Mr. Ed

Yes as much as possible but I don’t think we’d ever reach passive house sort of levels. We’d still need hot water of course.

Aha! Thanks for the edit Marcus. Might be a key piece of info.

Thank you for this clear recommendation. There’s a distributor here in Ireland, which is good, and Atmos’ own website is reassuring. No fancy electronics to tell you when you next need to load and so on? Maybe not a bad thing if so. Do I assume you load morning and evening in the winter? And every few days in the summer? Many thanks again: this was just the sort of info I was hoping to get. Ed

Thanks Marcus! That does sound like a grant aided folly. Out of interest what was shite about the installation and the kit itself? And what was the cost of this unsatisfactory installation? Ed

Hi all We’re building up to a biggish renovation project of our house in the woods here in SW Ireland and I’m very keen to include a gasification boiler in the plans. However I’m finding it hard getting first hand accounts to compare the market, a market which is confused by a lack of transparency over rebadged boilers. My understanding so far has Fröling at the top of the tree, but I’m not sure if this is on account of superior control systems or higher design and buold quality. A company called Firebird (who are very close to us) market a similar looking boiler at a smallish fraction of the price of a Fröling - they are coy about it but don’t seem actually to manufacture it, in the way they manufacture their oil boilers. We’re only interested in using logs, and sadly there is no RHI bung available in the Republic. We’ve got a perfect adjacent outhouse to house both the boiler and the immediate use wood store. We’d love to hear from anyone who has first hand experience. Many thanks and best wishes to all the Arbsters out there. Mr and Mrs Ed.

Well spotted. They now add that wire loop to the VF105 but if you mangle it by bringing the choker right on to the winch it ends up like a bit of bent wire! Ask me how I know. Without it you develop riding turns which are very bad.

Sorry for bitty messages - just bragging that we got one of those Docma winches and I think it’s the dog’s elbows - very handy and you can use the tractor as a base if you want to. We’re never going to be pulling 60 foot trees up slopes with it but it’s very flexible. Ed

Did someone say winch on tractor?

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It’s strange they’re always described as shy, because ours are pretty brazen. They’re used to being apex predators I suppose. They’ve done for the bunnies but the hares are thriving. We have leveretts in the wood yard - the first one I saw I thought “funny looking rat”.

Not just rich folk - when we bought our little bit of woodland we were introduced to one of our neighbours with the unspoken comment “this is xxxx. He’ll be poaching your deer.” The first time we accepted some venison from him made us co-conspirators.

Our pine marten really does work. Not a grey been seen and reds not common but present. Has anyone tried introducing them?

What’s that from please? And as a numpty to the world of cutting wood, is there a “bible” on it? I’ve seen people biggjng up a chainsaw book but is there one for more conventional milling?

“Roughty rot”. Lovely. Will steal that phrase, living as we do on the banks of the Roughty River!

Exactly so - lots of conifer crud ul there so the guides is the first thing to look at.

Bonane then I guess. That's a place name for those not in the locality ,reading this wondering what I'm ctapping on about Not quite - halfway up the Roughty valley. Healy-Rae country.

Hi SKC101fc (or may I call you SKC?) I do have a whole load of shite that I’m sawing so that’s a good idea, as is the dodgy blade. However the problem developed suddenly and I’ve changed the blade and done some different woods with the same problem. I’ve been using the fine weather this weekend to knock down some of our thousands of dead and dying ash trees so haven’t done any fiddling yet. I have some raised flowerbeds to make from Leylandii and may get round to it tomorrow and will have a tweak of my bearings beforehand. We’re just over the Kerry side of the border - a few miles east of Kenmare, a nice place and we’re safe in the event of a cashmere crisis or a shortage of organic chocolate.

It’s fine for what it is - I have to go and wiggle my bearings a bit this morning to try and tilt the blade down, but overall I’m quite impressed.

Agreed - if we do that It’s going to be painted - we don’t want to live in a fecking sauna after all - it’s an old farm style - matchboarding they used to call it I think. Just using wood instead of plasterboard.

And I'm planning on making a scale model of Venice on miniature alder piles, while wearing clogs . . .

sorry didn't check my own sources - 20 - 30 cm. Second thinnings.

what diamter Paul?

apparently one of the reasons woodworkers like it is that it stains very well - so that floor is faked up a bit to look likesomething more expensive, but hey!

Interestingly, though it's soft, it's a little less soft than pine, which of course is used for floorboards all the time - here's a picture of a very sexy alder floor

Thank you Khriss - I think I've got to go back in fiddle with my wheels, for the blade seems to have developed an upward slop - as it comes out of the wood I can no longer just wheel it back, but have to raise the head - that only mean that the blade is cutting at an angle I think. I've got one more similar to do, which will probably give me just not quite enough for the staircase. Ha!