Steven P

I've not heard that one for many years!! And the bloke who told me used the unedited version (he was proper respectable too, a local business owner, family man and all)

So, you are going to cut the logs to firewood length eventually, and split to the right thickness where necessary eventually. If you are not doing that now you want to add another process and couple of minutes each taking some bark off. Have fun. I can see the point if the log is going to be used for something else, made into something, but to be put on a fire? Me, I would use the time chopping them to length / double length (double length is easier to stack), the cut end (x2, once for each end) surface area is going to be larger than running a saw down it or a blade or whatever, and am sure it won't take that much longer. For drying we need a large surface area of wood (not bark). If you can split them as soon as you can too that doubles (?) the surface area. And do it as soon as you can too - do it in October and you have missed a whole drying season (willow takes 1 to 2 years to season, to dry), get it stacked now in a 'wind tunnel' location with sun you might be able to use it next (2023 - 2024) winter (example, my drive is a good wind tunnel - house either side the wind is tunnelled along the wood stack, err drive)

am surprised they struggled getting out even when partially blocked in - thought they would be experts at towing stuff

Are the guys who are working in the area local to you or are they travelling in from a distance, reason being a local firm are more likely to have long established routes for their 'waste', they might not even look for a tip site in the area - just use what they know. If the firms are outside the area then they I think are more likely to want a local tip site rather than drive a tipper full of waste, a couple of journeys or more longer distances. If you can give one of them a shout next time you pass, that can give surprising results.. chainsaws are hard to hide (till they all go battery). an early lunchtime walk does me quite well sometimes I know where I would be going however if I was working in the south west!!

Yuo, can burn all sorts in the garden, green wood straight off a tree, smouldering leaves for hours, the only come back from that is the neighbours. Put a log at 21% moisture content on an inside log burner and it is off to the gallows with you. I'm not a statistician but I bet you need to look at a lot of variables to get an answer for lung problems and their causes, and I bet that there is no single cause either. I don't think the scale of the media interest is in proportion to the problems caused by wood burners

I'd go with the the 'bund' idea, don't let yourself get in a situation where an oil spill will cause a problem If only you had access to something like sawdust to clean up the majority of a spill.... scrubbed into the remaining oil, brushed up and then clean up as above

Back to the original post, not CO related, probably, but how much fire do you usually have if it is tricky to keep going? Is it 1 or 2 logs, or a firebox full?

However should still be enough of a draw up the chimney even if it needs a sweep, to take the fumes away unless the fire has been slumbering for a long time and it's colds. Might ask then when did the CO alarm go off, right at light up, part way through your expected fires life of as the embers were dying away

Depends on the question, Carbon Monoxide, CO, is lighter than oxygen (see above), Carbon Dioxide CO2, heavier than oxygen (see above)

I find a mix works well - coal for a while then wood for a while (not usually a mix fuelled simultaneously though) - the wood ash will burn through to nothing but kind of 'aerates' the coal ash as it does letting it burn more fully or fall into the ash pan better (dual purpose grids are not so great for coal - gaps are too small meaning the coal ash hangs about above the grate too much) - in my stove anyway

how old is the alarm? They reckon they need changing every 10 years because the sensors can go, just to add another thing to think about.

However, 3" thick silicone? Round the back of the sink is one thing, holding the window ledge on is another.

I'm spending quite a lot of effort to remove the plastics from the house as I do repairs and replacement... and ******** silicone sealant that is used to hold the windows together (and bathroom, some walls, kitchen and even the meter cupboard) instead of doing a decent job

What glass do conservatories use? Might be worth a look at that too. Laminated glass - can appreciate that next to a door the way my boys 'close' it sometimes

playing with the socks lost in the washing machine

I don't believe the government does much unless there is a financial and tax benefit to it, not much tax in wood fuel and they are going to be losing a massive lump of petrol taxes as we go to electric vehicles - and adding tax t electricity isn't going to go down well. So hit what is perceived to be a middle class thing and wood burners... which is I think where they want to go, we all buy wood according to the HETAS scheme, then add tax to that. But the comments above make a good point, years ago the air pollution from everything else was higher, wood burner emissions was nothing in comparison. So let the wood rot in a tip (like Arb waste wood), the methane emissions from that are far worse to the environment than carbon emissions from burning it, let a diesel transit take the waste 30 or 40 miles round trip to a tip instead of round the corner to a bloke with an axe, and then import biomas logs from South America rain forests in a boat so the bloke with an ace can get cheaper electricity and afford heating. Joined up thinking is good but wood burning stoves isn't the right thing to go for just now

From the other side of things, been quite mild the last 2 weeks, I should have been buying coal yesterday but will be leaving it till Friday - the same amount lasting 3 weeks in the winter has lasted nearer 4 this last time around

I'm going to have to get into these, 500g for £7!

Number 2 - apart from a few woods, you can use them all on a BBQ, hot embers are hot embers, managed well you can keep a 'fire' with flames at one end and as you add fuel to this end it will push hot embers along the rest of the BBQ,,, hottest at one end, cooler at the other. Firewood - even in the UK, just don't mention the word firewood in an advert, sell them as logs..... All wood will sell freshly cut but for a lower price than seasoned .. and weird this should come up, was chopping up an Alder yesterday - I'll let you know how it is to burn next year!

Goes back to how much is it costing you.... machine processed and you have a processor to worry about, hand split and your time to worry about, did you buy in the wood or acquire it, what about your storage costs. (I don't need to know the figures) Place near me is dong softwood 'm3' bags for £115 just now, so the £100 above won't be too far wrong, didn't see a 'ready to burn' sticker on the advert so guess that is the cheaper end of things I rarely sell any - personal use - but the other year was doing a 'car boot' of soft wood logs for £15 to £20 (depended on the reply to gumtree advert and if I liked the sound of them!), middle of summer and was selling them too cheap (this was maybe 0.4m3) so this is as an absolute minimum - had the whole drive covered with logs and needed space. All went in about 10 days. And how much would I pay? Couple of pints and a cake do you? Think if I needed it, again £100 sounds OK to me... but make sure you don't make a loss.

That's what a shepherds wife told me a couple of years ago.

So a question back at you... what do you need to know the make for? I am guessing you need new internal parts, fire bricks, glass? maybe and then all you need is a tap measure.

n+1, where n is the number you have.

I'm with coppice cutter, experience of the past means I regularly let the tank get to it's last litre before filling up - stops the muck accumulating. Not sure what the cost and effort of a clean is and what the cost and effort to fit a new fuel gauge? You'll know. Failing that looking at the what MPG do you get thread, might be worth doing a few sums to figure what a tank should get and run it to 3/4 empty more regularly?

Stolenim then?