neiln

Sat here trying to do nothing and trying to stop the kids getting hot and grumpy. I had a thought and looked it up. 40C and 30-40 RHI weather, wood equilibrium moisture content is about 7-8%. Why do we need kiln dried logs again? 😂 Seriously though, how dry will my oak logs, seasoning since November/December 2020, be by October if this summer carries on? I might have to try and find my cheap moisture meter.

Oops, typing from my phone was terrible, but I think you got the gist. Yes I agree solar is a good thing, buta shame it's cost means it's only available to those with a big whack of cash to hand. True they could both be done, if you have even more money. I can't deny that wood is only free with considerable on going effort. With small stoves as I have I work on 5 hours per cube to scrounge, cut, split and stack and tidy ignores the considerable effort to collect from wood pile, set and feed the fire, and clean the ashes. It's real work! I enjoy the saw and axe, the time in the garden and the exercise. When I no longer do, I doubt I'll do 12+15 cube Year any longer! Now....I need a wood fired house sized CHP system, to generate lecy, hot water and space heating, and a way to distil premium unleaded from wood.... Maybe producing saleable charcoal as a by product.... Any ideas? 😂

Installing a large, or could of, wood stove, voting a chainsaw, PPE, axe, hatchet and maul and getting busy making friends with local tree surgeons will pay back much more quickly. This winter alone could well cover what I spent, although that was 6-7 years ago and prices are up on stoves, saws and axes too, but yep, I'm glad I've 2-3 years worth of wood in the neck garden. Even my wife is complaining less that ' all you do is split wood' 🤣

And don't intend to move for the lifetime of the panels (per let's say 10+ years). As the upfront are still massive.

Those scrounging wood have been busier and there seem to be more doing it, I hope that translates to more demand for bought wood too. Gas and electricity price rises expected too be very large again when the October rise comes. I worked out people having come off deals and onto the massively increased cap will be seeing a tripling of costs in a12 month period. Heating oil I don't know exactly but assume is well up too. If I was supplying wood I think my price would be set considerately higher than last year, double maybe.

Don't be down on softwood, beggars can't choose, it's fine, it has advantages such as it'll dry very fast, lights easily and burns hot. Plus it'll start a relationship with a tree guy, they may then give you hard wood next time. You've got to build they relationship by being very very good for them. My 35 cube pile is over 2/3rds oak, but I take Conifer for all those reasons....I actually have too much oak right now. Grenades.. hahahaha. Useless. Please post a photo when you nail your first log to your block with it. Muddy has a lot of good advice, follow that and tweak as you learn what works. I always go to the pile with 2 or 3 axes is different sizes (from a team of 5 or 6). And split what I can with lighter axes and on the ground. Moving to the block and moving to a heavier axe or maul for the tougher rounds. Toughness is rarely proportional to size, a 3 or 4' diameter oak round from the trunk away from a union will be easy to split on the ground and with a small axe ... Just don't try to halve it, learn other techniques. A 8" round with knots or a branch Union, or even straight grained but from certain trees will need the maul and a block, or may need the saw. There's lots to learn and you seem keen so I think you'll learn it, but before you've struggled a bit, you'll not understand some of the questions you should ask let alone follow the answers. That's all I mean by over thinking it. It's good to think it through, but recognise some of your learning will come with,/from the frustration that results from the uneducated struggle! Part of the journey. I hand split 12-15 cube a year. I've done most of this year's wood since start of April (6 tipper loads, 2 of Conifer, 4 oak, came in the first week of April). I think I'm moderately good at my process now. First year I burnt I struggled for longer to split about 6 cube but that taught me what I needed to learn, and then places like here and YouTube answered my questions. I don't touch wedges anymore... Horrible horrible hateful things. YMMV.

Once you get some experience, 2/3rds of this kit will not be used. Get assume wood and start splitting, then ask more questions, until then you're over thinking it

Second all the above. I had a tip site listing for..ooo..error 3 years or more before it got used for the first time back in April. That was not a problem as by messaging 6 or 8 local guys is made 3 good contacts and have no problem getting the ~15 cube a year I want. You tend to go from famine to flood in the free fire wood game!

Is that so? I don't know the ins and outs of the range but absolutely love my ea4300, very capable little saw.

Worth a look at a Makita ea5600. Older, heavier for the performance but well built and good value perhaps.

I'd love to have something like this! Ok probably not ideally suited to a house in sunbather suburban London but if I lived in a suitable house and location I'd be all over a biomass boiler. Actually that brings a question to mind, what are the emission regs on these and are they tightening like with stoves? Could I even install one legally in a smokeless zone like London? I'm guessing not. Booo!

Some insurers are lazy. You can try a complaint to the ombudsman, they may decide regular crack repair is insufficient and the insurers should pursue a structural solution. The cost is which may well make they insurers pursue your neighbour with vigour. Or you pursue your neighbour yourself. Having had the same, over a decade and 3 bouts of damage, I pursued my neighbour and he relented and removed his tree. Horrible situation too be in so I feel for you.

Insurers are being lazy. They must think it's fairly cheap to repair every few years and don't want the potential risk of losing in court. Feel for you. They should have collected evidence from soil samples and Arborist reports, and written to your neighbour putting him in notice that the trees may cause future damage, for which they would be liable.

Thanks Dan, that's useful info. Slowing down after an hour isn't an issue in a way. Busy life and young family mean I'm rarely doing long stints but rather grabbing 30-60 minutes here and there. I thought about the hire a splitter to do the lot in a day suggestion and also realised that slave constraints drive me to deal with a delivery of arb waste before I get the next, so that isn't such a great option for me. Axe does seem best for me in many ways.

I don't need to work on a rainy day..... My 'honey do' list has plenty of other jobs o can do 🤣 Wowsers Scbk, I'm going to have to show my wife that photo. She complains our back garden isn't normal....ok there aren't many gardens to a semi in zone 3 South London which have ,30m³ of oak firewood stacked and drying no.... But then there aren't many husbands that don't complain about the money spent on clothes she never wears either 🤣 she indulges me, my hobby funds various wastes of money from us both elsewhere! For a bit of context. Typical residential street in suburban London. I get arb waste from several tree guys I've befriended. All of this will have come from a similar garden or back garden to my own and the tree will have been dismantled and ringed up small enough to handballed from whatever back garden out to the street. Depending on which guy I've got it from the size varies from easily liftable into the back of my Octavia to groundiebreakinglybigwrestledintoatransittipper and tipped on my drive. If it's easy enough I wheel barrow it to the back garden and deal with it there. The rings that are big but already stove length get axe split to chunks and they get 'barrowed out back. If it's too long it gets the saw, just enough to enable me to get it out back. Once in the back garden I can cut and split without worry. This modus operandi sets the constraints. Splitter if used needs to be in the back garden near the stacks and away from nosey/untrusted eyes. This makes noise slightly less of an issue then out on the street but means access is restricted. End result based on the super feedback today... Stick with the axes! Bit save up for a petrol splitter in time, but something like this one might be viable https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/264593465440?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=ua4htPRmQxq&sssrc=2349624&ssuid=ouq3u5EnS2m&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=EMAIL

Ok looks like I'm sticking with the axes. Tbh I'm happy with that. It's good exercise and a lot of it is done while I'm minding the kids playing in the garden so neither the work nor the time involved are a big issue currently. A small electric splitter that I could grab from the garage and plug in clearly isn't worth it and a petrol splitter would probably still be noisy for the kids playing and would have to live in the garden if I could find a way to get it there. That just leaves..... What about the electric kinetic splitters? Like the portec. I'm guessing fine on the straight grain stuff but how do they get on with knotty uglies?

Interesting, I'd just assumed they were noisy, wrongly it seems. There is also storage. I'd not given any thought to where a big machine like that would live. I would need to get it through a 2'6" wide doorway to get it into the back garden, and down a couple of steps. That probably rules out any machine worth having. B ******s.

I suspect I could pay for one two or three times over with what I'll save on gas this coming winter, but I can think of more fun things to spend the money on! Although....tools are pretty good things to have....🤔🤔

😲😲

Which is pretty much what I told the **** when he complained the other week, before smiling politely, popping the ear muffs back down and restarting the saw.... Then grinning..... Possibly less politely.

Noise. Although I have a particular neighbour that I don't mind annoying with the noise of my 365, I do try not to make loads of noise, so I lean away from petrol splitters. I am of course ' Budget conscious' too 😆

Yes awful ad isn't it Rob! Perhaps on purpose, the cheap price and awful description leave me thinking it might not actually exist. Since it's the same power and stroke, and about the same price before the discount, I think it might be a Scheppach unit, if it does exist.

Do clamber down from the fence Andy 🤣. Seriously though, is that based on having tried one?

I always split my logs entirely by hand, a range of axes and a big maul when necessary. These days the wedges stay in the garage and any unsplitable crotches get blocked up with the chainsaw. 12-15m3 a year. I enjoy the exercise. However every now and again I find myself browsing log splitters on the web and I may have found a good deal which has me thinking perhaps I should get one. Does anyone here know much about them? They all look much of a muchness other than the power and stroke length which varies a little, is there much to go wrong on these things? I'm guessing they are a little slow but how bad in reality? How long would one take to split a m³ say? This is the one I've seen, and the price seems about £70 cheaper than I've seen other 7 tonne splitters Electric 6 Ton Tractor & Mounted Log Splitter WWW.BECKSIDEMACHINERY.CO.UK Electric 7 Ton Tractor Log Splitter | Tractor Mounted Log Splitter Max force: 7 tonnes at... Any comments welcome.

They might clear it properly..., then come back with 3 caravans for 2 weeks every year.