they'll become charcoal. They'll be in RG7 near Reading. Either pm me or text 07876230293. Cheers Ernie.

Hi J, probably worth a look at evans-engineering.co.uk . they're in Launceston, been doing water wheels/hydro since 1810. Ernie

Hi Acer, generally the system (around Berks/Hampshire anyway) to get over-stood hazel (which this will be at 18yrs old) back into rotation is as follows. You cut the stand for free and get all of the wood you want, or if the estate has a use for it, they will pay by the tonne. The wood won't have massive commercial value as you'll struggle to get much product out of the stand (either binders, bean poles or stakes). There'll be some but most will be bigger diameter stems (hazel gives good firewood logs, small size though). Then when the stand has regrown to usable size, 7 years or so, you also get the first cut of the newly grown back 'in-rotation' coppice, again for free as part of the original contract. This should be much more the right size for usable product. Then the estate has an in-rotation coppice as a usable resource for the future. Hope that makes sense. Ernie.

Hi Beau, much belated reply, been out and about doing marquees on the festival circuit, with a bit of charcoaling in between. Yes that's essentially what happens , Dr Adam sells you a set of plans with permission to build up to 4 retorts, you can pay per retort if you want to build any others. You have to sign a contract/confidentiality agreement re the design and send the location for those you build. Her's the result of the shopping basket batch 55 baskets in 3 and a bit burned away as too close to the vent, I knew we'd left a gap previously for a reason ,doh! Just need to do some weighing to work out the conversion rate. But overall a better burn with better conversion than when densely packed in. Ernie.

Finally got some time to get this done. The 2 flue stacks are 4m high (making it look like a model of Battersea power station) this was to improve the draw as we were losing a lot of heat out of the door of the fire box, we also raised the base plate another 100mm again to keep the heat underneath. The chamber is lined with ceramic fibre insulation again to keep the heat in the charge and not lose too much into the brickwork. The crack happened before the mods as we over heated the fire box/front corner trying to get the temperature up; crack repointed and also heat resistant silicone applied where it opened slightly, now airtight. Arb waste for the fire not for charge in the background. the pulleys lift the lid on a pivot hinge, for top loading. These picks are from Thursday, emptied the last load and refilled with a new charge (now in shopping baskets to make loading/unloading quicker and easier. Also stack nicely, we'll see how its works next Thursday when we look inside. The kiln had been lit about ten mins when I took these. Ernie.

Hi Buster, can probably sort this for you. Am I right in thinking you're in Lincs? I'll be down in Berkshire working this week but am coming back home to Horncastle on Thursday. I could bring you 50 bags up on the van. It'll all be hardwood mainly hazel, with a bit of birch and chestnut. If that works for you let me know, email me your mobile number. email: [email protected]. Ernie.

Sorry for the delay posting again Beau been working in my main summer job on the marquees, up at Download and am back for the derig on Tuesday. Yes the retort will hold just about 4 cube of loose stacked wood but was only about 3/4 full for that burn. So probably looking at around 150-200 kg of charcoal plus loads of fines. I am going to see if I can moves the fines as bio-char, via the farm shops also. Anyway the only pics of the retort are on an old phone so I'll try and get some Monday and probably get them up here next weekend. Cheers Ernie.

Hi Beau Image of our latest batch in the Adam retort, hazel and birch if I recall. I think you're about right with your price, we also use the Selway coppice assoc bags; we get £2 for the small and £3.90 for the large from the farm shops near us. Not sure what the mark up is when they retail them on. Check out Oxford charcoal's website they sell retail from around £2.80 a kilo for Non species specific. Or Matt at Hertswood's Stag charcoal website ,think he's closer to £2 a kilo for "ordinary" hardwood charcoal. On the enquires I've made for larger bags, 10kilo, the best I've been offered locally is £1 a kilo, the argument being they need a 50%ish mark up in the shop for retail. Also at that end you're starting to compete with the12kg blue caterer's charcoal bags, imported which they sell for around£10-12. It's tricky but I think the market for high end charcoal is fairly limited outside of London. Most people will buy by price, or bulk( as we both know 5kg of well made charcoal gives you a greater volume than 5kg of the dense imported stuff. I reckon about 3kg of our charcoal will fill a bag that has 5Kg of the heavier charcoal in it, but people will often go for the 5 over the 3 as they think its better value for the extra 2kgs of weight, even though its the same volume) Hope that all makes sense, seem to have gone a bit convoluted and waffly at the end. Ernie.

Just thought I'd share. Found this when I was about to get in the bath after a day collecting up logs of overstood hazel. Got the wife's really fine tweezers from her lab assistant days to get it out. 2nd pic is this morning, ten days after removal, all good.

Hi J we used to run an import 80 series Land cruiser, 4.5 petrol/LPG as our crew bus and towing 3.5 for the marquee side of our business. Really solid and comfortable, but sadly the gear box was giving in after 285000 miles, about 150000 towing. So traded it in for an import100 series with 50000 on the clock (£8k including the trade in), had it 18 months now up to 75000 and all good bar the gas assist on the front suspension. The gas pots run out of gas over time and then suddenly fail, leaving you with a dragster looking motor. The replacements are £600 each, will fail again after 50-100000 miles depending on use and you need 2! So went for a suspension kit from Pedders, which replaces the whole suspension front and rear with traditional shocks and springs, only £800 for the kit. Alternatively what about a Delica as driven by Bob at Aspenarb? Basically a 7-8 seater minibus body on a Pajero chassis. Had one prior to the Landcruisers. Really comfortable and roomy, not sure on the towing but Bob might know, he seems to get some weight behind his (see the towing in the snow thread. There's one on autotrader with45/50k on the clock for about £6k I think. Sorry that was so long but hope it's helpful. Ernie.

Agency guys are on hourly rate, and don't know the round so will be slower than the driver who gets paid by the drop so will try to do as many as possible in one day, so yes he will work faster and do a longer day and need 2 guys to cover his round. I did a month or so for DHL one winter 10 years ago as an agency cover driver, if you show any competence as an agency guy they just put more on you for the day. The main problem with these jobs is that when people take them they see the money that can potentially be made, but they don't take into account that you're self employed. If we as self employed workers whether tree related, or ground workers, are sick we don't get paid end of. The problem here is that these guys will take the extra wedge for the self employed status, but then if they get health issues wonder why there's no sick pay etc that PAYE staff get. The answer being that the PAYE Staff are paid less in the first place to cover this. I think there was a plumber working under similar rules who took Pimlico Plumbers to court over this? After years of being paid over the odds, cus he was self employed by them. Work interruption insurance is what you should have so if you get ill or your kit gets nicked you still get something. But as earlier these franchise/self employed deals are wrong they're a scam so the company has lower costs and fewer responsibilities, whilst the employee/agent has basically to work for them as if employed by them, I can't really see how they get it past the Revenue as self employed. But they do so hey ho.

Got a mate who works for DPD (15 years plus I think). Could be wrong, but as I understand their deal, the drivers hold a franchise for the area they deliver to and as such they agreed to be the DPD service for that patch, like Costa, McDonalds etc. I think he gets 2 weeks a year off where the company will pay for the cover as part of the contract, if you want/need more time off they'll provide the cover (agency drivers generally 2 guys to cover what the one driver would do) and then bill you for this. This isn't a fine its a charge for cover when you're not covering the work of your franchise area. Its expensive though as you aren't delivering and therefore no pay for you (they get paid by the number of deliveries) and then the cover charge comes out of your monthly amount. So 2 weeks off will effectively be knack all for the month. So yea the initial whinge is pretty much rubbish as those were the terms the guy agreed to. Also there's a lot of these self employed/franchise jobs out there, which apparently are ok with the HMRC rules, but I'd say with most of them its employed really.

Hi Daniel, we're producing the stakes for Kav. I gave him a call from the number on his website, as I'd been away for a couple of days and it was the quickest way to see if he still needed the stakes. We're cutting an overstood coppice around some ash/oak maidens that may then be felled and the whole wood deer fenced. The hazel is really overstood with a lot 6-8" at the butt end, or bigger on some stools. So essentially a lot is going to be charcoal or firewood, we should get a fair few stakes out of it but hardly any binders. The coppice is just south of Reading, so if you need any stakes, or limited amounts of binders, give us a call/email: 07876230293, [email protected] . I think spoke to you on the phone about 2 years ago when you were near Sleaford? Cheers Ernie.

Hi again, problem solved, got someone to take them already. Thanks for the interest and thanks to Al for the sale. Should be gone before the fence goes up. Cheers again Ernie

As per the title I have 30 x 1m cube SGBakers bags of split, seasoned logs (all at least 2yrs), hardwood softwood mix that need to go from our yard asap. Just been informed that there's going to be a new 6' high fence put in dividing the existing yard into 2; and really helpfully the intended line is through the middle of our temporary log storage marquee. So it needs moving within the next 2 weeks, or we'll be working around a 6' barrier. Preferably want to sell the lot as one, to someone who can collect, we can load with forks. Looking for £40 plus vat per bag (£1440 total inc vat). The bags are near Reading Berks in the RG7 postcode. Anybody interested drop me a text and I'll call you back, sorry no pm's as I may not be able to log in 'til Friday afternoon. Sorry there's no pics of these. Cheers in advance Ernie 07876230293

I've been looking at similar things (will do the first firing of our brick built Adam retort after Easter). We just needed a steel sheet for the bottom plate. In the end went for ss304 as will last longer than mild steel. Better suited would've been ss309 or ss310 or ideally ss430; It came down to cost for us. SS304 £142 for a 1250x 2500 x 3mm sheet, or ss310 (couldn't get 309 in the size from our local supplier) for £397. Didn't dare ask re ss430 after that quote. Hope that helps otherwise sorry for sticking my oar in. Ernie.

Sorry Carpenter no 6m available. Hi Justme, dropped you an email. Ernie

Hi Carpenter, the hocker frames are a modular system, both th9m wide and 3.66m wide come in 3m sections, if you want bigger you just add another 3m bay. So we've got anything from 3m to 60m long in the 9m and 3m t0 90m in the 3.66m. Hope that makes sense Ernie.

Hi all, Just spotted this thread, obviously not paying attention over Christmas. We do marquee hire work in the summer months and are in the process of scaling down that side of the business. We use some of the marquees for log storage/ processing and other coppice related work. The attached pics are of of a 6m wide x 6m long Hocker P6 (blue roof) and a P3.66, 3.66m (12') wide x 9m long (white in pic this ones been up for at least 6 years) and they are of course temporary structures. Any way we've got some for sale in P3.66 (up to 90m total) and P9 (9m span, 4 of at 9m x 15m, or similar up to 60m total), they'll all be white pvc covers and be fully enclosable as per the3.66 in the pic. If you want to check out the spec. for these UK Marquee manufacturer, clearspan marquees & temporary stores for sale, commercial quality, Up to 25m wide - Hoecker Structures (UK) Ltd is the manufacturers website, look under party tents. So if anybody's interested drop me an email: [email protected] . we can deliver and erect as part of the deal. Apologies mods if this shouldn't be on this bit of the forum. Ernie.

Hi Guys Just thought I'd post a couple of pics of what we're up to. Working our way through about 6 hectares of overstood hazel with some ash coppice (also now well overstood) in it too plus some oak standards. Will post some of the ash and other big bits of hazel soon. Started briefly 2 winters ago, had to stop as moved house last winter plus all the related upheaval. Just turned out 360 hedge laying stakes and 360 binders. Trying to find suitable material was getting a bit tricky as it's all a bit big (see the pics, helmet for scale). 500 rustic tree stakes to create next, after a week off doing the other job (marquees). Also a plant ID are they primroses/primulas or cowslips? Although just had this answered by The Village Idiot, cheers G . Cheers Ernesto

Hi Guys Thanks that was what I thought, but then worried myself that I was over thinking it. Cheers again Ernie.

Hi All, hope you're all having a good Christmas, and apologies if this is covered elsewhere. Just changed van, having had one with a paper tacho, the replacement is new enough to have a digital tacho. So I'm applying for my digital tacho card, all good so far. But do we need to get a company Digi-card? We don't run anything over 3.5 tonne, but use a 3.5 tonne trailer in conjunction with the van and generally only go over the100km limit for halt a dozen jobs a year. So to summarize obviously the driver needs a card but as we don't have/need an O license do we need to get a company card? Thanks in anticipation. Ernesto.

Hi Bob Sent you a pm on the 24th re this if its poss. Thanks Ernie

Hello All, first post (thought I'd better get involved after lurking for the last few years). We do marquee hire in the summer months and some firewood and coppice work through the winter. So handily we have some good storage for logs. we use some of the clear span frame marquees for this, 3m sections at varying widths 2.4m at the eave. The stripey one is in the garden 'borrowed' for own use and is 2.1m wide, got another bay up since the photo so its now 6m long. The one behind Dave's car is 3.66m (12ft) wide by 9m long will take about 30 1m cube bags (two rows double height Gap down the middle), been in situ for 5 years and 3 years at previous site. Much more durable than poly tunnels, some of the pvc covers are 20 years old now. Anyway they work for us hoe you like em. Ernesto.