Muddy42

I don't have one, but all I would say is that personally the handles and air controls look to be made of thin metal that might be weak. I like the fact they have vermiculite on all 5 sides as this material is incredibly easy to replace if broken. Other than that they are just the run of the mill steel box with a glass door. Also if you are using an installer, Id follow their recommendation. Then you have more grounds to complain if any part of the system doesn't perform.

Unfortunately not. Esso state on their website that premium their E5 now contains ethanol.

Here is a picture of my current playground (a few weeks ago now). I'm slowly working my way through this massive oak. I havn't measured it but the butt is probably 8ft in diameter and I can see a few stones in it. So far I've been cutting logs at the weekend and splitting and stacking during the week after work as my daily exercise. The logs will be for personal use in my house. I'll be able to speed up when the days get longer. I'll probably mill some of the medium sized bits in the summer. The butt looks quite rotten and probably too big for my 5ft bar and/or the loader. Unfortunately I find selling hardwood makes marginal economic sense after I account for the fuel, machinery and hours involved. Id have to pay someone with a forwarder to help move the butt. Also I expect the country will be awash with hardwood after the recent storms.

I just resort to iphone calculator. Generally I start with 4 litres of unmixed petrol in a 5l aspen can, that is 4,000 ml. 4,000 divided by 45 would be approx 89ml. I have a variety of sizes of plastic measuring jugs. I use the 100ml jug to measure out just below 90ml of oil. Drop that smaller measuring jug into a 2litre mixing jug. Pour in some petrol and slosh it around a bit so everything is dissolved and the smaller jug is clean. Pour back into the aspen can. Repeat with more petrol if you want to. Job done. Denny all knowledge of the smell of fuel.

Yup, if its an old saw the carb could probably do with a good clean out with carb spray and new diaphragms. There are plenty of youtube videos about this. Clean the screen, jets and check the metering arm height.

brown carpet? no mess and hoover-able.

Does it start quicker with a shot of fuel in the spark plug hole? If so Id guess it has a fuel delivery issue. Have you checked the fuel tank vent is clear, replace fuel filter, check fuel lines are intact, or try replacing the air filter. It could benefit from a carb kit and cleaning out the little filter in the carb.

I might be wrong, but don't modern two stroke engines use more advanced materials (in the fuel line/impulse line/carb diaphrams) than older machines? This is why the manuals say you can use pump fuels below a certain ethanol content. I still keep an eye out for fraying or cracks. Its annoying that esso premium fuel now contains 5% ethanol. One day I might start removing the ethanol with coloured water.

I have diesel cars, so I fill the car with diesel, return the hose and then wave a 5l petrol can at the cashier and make a sign for them to reset the counter and then I pay for both. If they see me they generally play ball. You are on CCTV so you can't do a runner.

Yes they smell different, but Ive never really noticed any side effects. I use fresh petrol pump E5 in the strimmer and MS261. The thinking is they are newer, get used a lot, and were built after the introduction of ethanol. I start the strimmer up with aspen in January to flush things out a bit. The larger, older saws that get used infrequently just use aspen. I can't ignore Aspen is double the price. Back to storage, always try to store machines in the dry up off damp floors etc.

The closed season for male deer has been removed in Scotland so you can shoot them all year (if you want, lots of people prefer to stick to the normal seasons). The seasons for female deer have not formally changed although a lot of semi-public organisations intend on exterminating deer get a dispensation to start the season early (the welfare justification for this is questionable - orphaned dependant young etc.)

Scotland recently permitted a range of digital scopes, thermal and light intensifying etc. but I think this is for daytime shooting (or up to an hour after sunset). Night time shooting (after this time) requires a special authorisation.

I just think some of the modern stoves are very fussy in terms of their operating conditions - perfectly straight flue liner of the exact length, insulation, cowel, register plate etc. The internal design and baffles may actually reduce draft, to help recirculate and reburn smoke, extracting maximum heat from the wood, maximum efficiency, cooler smoke etc. I get all that but if anything is slightly not right, you can get smoke in the room or other operating difficulties. Whereas Ive had several older that will work anywhere in any old unlined chimney. They light instantly and roar like a train within seconds and I've never had issues like with this eco design one. Yes you use slightly more logs but my firewood is free aside from labour and fuel.

Agreed, in one area I'm still pulling up seedlings 10 years after the bonfires went cold. In the early years we used glphosate to tackle the regrowth but seedlings keep sprouting for years to come.

Agreed. I suspect eco design (with an external independent air supply and perfectly set up flue liner) has been designed for a modern air tight house. Mine certainly isn't air tight and oxygen starvation isn't a problem.

It just shows how precious stoves have become that this is a consideration, but yes its a double skinned liner surrounded by some overpriced insulation beads. I dunno a stove should be so simple, but yet there has been this whole industry created to sell extra stuff, services and installation that wasn't required in the past. One of my Clearviews works fine and doesn't even have a flue liner. And before you ask, I clean it twice a year and have seen the CCTV footage and its spotless with no creosote. I also have various carbon monoxide testers, yawn.

Sorry I mean the opposite. My stove has a rectangular vermiculite baffle in its roof. Originally this baffle was of a size that left about a half inch wide gap for smoke to exit. I had some spare vermiculite board lying around so I made a smaller rectangle to give a bigger gap. All experimental and totally reversible. The flue has a 5 inch x 7 m liner fitted so plenty long enough. Yes what I do is lay the fire normally then put some rolled up newspaper on top to provide a flare up. People talk about 'bottom-up" or top down fire lighting - this is the best of both! Don't worry I've tried all the tricks - this eco design stove is just a bit sh!t compered to my other older stoves.

No its fine when the flu is warm or used the day before. I've also adjusted the stove a bit to help with the through flow or air - smaller vermiculite chimney baffle to help expel the exhaust and open up the air intakes with a dremel. Yes I've used an electric heater before to heat an open fire flu. However I then fixed that flue permanently by reducing the size of the fire opening with a glass strip.

To be fair that job description contained a lot of waffle and nothing about the hard manual graft of annihilating rhododendron. My issue is a broader one, that there is a lot of public money being thrown at the highlands of Scotland to try and "restore" or "improve" it. This new vision of the landscape is drawn up remotely by people behind desks to make the highlands look good for visitors. Yes it provides jobs but the majority of those jobs are again the managers, ecologists and funding farmers not grafters living on the ground. One of the aims is growing more trees. Either this is on a commercial scale which means a monoculture of sitka spruce and huge loss of biodiversity. Or this is Caledonian pine and oak forest which, current thinking requires the extermination of deer by professional contractors at huge public cost. As an example if there are less deer, traditional estate stalkers lose their jobs guiding guests on the hill plus a whole raft of jobs down the line. To that end the Scottish government has a campaign of land and housing reform to end private involvement in the rural economy. A whole way of life is at threat in some areas.

another 'magic' public money rewilding job. Please share with the traditional stalkers, gamekeepers, ghillies and estate workers that are loosing their livelihoods.

Talk to your neighbour, walk along the boundary and agree which branches legally he can cut. As long as you agree on the boundary, this should be factual because its anything overhanging that boundary. Then if you want to control the process and make neater cuts, make this clear and ask his permission to do the work on his side. Find out what is making him tic (lack of sunlight, leaves, the need for firewood etc.) Maybe it would look better to remove some trees entirely and leave others rather that create a 30 ft hedge. There is no point worrying about the past, the branches have zero value and the only people that win from a legal approach are the lawyers..

Agreed, yes I have an old Charnwood that is excellant. Agreed, I use this trick once its going a bit. Don't get me wrong, I can get the eco deisgn esse going eventually with all the usual tricks - lots of paper and kindling, window open a crack to neutralise the air pressure, as its also a nightmare for downdraft and smoking into the room when first lit. The flue is long and fully lined. Its just not the same as my older multifuel Charnwood or Clearview. With these fellas I literally put logs next to a twist of newspaper with one piece of kindling ontop, open the ash tray, open both air vents, door open a crack and they roar like a steam engine on nitrous oxide in seconds.

This doesn't sound right? Going from copper wire to fibreoptic cable will definitely increase your maximum potential speed. Keep bashing away at the Openreach and your ISP. Find out exactly what connection you have, what speed you are paying for and what you are getting. Do you have modern equipment within your house? Changing ISP is a good way to get a new router and the new 'mesh' equipment for bouncing the wifif around the house is great. Use ethernet cables if your house is massive. As above, totally agree

Gotcha, apologies i misunderstood. FTTP will be faster. Myself and many others have had the same experience as you. Just phone them every couple of days and bombard them with repeat emails. Often the engineers just have a handheld machine that you can sign on, just before the work starts.

Sorry I don't understand what work this "permission to work" form is required for? Either you have Fibre to the cabinet (FTTC, the cabinet is the telephone exchange or a green box on your street and then it uses older copper wires to go to your home) or Fibre to the premises (FTTP or to your home). FTTP is the best. Going from FTTC to FTTP would require landowners consent to put in cables, but simply switching providers shouldn't require any permission, and I'm afraid for you in my experience switching providers doesn't result in a speed improvement whatever the fcuk-ers say. Think about it, the cables and infrastructure are the same?