[bucketman]

Sat here in front of the stove and got thinking. What would you think pro's and cons for heating and what would you do and why?
Will add for those that dont know we live in the Highlands so could do any of the following. So for heating
Open up a peat bank and dig the peat (been offered the use of one if I do all the work)
Get a bulk 21ton wagon of logs and processed them my self (chainsaw and log splitter)
Get a Scavenger's license and go round Forestry sites and get wind blown/off cuts
Carry on as is and buy split logs in
or just fill the tank with oil and flick a switch
So do all the work or pay the cash?

[nutterly_uts]

I think I'd buy the bulk wagon of logs, but also do a back up in the oil tank of the minimum amount of oil you can get, to be touched only if needed

[doganjo]

It's a balance of time, effort and money as to which combination you choose .

[clydesdaleclopper]

I believe forestry commission stopped gleaning rights because of health and safety issues 

[Womble]

I think you can still get a scavenging license round here, but you're not allowed to use a chainsaw for safety reasons.
 
I'd do the same as nutterly_uts.
 
 

[bucketman]

I asked the Forestry about Scavenging and they said you could still do it about £50 for 3 months and hand tools only. but would have to find out where could go, May be the drive would make it impractical. The collecting peat sounds like back breaking work (does it burn as well as wood heat volume wise ) Have all so been told a wagon full of logs would kill a chain saw

[oor wullie]

It depends on how much fuel you go through in a year.  If it is only a couple of tons then scavenging permit, if it is more than that then the time and effort in collecting wood probably outweighs the financial cost of getting a lorry load in (£21+VAT (at 5%) per ton if I remember correctly (plus haulage costs)).

[cloddopper]

If I had the money to spare I'd go for making a four or five hundred meter heat sink pipe network for a ground source heat pump.  Driven by my own wind turbine and solar panels with my own battery bank & inverters independent of any mains power system .

 The water system would entail having a 2 or 3,000 litre hot water storage tank & a couple of small .. use it now tanks .
 Might even consider a massive heat bank tank of Glaubers salts .

Any excess power would run one of the immersun (  sp? ) water heaters  with some of the heat being able to be diverted into a poly tunnel or two when needed.
I'd also install solar water heating tubes connected to the system as well.
 
Once I'd proved it worked well , I'd see about setting up a small company to design and install others made along similar lines .

 Having seen the miniscule running costs of such integrated systems being around £159 per year or less  I reckon that once up and running I'd have a lot of time to do other money making ideas instead of continuously scrabbling around scrounging wood .

 If I didn't have the dosh all in one go I'd sit a while doing a lot of planning and thinking then  design a comprehensive integrated system & decide the order or priorities .
Then install the first part that  I could afford , then over five or six years  keep adding to the system till it was totally done.

[honeyend]

Over the years we have had a log burner, open fire and LPG, and at the moment storage heaters, which are working out at about £20 a week but we are warm. The deciding factor for me is insulation and I would spend all I could afford on that.
 A couple of weeks a go we visited some friend who living off grid, they have a wood burner and a solid fuel aga, literally all the heat goes out the window and the uminsulated walls. We are living in an asbestos shed, made up of two thin sheets of asbestos, but we lined it with insulated plaster board, this has made all the difference, even though its only half an inch thick. So I would spend my time and effort on insulation how ever time consuming and buy in the logs.

[Creagan]

Agree with the above, insulation and stopping drafts as much as possible.
I'm in the process of designing a new house and it's amazing how the correct design and materials can effectively eliminate heating requirements almost completely. I'm estimating that my total heating requirements will be under 2kW even if it's -10C outside!

Re: scavenging licenses, I was told that you aren't generally allowed to take a vehicle onto the site, so that massively limits how much wood you could extract. Seemed like very poor value for money, to me.

[Possum]

Wagon of logs plus a bit of oil as back-up.

[regen]

local woodyard for builders bags full of the pieces cut off when making fence posts- partially dried larch can heat our 135m2 farmhouse at 800 ft to a constant 20 degrees  for about £110 per year and provide most of the hot water.  Have not used any oil for about 3 years.  However it is very heavily insulated.

Regen

[Garmoran]

As said above, if you can insulate, do it! I've gradually been insulating our century-old crofthouse and have seen the electricity bills falling each year.

If the peatbank is close to the road - try it. There will be a fair bit of initial work getting an unused peatbank back into production: clearing the turf off the top, draining the bottom, but then most of the work is doing the initial cutting and then getting it back home. You will also need the time to turn it regularly while it is drying.

I wish I still had access to a good peatbank - all those available on our grazing are either worked out, rubbish quality or too far from the road.

Good dry peat burns very hot: it can be useful to have some poorer quality or not-quite-bone-dry peat to slow it down, specially if you want the fire to stay in during the night. But there's nothing to beat the smell of a peat-fire and i's even cheaper to produce than logs.

[RUSTYME]

I would rather just  dig the peat or collect the wood , ie just do the work direct , why earn the money doing something i don't want to do , getting paid crap money , and then give it to someone else for logs ?, (not to mention giving tax to a corrupt government so they can go kill more people in iraq etc ) .
 Insulation is good as long as there is no chemical leech off of it ?
Grow , cut wood/peat , make methane gas .

[Victorian Farmer]

I have the wood burners but not in the house I cut colect wood to keep fit .I then sell stock to heat the house .Iv done some insulation 3 by 2 frame fill sheepsvwool then silver foild plaster board then paint .No damp wall