neiln

Oh yes...stitched right up. delivered at night so i couldn't see it as he tipped but spotted instantly the next day. every round was a huge crotch from a ~30" diameter tree, and utterly unsplittable, he'd kept any straight ones back. but the worst of it was the brick and the barbed wire...utterly riddled, it wound around and around in many rounds, in and out so much i had no way to work out where it ran...boy oh boy did i trash chains...lots and lots. And I paid £50 for the load! Still I've got particularly lucky with my usual guy, he's brilliant and won't take cash even when pushed into his hand. It is a mix of loyalty to him and never ever wishing to get 2 tonnes of barbed wire and brick infested unsplittable ash again that stops me completing a listing! The photos are typical of what i had to deal with....the insanely folded grain that meant even the stihl pro 8lb maul bounced off may not have been his fault but the brick and barbed wire he'd hit loads and it stuck in and out....he knew about that.

I've got halfway through completing a listing several times but then stopped. I have a close by tree guy I've befriended/have a good relationship with. He only puts out clean stuff (nothing with metal or whatever embedded), and although i normally drive (3.5 miles) and collect, he will text when he has oak, etc. and occasionally will deliver. I make sure to not make a mess where i collect from, I like a bit of softwood for starting fires and feel its only fair of me to take some. All in all it must be good for him as he texts, puts oak aside and generally looks out for me, so I do my very best to be good for him too. The one time I got wood from another guy after hearing him cutting nearby I ended up with a load of the biggest gnarliest ash crotches all riddled with brick and loads and loads of barbed wire! Its put me off approaching anyone else! Besides I'm not short of wood so I'm choosy these days. The tip site is a great idea though and if I ever move or lose my usual tree guy I'd get a listing on there.

I'm very near Streatham ( or st reatham) in SE19 and can take the logs but not the chip/brash. I'll pm my address and photo of the house so you can see the access, which is fine. What's box elder like to split? I hand split with x27, Stihl pro 8lb cleave hammer.... Or noodle with 365 x-torque if I have to.

For those that burn it for ambience, as a luxury, there is probably some link to increased cost = burn less. Ironically it likely drives that type of consumer to either burn cheap, wet rubbish, or to cut back from their 2-3 m³ a winter to just a couple of dozen sack fulls from the garden centre. Or they switch to coal/smokeless.

Not looked into it, but I doubt there are many processors for hire in zone 3 London. I do it for the fun though.

From everything I read on here I can't see any body getting rich in firewood! For a hobbyist like silverhooker and Ratman you can make yourself smile as you work out what you save on heating, I'm in this boat. Like them I do it for fun and exercise, and doing 12-14 m³ a year is fun to cut and split but more would not! Even those 12-14 wouldn't be fun if I had to do it, but since I can choose if, can and when, it is fun. 2 stoves, self installed with liners in the flues, sweep my own flues, factor in consumables ( mainly petrol collecting the logs), the 2 chainsaws, axes, mauls, hatchet, ppe... I've got to burn about 45m³ to save enough gas to be in profit. With what I burn and supplying mum then I'm even in 5 years.... That's 2 more.... So I'm even by the time I've burnt what I have CSS in the garden. This only works as I've befriended a local tree guy and I get all my wood for free. He gets his arisings to disappear, I get 65% hardwood and the rest soft. Now if I could just sell a cube to neighbours in garden centre size sackfuls at their prices...I worked out that's about £250/m³

50cc = 1 saw plan 2 saw plan = 60+cc saw and 50 or less cc get a 365 x-torq for a value big saw,get a 462 fo a spendy and very powerful saw me, 365 x torq....and ms180. difference in weight makes me use the little saw if i can, difference in go makes it fun when i get to big logs and not a pita

I've been thinking on this and i realised I haven't cleaned the glass on either stove hardly tis winter either. Previously it could have gone all winter without but since it got a 'tint' of creosote across it, and a bit across the bottom 3 or 4 cm where the log guard is, I would clean it to improve the look every week or 2. this winter it basically just got a dusting of fly ash, and a tiny bit of creosote on the bottom cm or so, So other than a wipe with a scrunched up ball of newspaper as I've been building the fire ready to light I think I've only cleaned it about once...maybe twice all winter. That must show that my wood has been drier this winter, bone dry basically, and correlates to the immaculate flues surely. Now the confusing bit, previously my wood was, according to my cheapo moisture meter, down at 18-20%. I didn't think air dried wood (top covered in winter) would get drier than that but it must have, and probably a good few percent. I don't no if it was because of last summer's long hot drought, or because the wood i burnt this ear had been CSS for 2 summers, or a bit of both. I guess i'll find out next spring after another burn season. But I know now, if the glass stays clean all winter then the flue does too and there is no point in sweeping it. If my glass 'tints' and i clean it once a fortnight then I'll have 3/4 of an ash pan full of creosote, I could leave it another year and be fine but a sweep every couple of years is worth the effort.

Just swept my two flues again. I've burnt about 4.5m3 through one, about 3m3 through the other, nd swept as ususal with a power/rotary system nd got about 1/2 mug full of dry powdery chocolate brown soot and fly ash mix. I.e. bugger all. I guess my logs which had dried for 2 summers instead of the previous 12-14 months of drying made that bit more difference....or last summer's drought got the logs down another few percent. I don't think i'll sweep for 2 or 3 years now unless something changes. Oh and my rods - i found the name on the instructions, they came from chimneyrodsdirect

first few feet? do you have a pipe going that far past a register plate then finishing? i thought that was bad practice as it creates a potentially large trap for creosote and hence a chimney fire risk.

BillP got it right first reply......365 x -torq pairs well with my ms180. I would say that...I bought the 365 from Bill In all honesty though, if you want a 2 saw plan, go 60cc or bigger. If you get a 50cc saw I suspect you'll not use the ms181 much after that.

Surely its the sulphurous smokeless coal that is hard on the liner, the brush just reveals it. if you burb smokeless you should have the 904 grade liner anyway. I only burn wood but I wasn't 100% sure that would be the case, so i ou in the higher grade liner

want light, shit hot performance and maybe willing to baby it a bit? (yet to be determined how necessary) OR do you want, smooooth, good but maybe less zip, possibly torquier (I may be making that up*), and prepared to hump around more weight...a lot more weight. make your choice * I'm not going on experience, just what I've read...i may be spouting rubbish!

here you go, my post of 2nd Nov not much of the actual kit on show though

can't remember what set up. Bought from somewhere online..chimneysweepdirect or similar name. The set was describe as a high end domestic/bottom end of pro sort of set. Better quality nylon or whatever the rods are supposedly to resist heat build up (DONT leave it spinning and not moving p or own, if a spot is touching the flue that spot will warm up!). brass fittings, glued and pinned to the rods and they seem substantial. replaceable whips in the head. Standard set was something like 8 rods and I got an extra one which cost a bit more...turned out not to be needed as i get to the top with one spare now. I've had it a couple of years, with 2 stoves and sweeping before installs I've used it 4 times i think. I'm happy with the set but because i miss read the description I got a set where the rods screw together, fine...just ensure the drill turns clockwise only. However the sets that lock together are a bit quicker to use...screw together ones get tight being turned on a drill and disconnecting the end fitting, adding a rod, reconnecting the end fitting is what takes all the time doing the sweep. I can still do the pair of stoves in I guess a couple of hours with digging the tools out the garage, and tidying away after. Have a search on here and you'll find phots of my set up in use...might have even dug the name out last time, not sure.

Sweep myself each year, it doesn't make any mess and doesn't take long. I have some bends in the flue so I went for a powersweep system, spent about £100 on a set as the cheap ones just worried me.

you'd get a new ms180 for under £200 unless they've gone up loads. And while i like mine, its a home owner saw, probably not what the OP wants. although...if you do I'll swap mne for the 290 ? being serious, something like a ms240 would be more capable

I don't really care what the makers say. I've enough personal experience now as I come through my 3rd year operating 2 stoves ( just a newbie, but I've about 16-18m³ under my belt now) to make my own mind up. I'm quite happy with softwood, dried it has no I'll affects. Leyland cypress is actually modestly dense, and burns great. I favour Oak, ash, Holly, acacia and now silver birch but cypress is on a par with sycamore in my overall ranking... Similar energy.

I had a couple of m³ of silver birch this last winter/spring. It was easy to split by hand in general, it dried well over the summer and has been burning very well with good heat. Lights ready too. Having read Norwegian wood (great read btw) I expected nothing less!

We all bring our seasoned wood inside a little at a time and store a few hours to a days worth beside the stove, where it dries a little more. If I bring wood from the shed at ~18% MC, and sit it ½m from the stove, ambient conditions say 22C and 45% rh, but the ends facing the stove probably reaching 60C, does it dry measurably in 6 hours? 12 hours? 24? 48? I'm just thinking, how big would my hearth rack need to be in order to achieve 15% MC as it goes to the flames. I know I used to hear the odd crack from the stored wood drying slightly, although rarely now I'm 2+ years ahead on my wood.

proper way to do it is wood at room temp, split the wood, measure on fresh split face....and it makes a difference if across or with the grain but i forget which is correct! oh and jam the pins in firmly.

Err, not really. yes I know that a sustainable source only has a capacity, and pushed beyond that it isn't sustainable, but a sustainable source of energy is sustainable when used right...a fossil fuel is always unsustainable. Mass power from sustainable forms means a mix of sources....wind doesn't always blow and we can only have so many turbines in windy spots, the sun doesn't always shine, there are only so many spots for tidal generation and so on. My point is wood can be sustainable, but only if managed, and operated within capacity.

Except littler doesn't dissapate naturally in a short term.... And even if it did I'm more suggesting a voluntary cessation of one type of littering... Say littering by women (stove operation by those burning dry wood) to see if there is an effect on overall levels of litter.... No, actually it's more like looking at the affect of overall levels of a particular type of litter, say cigarette butts (pm 2.5). In practice it's not feasible to get all stove owners to voluntarily stop for a week, and even if it were..... If it showed little change to the pm 2.5 levels then the authorities would question the participation levels rather than look to find other causes of that pollution!

chessa, sustainable and hugh capacity arent the same thing

The figures for pollution sources vary much. But given that pollution is short lived it is almost feasible to determine the contribution by short term removal. I.e. stop all wood stoves in an area (London) for a week, and measure the change to pollutant levels. If it gives a 30% reduction I'll not light mine again. If it gives 3% reduction then the government need to pursue other causes.