Yeah OK now, still a bit of nerve damage, and the cold plays hell with it.

I coulda been the next Jimi Hendrix though :lol:
now I can't play barre chords :( Still, I can bang a few songs out round the campfire, I never fancied life as a superstar anyway :lol:

Ironically it was collecting "free wood" for a mate :lol:

It happened for a few reasons really, rushing on someone elses time pressure (mate had to get to work) compromised workspace; I'd backed a trailer full of green wood up too close the saw, only meant to unload it, found some dead stuff and decided to cut that up and stack it, acting without much forethought "I'll just do that it won't take a second" caught it on a 32" table saw, felt like I'd just got a bit of hammer rash, then I looked at it :eek: it went right through the knuckle, now it's cut off at the knuckle.

you live and learn :p
 
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Pumpy said:
Yeah OK now, still a bit of nerve damage, and the cold plays hell with it.

I coulda been the next Jimi Hendrix though :lol:
now I can't play barre chords :( Still, I can bang a few songs out round the campfire, I never fancied life as a superstar anyway :lol:

Ironically it was collecting "free wood" for a mate :lol:

It happened for a few reasons really, rushing on someone elses time pressure (mate had to get to work) compromised workspace; I'd backed a trailer full of green wood up too close the saw, only meant to unload it, found some dead stuff and decided to cut that up and stack it, acting without much forethought "I'll just do that it won't take a second" caught it on a 32" table saw, felt like I'd just got a bit of hammer rash, then I looked at it :eek: it went right through the knuckle, now it's cut off at the knuckle.

you live and learn :p
Click to expand...

bloody hell :eek:

ah well, you can have nine other goes at it :D
 
trax said:
bloody hell :eek:

ah well, you can have nine other goes at it :D
Click to expand...

It took me two years before I started that saw again, great engines them Listers, started first time :D had my balls in my mouth for the first hour :lol:
 
We wished we had gone for one that has a back boiler and transferred the heat through to the rads. We bought a yotul with the big window. It's nice to come home to a fire and know it's safe to leave unlike a open fire. Watch the gap and distance around the stove. Some stoves that are too close to walls can start a fire. Get advice and have the chimney checked. Worth it.
 
tnseal said:
We wished we had gone for one that has a back boiler and transferred the heat through to the rads. We bought a yotul with the big window. It's nice to come home to a fire and know it's safe to leave unlike a open fire. Watch the gap and distance around the stove. Some stoves that are too close to walls can start a fire. Get advice and have the chimney checked. Worth it.
Click to expand...

unless there's a new way, you have to have an open system, cold water tanks and have it gravity fed with a pump.

buying a new stove with the backboiler would probably be the cheapest bit.

also, backboilers will reduce the amount of heat chucked into the room, so you'd probably need a larger stove and increase your fuel consumption.
 
trax said:
unless there's a new way, you have to have an open system, cold water tanks and have it gravity fed with a pump.

buying a new stove with the backboiler would probably be the cheapest bit.

also, backboilers will reduce the amount of heat chucked into the room, so you'd probably need a larger stove and increase your fuel consumption.
Click to expand...

you guys have these???????? works with a hot water system and forced warm air and can be used for hot water for baths etc and hooked to clothes dryers

Hawken Energy provides outdoor wood burning furnaces, the best outdoor heating systems in the industry, as well as offering green, cleaner heating for home, pool or office
 
Thor1950 said:
you guys have these???????? works with a hot water system and forced warm air and can be used for hot water for baths etc and hooked to clothes dryers

Hawken Energy provides outdoor wood burning furnaces, the best outdoor heating systems in the industry, as well as offering green, cleaner heating for home, pool or office
Click to expand...

Yep, we have versions of those ; log, wood chip or pellet boilers.

I have to agree with mr.pumpy (at least the bit that's still here). I repair and service chainsaws and the 'I'll sort the tree out for the wood' crowd are mostly a liability. Apart from the legal liability of allowing an insured clown on your land, their saws are often blunt and the chain brake is a mystery.

I take the point about all power tools being dangerous but chainsaws are particularly maintenance intensive.
 
SpringDon said:
Yep, we have versions of those ; log, wood chip or pellet boilers.

I have to agree with mr.pumpy (at least the bit that's still here). I repair and service chainsaws and the 'I'll sort the tree out for the wood' crowd are mostly a liability. Apart from the legal liability of allowing an insured clown on your land, their saws are often blunt and the chain brake is a mystery.

I take the point about all power tools being dangerous but chainsaws are particularly maintenance intensive.
Click to expand...

Really...... They do not know a sharp saw is a safe saw. I always use a file on every fill up of the saw, and file when there is sign of being dull. And the chain break is a must. A good cleaning with a brush and flat blade on the chain wrench does most. and at end of the day a air hose on the thing with side cover off and the airfilter keeps them running for years with out trouble. Use it once and put in a shed for months is the worst for them, old fuel kills them
 
SpringDon said:
Yep, we have versions of those ; log, wood chip or pellet boilers.

I have to agree with mr.pumpy (at least the bit that's still here). I repair and service chainsaws and the 'I'll sort the tree out for the wood' crowd are mostly a liability. Apart from the legal liability of allowing an insured clown on your land, their saws are often blunt and the chain brake is a mystery.

I take the point about all power tools being dangerous but chainsaws are particularly maintenance intensive.
Click to expand...

:pound:

i took him out of context. i'm just against anything that would lead us down the path into a greater nanny state. I can imagine a law being passed that chainsaws can only be sold to people with arb (whatever they are) certs. (reading that back, i sound like a nutter)

i'm more of the view of if they are stupid enough to not be extremely careful when using one, then tough, you make the judgement call yourself regarding the risks. fortunately, most of the uk has gch.
 
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leeby7 said:
does anyone know where I can get any cheap logs ;)
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Just drive around and look for a 'logs for sale' sign outside someone's house, private sellers are usually the cheapest. The 'logs for sale' signs are everywhere around here but I suppose it all depends where you live. I've got several acres of woodland to harvest my logs from, so I'm unlikely to run out in my lifetime :)
 
Pumpy said:
Yeah OK now, still a bit of nerve damage, and the cold plays hell with it.

I coulda been the next Jimi Hendrix though :lol:
now I can't play barre chords :( Still, I can bang a few songs out round the campfire, I never fancied life as a superstar anyway :lol:

Ironically it was collecting "free wood" for a mate :lol:

It happened for a few reasons really, rushing on someone elses time pressure (mate had to get to work) compromised workspace; I'd backed a trailer full of green wood up too close the saw, only meant to unload it, found some dead stuff and decided to cut that up and stack it, acting without much forethought "I'll just do that it won't take a second" caught it on a 32" table saw, felt like I'd just got a bit of hammer rash, then I looked at it :eek: it went right through the knuckle, now it's cut off at the knuckle.

you live and learn :p
Click to expand...

I can see why you have your particular stance on free wood now :( , I would not go by that saw full stop.

My wood store is about 1 of your lean to's, but is enough for one stove when you work full time.
 
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tbh my stance doesn't have much to do with the accident, it has more to do with trying to feed my log burners for 8 yrs ;) I started out like many of you with rose tinted glasses and ideas about cheap heating, it never worked out that way.

For the first few yrs we had access to the recycling center run by my mate, I'd go twice a week and fill a trailer after hours from the wood skip, it would take me half a day to process 1 trailer of scrap wood into log size lengths with a chop saw and stack it. I burnt out 3 chopsaws doing this (an awful lot of wood). Then the council H&S brigade put cameras up, which put a stop to climbing in the skips.

I went round collecting pallets and "free" wood from trading estates (getting permission for the pallets etc.) when you've cut up a few hundred pallets come back and tell me you still think it's worth it, cos I'm here to tell you it ain't!

I also have chainsaws and mates in the hedge-laying game who I would help by removing a lot of the brash on really old hedges, taking anything log size with me, burning the rest on site. (this is bloody hard work, half a days labor for a trailer full of logs = 1.2cube you still have to process). After a 2" blackthorn thorn sprung back and went right through my cheek, almost blinding me, I soon gave up on that for a game of "free" firewood.

I had contacts on big building sites, I'd pay a 6 wheeler driver some beer tokens to drop a tipper load of building site scrap wood in my garden, and then spend a week processing it and stacking it. Soul destroying work, lots of little stuff, lots of crap, big bonfires making a mess of the garden to get rid of the ****e, all for a few weeks fuel, it really wasn't worth the effort.

I got the big 32" circular saw run by a lister engine to save buying more chopsaws, and we know how that turned out :eek:

When I recovered I employed a climber to come and top a load of big willow and Poplar trees we had on our site (they needed doing anyway), got a bunch of "free" wood from that, climber was paid £100 a day (which is very cheap) I paid a groundie £60 a day to help, and I worked for nothing, for 32 full fecking hard days work, we beat the nearest quote from a tree firm to do it, but only just if you count the cost of the chipper i had to buy to do it (I already had the tractor it fitted on) and it nearly killed me working that hard in Jan when it was bloody freezing. I had to buy a hydraulic splitter for the tractor to process the huge chunks of wood (£500) 1 days splitting gets me 6 cube :/

I have no big barn to put it all in, I can store about 12 cube in my woodstores, so i had to buy 50 cubic meter vented bags (£8 each) I stacked em 3 high (with a JCB) and put a tarp over them after summer to try to keep them dry, it looks like the wood is sweating under there, so it may turn into very expensive compost before I get to burn it :/

I also advertised a free tipping site for tree surgeons, I get about 50 ton of woodchip (makes great compost eventually) and about 6 cube of "rounds" a year, rounds are all the big chunks of wood (usually gnarly knotty conifer but also some nice stuff) that don't fit through the chipper. It's a good deal for them as it saves tipping costs, and it works for me, but it does involve moving/turning/spreading 50 ton of chip a year for a few "free" logs I still have to process, most of which is hard fecking work because it's all the gnarly stuff.

Since I have now lived and learned, I will share the secret of "Cheap" firewood with you. ;)

When the current pile of willow/pop is gone, I will be buying in hardwood chord by the 26 ton load, prices are rising now, I expect to pay about £1800-£2200 for 26 ton, which will equate to about 45 cube, works out about £40-£50 per cube before processing, I'll have invested £4k in a tractor, £500 in a log splitter, about £900 in chainsaws, and about £400 in vented bags, we won't count the quad bike and trailer to move it all, or the JCB to stack the bags up ;)

Yeah, no such thing as free logs, no such thing as cheap logs either.

But being self reliant, and the fact I don't have to take out a mortgage to get gas piped down here = Priceless :D

free wood? Cheap logs? Wood cheaper than gas? My arse.

And that's before you start cutting bits off yourself :lol:
 
Pumpy said:
tbh my stance doesn't have much to do with the accident, it has more to do with trying to feed my log burners for 8 yrs ;) I started out like many of you with rose tinted glasses and ideas about cheap heating, it never worked out that way.

For the first few yrs we had access to the recycling center run by my mate, I'd go twice a week and fill a trailer after hours from the wood skip, it would take me half a day to process 1 trailer of scrap wood into log size lengths with a chop saw and stack it. I burnt out 3 chopsaws doing this (an awful lot of wood). Then the council H&S brigade put cameras up, which put a stop to climbing in the skips.

I went round collecting pallets and "free" wood from trading estates (getting permission for the pallets etc.) when you've cut up a few hundred pallets come back and tell me you still think it's worth it, cos I'm here to tell you it ain't!

I also have chainsaws and mates in the hedge-laying game who I would help by removing a lot of the brash on really old hedges, taking anything log size with me, burning the rest on site. (this is bloody hard work, half a days labor for a trailer full of logs = 1.2cube you still have to process). After a 2" blackthorn thorn sprung back and went right through my cheek, almost blinding me, I soon gave up on that for a game of "free" firewood.

I had contacts on big building sites, I'd pay a 6 wheeler driver some beer tokens to drop a tipper load of building site scrap wood in my garden, and then spend a week processing it and stacking it. Soul destroying work, lots of little stuff, lots of crap, big bonfires making a mess of the garden to get rid of the ****e, all for a few weeks fuel, it really wasn't worth the effort.

I got the big 32" circular saw run by a lister engine to save buying more chopsaws, and we know how that turned out :eek:

When I recovered I employed a climber to come and top a load of big willow and Poplar trees we had on our site (they needed doing anyway), got a bunch of "free" wood from that, climber was paid £100 a day (which is very cheap) I paid a groundie £60 a day to help, and I worked for nothing, for 32 full fecking hard days work, we beat the nearest quote from a tree firm to do it, but only just if you count the cost of the chipper i had to buy to do it (I already had the tractor it fitted on) and it nearly killed me working that hard in Jan when it was bloody freezing. I had to buy a hydraulic splitter for the tractor to process the huge chunks of wood (£500) 1 days splitting gets me 6 cube :/

I have no big barn to put it all in, I can store about 12 cube in my woodstores, so i had to buy 50 cubic meter vented bags (£8 each) I stacked em 3 high (with a JCB) and put a tarp over them after summer to try to keep them dry, it looks like the wood is sweating under there, so it may turn into very expensive compost before I get to burn it :/

I also advertised a free tipping site for tree surgeons, I get about 50 ton of woodchip (makes great compost eventually) and about 6 cube of "rounds" a year, rounds are all the big chunks of wood (usually gnarly knotty conifer but also some nice stuff) that don't fit through the chipper. It's a good deal for them as it saves tipping costs, and it works for me, but it does involve moving/turning/spreading 50 ton of chip a year for a few "free" logs I still have to process, most of which is hard fecking work because it's all the gnarly stuff.

Since I have now lived and learned, I will share the secret of "Cheap" firewood with you. ;)

When the current pile of willow/pop is gone, I will be buying in hardwood chord by the 26 ton load, prices are rising now, I expect to pay about £1800-£2200 for 26 ton, which will equate to about 45 cube, works out about £40-£50 per cube before processing, I'll have invested £4k in a tractor, £500 in a log splitter, about £900 in chainsaws, and about £400 in vented bags, we won't count the quad bike and trailer to move it all, or the JCB to stack the bags up ;)

Yeah, no such thing as free logs, no such thing as cheap logs either.

But being self reliant, and the fact I don't have to take out a mortgage to get gas piped down here = Priceless :D

free wood? Cheap logs? Wood cheaper than gas? My arse.

And that's before you start cutting bits off yourself :lol:
Click to expand...
well i work as a self employed carpenter,
I remove around 5 house roofs per year on top of all the smaller jobs where wood is available,
I get paid for taking the roofs off, I have the tools to process the wood as part of my job, I would normally have to pay to dispose of the waste timber, now i burn it, and as im at work during the day, i dont need the log burner on 12 hours per day,
I find 2 maybe 3 hours in the evening and the house is warm enough,
so its a win win for me, and in the 2 months since burning wood instead of gas ive saved around £200 on gas alone, and kept my mate with his wood burner all last winter going,
so there is 2 sides of the coin
 
sarah90 said:
You need to get a Hetas certificate for a solid fuel fire and if its over 5kw the room its in needs to be vented. I had mine fitted last year with a twin walled external flue as I don't have a chimney. Its like a furnace once it gets going and I love it. Its a tiger stove on its own stand with space for logs underneath. Only downside I find with mine is because its small your wood needs to be chopped up fairly small compared to some stoves.
Click to expand...

spot on,building control also needs to be involved unless heatas guy can register it,ventilation is normally 100cm2 or more depending on kw input
 
johnlad said:
well i work as a self employed carpenter,
I remove around 5 house roofs per year on top of all the smaller jobs where wood is available,
I get paid for taking the roofs off, I have the tools to process the wood as part of my job, I would normally have to pay to dispose of the waste timber, now i burn it, and as im at work during the day, i dont need the log burner on 12 hours per day,
I find 2 maybe 3 hours in the evening and the house is warm enough,
so its a win win for me, and in the 2 months since burning wood instead of gas ive saved around £200 on gas alone, and kept my mate with his wood burner all last winter going,
so there is 2 sides of the coin
Click to expand...

I'm sorry mate, you missed part of the conversation, in case you are hard of hearing I shout it again "UNLESS YOU HAVE ACCESS TO A LOT OF FREE WOOD GAS IS CHEAPER" :rolleyes:
 
Pumpy said:
I'm sorry mate, you missed part of the conversation, in case you are hard of hearing I shout it again "UNLESS YOU HAVE ACCESS TO A LOT OF FREE WOOD GAS IS CHEAPER" :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

you need to get one of them woodchips of yer shoulder
 
Pumpy said:
not if you learn to read.
Click to expand...

read pretty well, what i read between the lines is a guy unhappy with his self sufficient life choices, who cos its gone wrong for him, wants to gripe to anyone who will listen,
If you dont like it, change it,
Oh, by the way, you shouldnt cross cut on your 'field' circular saw, its dangerous
 
i'm with pumpy on this re the free wood. i mainly run coal now and use logs as a top up.

it's a lot cheaper to run than kero or lpg out here and i can keep it going 24/7.

I reckon i chuck 600quid a year at it, mainly used over nov - march. kero was about 2k.
 
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