SbTVF

Sales have slowed this last fortnight due to the mild weather. Those customers who were out are probably stocked up already and those who we haven’t heard from we saw quite late last season so won’t be in need yet I imagine. Had a good 70 odd cube out through September though which is our best September yet!

Took up your offer on the chain Rob. For use on our Tajfun 400. Been using Oregon semi chisel on a sugihara bar for the last year because full chisel dulls far too fast. Rotatech does not agree with the sugihara bar for some reason. The EXL is going through everything like a hot knife through butter so far, oak, ash, elm, lime, sycamore, beech and can barely tell a difference in cutting tone, almost sounds like a circular saw him actually. It leaves very smooth cut surfaces too. Put 9 cube through so far, best I’ve done is 30 cube on fresh from the box with semi chisel but it cuts maybe a 3rd to half as slow per cycle so if I do 15 with full chisel it’ll be a time saver. Old LPX struggles to do 7cube from a sharpen usually. Videos to follow.

Yep and it’s a good job I did or I’d be getting complaints. I actually think it’s wetter than the 6 month seasoned I dried earlier in the year [emoji15] Perhaps I dry my logs too much...?

Thanks! That sensor only goes to 70 so I’m assuming we get more like 72 at times! Yeah it’s 90kw of water heat exchangers with 3 fans circulating it through a 10” sub floor or exhausting if the vents open. Gets to about max 60degrees if I vented constantly but that doesn’t do as good a job either imho end up with wet centres in bigger logs usually. 100mm of kingspan insulation all the way round. Probably going to add another 75mm to the ceiling when I get around to it before next season.

Slight topic detour today. ‘What logs have you been drying lately?’ Imported some ash, oak, alder and birch from Lithuania to take the pressure off while I’m away for a fortnight getting married and on honeymoon. In the absence of a working tester I put the oak and ash in our own kiln to see what would happen. Worst case I’ve wasted electricity running the fans and best case they needed putting in anyway! Got back this morning and they’re on 70 degrees at 46% RH. Definitely worth putting in there. Had 6 month seasoned logs in there give out not much more moisture. At least they’ll be dry I suppose. [emoji17]

You need to be getting temperatures well over 50 degrees to even come close to being effective. Ours runs at 65-75 for a week with enough air flow to completely change the air every 30 seconds and it still takes a week to dry 16 cube from 35% moisture to 15%. You need high temperatures to increase the water carrying capacity of the air and then lots of air flow. Ideally a heat recovery system is used on the wet air vent to remove the water from the air and send hot dry air back to the air inlet.

Sent you a Pm.

Find the growi uk website and give him a ring. He was more than happy to discuss the options with me and I was only thinking of buying in some oversize! Very helpful guy. He would even come with an extra man and 2 395’s to ring up for you if you wanted! Think he’s Hertfordshire based if I recall correctly. Even it ended up £500 a day, if you did 50m3 that’s still cheap I reckon!

I can’t speak for others but in my experience the longer we can leave roundwood in the stack the better results we get in the kiln. Even better if we can process it into logs and part-season it before kilning. Fresh from felling I can process and dry (to less than 20)a 16 loose cube load of logs in 9 days. If I stack the wood for 3 months over a summer like we’ve just had you can take that to 6-7 days. 6 months stacked before processing and we can get 6 days no problem. However, process it from green and stack the IBC’s outside for 6 months and it takes 3 days to complete the cycle. More than doubling output once you take into account loading and unloading the kiln with each batch. Those logs were easily sub 25% after this years dry spell though. Burnt some that I didn’t kiln last night in the fire and they went great. But harder to light but still kept the glass clear and gave off good heat. As long as it’s dry when processed and stored so it can start it’s natural drying process then you reduce drying times dramatically.

Fair enough, you do right! Kilworth may still have it in stock when we change you never know!

Depending on when your new machine arrives, we would be potentially interested in taking your old one off you to upgrade from our 400. PM me if you like.

The bloke who imports the growi x-power hires the demo machine out at £350 per day including 2 men excluding transport. Takes up 1m rings and can easily do 50m3 per day. He reckoned 80m3 was doable if it was all over 500mm Would clear your 2 wagon loads in the 2 days maximum. It’s about 40k to buy as the base model.

That’s fair enough. How about If you split the rings into smaller rings that make a nicer log through the processor? How much is plenty of wood by the way and how oversize?

Split the rings into small enough pieces for the processor rather than down to finished size. Put through the processor. Unless you’ve got a fuelwood splitta style processor I don’t see any possible increase in output.

Not a bad price considering it’s £40 roadside fresh felled when we’ve been buying it!