The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Smallholding => Renewables => Topic started by: Fleecewife on September 11, 2021, 07:35:35 pm
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I don't think many smallholders are guilty of leaving their central heating blazing all day 'to keep the budgie warm' and we are used to choosing to wear appropriate clothing for the conditions. So 'save the planet - wear a woolly pully' isn't news to us. The question is though, given the current climate crisis, how should we best heat our homes?
When we moved to our house and smallholding over 1/4 of a century ago, we opted for oil fired central heating, in the absence of a gas supply to our area. Soon afterwards we added a wood burning stove in the main living area. Later again, we vastly improved the insulation and draughtproofing of the whole house. We have planted loads of trees, partly as a renewable fuel, but also for all the other benefits trees give. For clothing, we keep sheep and spin their fleece - wool is endlessly renewable and considered a by-product today, in spite of its amazing insulation properties. Of course we don't only wear wool, but it is wool which keeps us the warmest.
Now that 26 years have passed, suddenly everything we do seems to be criticised for damaging the planet. Oil is bad. Burning wood is bad. Not having a wind turbine is bad. Living in an old house is bad. Keeping sheep is bad. Eating meat is bad. Using the car is bad (there is no bus service)
So my question is, where are we at with non-polluting ways of living and heating our homes?
#I have no intention of fitting a wood chip boiler, when I am aware that virgin forest from the western seaboard of the United States is being desecrated to provide the timber for wood chip, which is then transported halfway around the world to reach here.
#I have no intention of having a wind turbine when a) I watch all the turbines installed all around me failing to last their first year, and b)we would never get payback within our projected lifespans.
#I have little intention of getting an electric or even hybrid car when the benefits are doubtful, the production costs are high, there are no local charging points and we hardly drive anywhere anyway, so keeping our current vehicles to outlast us seems the best option (no new production costs).
#I don't want to get rid of my wood burning stove which is one of the biggest comforts of my life, although I would happily swap my oil-fired central heating for something more planet-friendly if I knew what it is
Our Earth is of prime importance to me and finding a way for humans to continue to live here seems like a pleasant idea :eyelashes: so I want to do as much as I possibly can to leave as small a mark as I can, but how best to do it?
Does anyone else wrestle with these problems?
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Yes, we've been slightly conflicted over how we heat our home, but have been unable to find any viable alternatives.
Living in an old house nowhere near mains gas, I think we burn 1,500 litres of heating oil per year, which I think is a little below average.
The heating engineer who carries out the boilers annual service reckons he can keep it going for the foreseeable future with parts saved from other boilers.
We burn an average amount of firewood per year (<5M3), some of which like yourself comes from our own trees.
I'd like to have an electric car, but I'm not convinced they are as environmentally friendly as is implied, and I've yet to see a small 4x4 that would take us to our woodland in winter pulling a trailer.
I don't think I've flown anywhere since 2017, so that has to count for something, maybe I can be a bit easier on myself over my carbon footprint in other areas!
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no simple answers but if we are to save the planet then we all have to make do with less.
for house heating: insulate, insulate the insulate some more. If you are producing your own wood locally for the wood burner and it's growing back as fast as you use it then that's probably sustainable heating. If your house is well insulated and has large area heat emitters (under floor heating) then a heat pump is probably the cleanest way - but not necessarily the cheapest - and like any (over)complicated system can be a bit of a nightmare to get / keep working well.
I would have an electric car if i could afford to buy one - whilst there is obviously an environmental impact from building one I've yet to see a valid comparison vs the environmental impact of building a new conventional car. Once built there's no doubt the electric car is lower impact - even when the leccy used to charge it from the grid is coming from gas fired plants - when it's coming from wind/solar it's obviously even better. If you want to tow a trailer with an EV though, the last time i checked, only the high power version of the tesla was rated for towing, and i definitely can't afford one of those.
I haven't flown since the last century even though i do like travelling. Having a smallholding full of animals does limit options for going away anyway TBH.
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When we came to Wales 16 years ago in June 2005 we were horrified to find[ we'd used almost 4800 litres of heating oil to try to heat water and keep warm at the end of the first year ( wettest year on record for the area apparently
The double glazing units were 30 years old and badly fitted plus building settlement had occurred . At our lounge windows could let you drop a pencil, between the frame & window when they were fully closed The boiler was 30 year old ..Mr Nearly the P/O messed up the whole bungalow with his attempts at modifying it .. we had a hidden under the floor water leak courtesy of him.
There was little or no roof void insulation his recklessness at doing his version of electric was criminal.
First things first ....we had to make the electrics safe as sellotaped twisted 2.5 & 1mm twin & earth cabling in the roof void is perhaps not the safest of things. I chased in a complete new distribution set up adding things like extractor fans venting to the put side via pipe work 2 in bath room one above the cooker . I put in all new roof void insulation which seemed to flatten away to nothing in a couple of years.
That made an amazing difference to the sopping wet humidity but did not cure it . it was only when we realised what was causing the mould through out the bungalow ( Mr Nearly's handiwork 0 ) and got it sorted via an insurance claim that it slowed and almost stopped as it took over 18 months to eventually dry out . The oilbill and dehumidifier started to cost less as we were using less energy .
It was still rather high at 2 600 litres , then when we got a new all singing , dancing balanced oil burner via the Warmer Homes grant scheme . they also added another 8 inches of insulation to the roof void and also did a blown in cavity wall insulation job . I had someone come along to power wash , seal and put on two coats of 30 year external sealing paint on the outside.. it was like hanging a soaking wet sponge on the walls every time it rained on the Terrylened walls of the bungalow as Mr Nearly had used internal paint to colour the original white spar outside.]
It took another 18 months or so before the walls had properly dried out . the heating oil used was dropping steadily to about 1600 litres pa. So I came to the simple conclusion that having dry air in the bungalow was a big energy saver .
Then in Feb 2019 we paid for tripple double glazing to replace all te other stuff and decided not to have a letter box in he door but a bespoke fully hinged lidded marine grade stainless steel one 300 x 300 x 400 on the out side wall the oil,ill has dropped to 1200 litres pa.
A few months after having the tripple glazing done a government inspection team came to check out the work done under grant ..they were not happy .
As a result they helped us fill in a load of forms and six weeks later we had the veery lastes super dooper roof void insulation put in over th poor job previously done under grant by Will-More- Wills .. They also laid a raised floorboarding walk inthe roof void from the access trapdoor right along the bungalow to the solar PV control unit so that no one will walk on the new insulation material .
This has made an amazing change , we have used less than 400 litres of heating oil since the tank was filled at the end of October last year .
The county council have also sent out their inspection team to check that all the re done work was properly done and needed before they would pay the installer company
Save for putting in a full heat recovery /recirculation system & ground source heat pumps with underfloor heating I don't think there is any thing else we can consider .
Keeping your place dry and draught free is going to save you fuel & frequently a shed load of money what ever type of heating you use .
I know not everyone can suddenly find the dosh to make all the changes at once but can you afford to keep wasting fuel & money ...........you have to start somewhere& do it to a well made plan .
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Thick warm clothing is the answer: of course, when wishing to conduct personal hygiene routines, a warm room (bathroom) is a boon, but ya don't need to heat the whole house !
I understand, like me, Jeremy Corbyn does not heat his house. Not sure I and Jeremy entirely share political beliefs, but we seem to share a belief that thick woolly clothing is the future.
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I had forgotten about flying! The last time I flew anywhere was to a wool conference in the Czech Republic about 14 years ago and before that 20 years ago to Germany and 19 years ago one way to Lerwick. The total before that was one flight from Paris to London in 1968, a trip to Zambia and back in 1989, another to Barbados and back in 1996. I shall never be flying again so I think I can say that my flying contribution to pollution is less than most - 6 trips in 8 decades :thumbsup: .
I also had not thought about towing with an electric car. It means you would really have to have at least 2 vehicles on the road for most smallholders. That would make an electric vehicle just a luxury bragging car. We have motorbikes which are great for travelling light but no use whatsoever for carrying anything ::)
Your general consumption of fuel sounds fairly similar to ours Glencairn.
mab you say <<no simple answers but if we are to save the planet then we all have to make do with less.>> and I totally agree with you, but I see little evidence of those around me making more than token savings. For example, why are office blocks lit up so brightly at night, when they are empty, that they cause birds to stay awake singing all night? Why are 'security lights' at every farm and cottage shining all night instead of having movement sensors? Why do people leave their central heating on all day when they are out? Why do people float around at home in minimal clothing indoors in winter with the heating belting out heat when they could turn it down a notch or two and wear winter clothes? Same with offices where people dress for summer in the winter. Why oh why did Beeching chop the British railway system to shreds so now massive amounts of goods have to be transported by road by HGVs and pantechnicons?
There is research being done to try to find a successor to Nuclear fuel which is safer and much hope is placed on splitting water into Oxygen and Hydrogen and using the hydrogen in a similar way to how methane gas is used. However, the hydrogen has to be stored in pressure vessels and for cars it has to be compressed enough to become a liquid and I don't think that dilemma has been solved yet. So far it doesn't look like hydrogen can be used on a large scale. Also, we are going to be needing all the water we can get for its traditional uses.
It will be good when someone finds a neat storage system for wind and water power which does not involve giant and heavy batteries.
I think our house would crumble if we tried to retro-fit underfloor heating. But is it so efficient anyway? Any house I've been in which has underfloor heating, also has supplementary inefficient electric fires to provide a comfortable type of heat focus. Underfloor heating is soulless and not cosy! The same applies to ground source heat pumps which unless you can go pretty deep really don't keep you toasty warm, so you still need a fireplace. Neighbours here had a ground source system fitted but were stumped by the rock which is just under a shallow depth of soil, and cost masses to excavate a big enough area. Once it was done, the stone house was still freezing!
Back to car fuel, there are problems when people try to run their cars on used cooking oil - 3rd world countries are selling new PALM OIL cooking oil to be used as fuel because there is such a market for it, and not enough is supplied which has actually been cooked with.
A similar situation applies with the growing of crops on good farmland to provide biofuels. Not enough, by a huge length, of by-product crop wastes are available to supply demand to make bio fuels, so instead land which is greatly needed to grow food crops, is diverted to growing crops such as maize and quick growth willow to make biofuels for our cars. Our planet is a super-system, totally integrated, so changing one part will inevitably affect another part of the system with disastrous consequences as we see.
Then there's the clothing industry. When did we start needing so many clothes and shoes? I think it has happened within in my lifetime, with a slow start in the '50s and '60s and accelerating dramatically this century. In centuries past, people had the clothes they were wearing plus some washable undies. Some might have a choice of a couple of sets of clothing, but wardrobes full of dresses and suits were reserved for the rich. Those clothes were washed and mended and cared for so they lasted at least a year, best clothes for a lifetime. Now the favourite pastime for many women is 'shopping' ??? . They come home laden with parcels, then go online to buy some more. Something has to give, and soon enough all those mass produced clothes are thrown out with the rubbish. Think of all the fossil fuels used to produce the manmade fibres, non-recyclable, only to be thrown away. Think of the power used in production, transport and distribution. Think of all the water used to produce the cotton, which is the most water hungry crop on Earth. Then think of how comparatively low the inputs are for wool. Think too how a few quick stitches or a replaced button can make a garment fit for plenty more wear, rather than a tiny tear or a lost button currently condemning it to the bin and landfill.
I'm definitely with you on the thick woolly clothing arobwk
So many problems, so few solutions. I think any true solutions will be a mix of super-high-tech and very very low-tech, but we need to put every effort into finding those solutions. Also I don't think any of us should relax in our efforts; it only takes one tiny straw to knock us over the tipping point.
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"So my question is, where are we at with non-polluting ways of living and heating our homes?"
Another simple and cost- and resource-free solution, but only really works with new builds, is to maximize solar gain by orientation and size of the windows. If the south facing side of the building is used for most of the windows (double or triple glazed), the sun will warm the house well when it's low in the sky in winter and can shine far into the rooms. Conversely, put the room you want coolest (t'was the pantry in pre-fridge days) in the NE corner where lack of sunlight and cold winds are most prevalent. Some trad building techniques still work, can't break, and cost nothing ;D
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Was having the same discussion here this week .... and decision was that it cant be worth my hard earned money to retrofit any alternatives in our old stone farmhouse (like others ... oil central heating and woodburner put in 20 ++ yrs ago) . I would replace woodburner for modern controlable one if there was spare cash.
Despite emissions and lack of efficiency I can never see that it is better to ditch something that works well (eg my old diesal car almost 200,000 miles on clock) for something new and (reportedly) better for the planet .....
In my world make do and mend goes a long way to reducing waste and overall polution (which is the issue not just what comes out of my exhaust and cows rear ends!). How much pollution is used producing all this new stuff. If all those people (and young men are just as bad) spent their weekends doing some volunteering or learning to mend things instead of shopping. Learning to value community and environment not 'stuff' then this planet has a chance.
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I think I am lucky. I believe my carbon footprint is quite low
When I moved from Aberdeenshire to central Scotland to be nearer my kids in 2008, I bought a large bungalow with an acre as I still had ducks, hens, cats and dogs. It had unreliable gas central heating with a wonky timer, very little insulation, cheap thin carpets and laminate with no underlay. Electrics were dodgy as the previous owner was a DIY enthusiast with little knowledge. Leylands lined both sides of the property - useless for the wood burner. But it was beautifully decorated and lovely expensive looking internal furnishings which hid all that
It served its purpose, but was expensive to run.
A couple of years ago, I decided I needed to downsize, and eventually found this bungalow which needed complete renovation.
Fortunately the surplus on selling my last home has paid for -
upgrading kitchen and bathrooms,
installing modern double glazing,
improved guttering,
additional insulation,
thicker flooring,
properly serviced gas heating, used sparingly
reclaimed field grass for a productive garden
so my heating bills have almost halved, the garden is manageable without a gardener(mostly left wild for wildlife and birds and bees, and for my two dogs to hunt in).
I've planted 10 trees, reclaimed grass for flowers and vegetables, and I'm about to plant a wildflower area of about 100 square metres
I bought an automatic, smaller, car at around the same time, so running costs on that are much less too - less servicing and excellent consumption, while still being responsive
I rarely drive further than 50 miles for dog shows, so that has dropped considerably too.
I haven't flown since 2007, and not likely to; the only long train journey I'm likely to make is for a judging appointment next summer - most likely retiring after that.
Hopefully, with the help of the people who bought my previous home, I've reduced my impact on the world
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The traditional Eastern and northern European masonry/tile stoves are much more economical than metal wood stoves - you heat it once a day for half an hour and it stays warm for 12 hours - over night or you can hewt it in the kerning as well. That's how people kept their houses warm in Sweden, Poland, Russia and Germany since 16th century - many still do.
I'm fan of those stoves as well as wood fired central heating.
What makes the most difference, however, is insulation. Double glazing, attic, walls, floor, etc. If your house is well insulated you will use much less fuel of any kind, whether its wood, gas, oil or sunshine electricity.
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Now that 26 years have passed, suddenly everything we do seems to be criticised for damaging the planet. Oil is bad. Burning wood is bad. Not having a wind turbine is bad. Living in an old house is bad. Keeping sheep is bad. Eating meat is bad. Using the car is bad (there is no bus service)
Maybe we should all move to a country where we don't need heating?
Then we will need air-conditioning which is another waste :roflanim:
Not having wind turbine is bad but having one is bad too :innocent:
Eating meat is bad, mowing lawn is bad, planting trees is good, but councils use hectolitres of Round-up!
So much rubbish we are being told nowadays...
Electric cars are actually even worse than petrol cars- I know someone in Sweden who was evicted from his freehold owned farm because the Swedish crown owns all mineral rights in the whole country- they sold a licence to a company mining minerals to make electric car batteries. He spent so many years making his farm organic and enriching soil just to loose it all...
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Insulation: because we're old and doddery the Council decided to come and oh so generously insulate our attic. This involved removing the old insulation (which was fibreglass - horrid) but we have no idea how they disposed of it. Then two men laid foot thick rolls of an unnamed insulation product right over the top of anything left in the attic (we had not been able to get up there to clear out any stuff stored up there before they arrived) and over the top of the flooring we had put there too. Then we had our roof replaced, when all the rubble fell onto the insulation and one workie put his foot right through the ceiling below as he couldn't see which bits were safe to stand on for all the insulation. This deep insulation actually didn't seem to make much difference to heat loss but soon became full of vermin and their droppings as well as the rubble and the trampled insulation. Can you visualise the mess? I can't get into our attic but Mr F still can, just, and has slowly been crawling around up there and removing the 'free' insulation, dressed in his white disposable overalls and mask.
A potentially good idea from the Council but in fact it has caused far more problems than it solved.
Once all the thick stuff has been removed then we shall insulate it with a product of our own choice, hopefully wool :hugsheep:
The work we had done on the house - new roof, re-pointing of the stone walls, building a front porch and a back scullery as 'air locks' for the front and back doors, replacing all doors and windows with double glazed versions - all that had a far greater reducing effect on draughts and other heat loss than that wretched Council insulation.
The walls being stone hold heat from the fire in winter and keep the indoors cool in the summer - I love it. A house has stood here on the same ground plan since at least the 1500s [member=168910]Perris[/member] so I don't think we can easily change its orientation now :roflanim: However I was thinking that the same applies (as the point you made) to building in hot countries where they seem to rely on air conditioning - just look to the builders of the Middle East, Spain and so on, where houses are built to encourage air circulation and shade so don't need aircon, which relies on keeping the windows shut.
[member=26580]Backinwellies[/member] I'm totally with you on make-do-and-mend and keeping old vehicles going for as long as possible to save on the costs of recycling the old and rebuilding a new one. Some folk simply have to have the new car and the new clothes to be at the forefront of fashion, encouraged by Government policies - I couldn't give a toss ;D
[member=26320]doganjo[/member] your move seems to have come at just the right time and you have made some wise choices. We are here for life though so we have to adapt our house to keep ahead of climate change.
We used to rarely use our heating at all, but you really do seem to feel the cold more as you get older and nowadays we appreciate our woodburning stove so much. I wrap myself in wool - jumpers, socks, scarves, blankets and shawls, all of which I have spun and knitted myself, nearly all from the fleece of our sheep.
So now I have to think of the disposal of my body when I have no use for it any more. We've already had a good discussion about this on TAS, but to add a bit. I hadn't realised that the knackers who incinerate our deadstock use the rendered fats as a fuel, so why are human cremations not made use of in the same way to save on pollution?
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Boring, unsexy insulation is nearly always the most effective way of reducing your houses energy footprint. Easy to do when you're building a house, not do easy to retrofit and, as has been alluded to, it has to be done right (recently looked at a house that had kingspan boards fitted in the stud work but they hadn't been cut perfectly so you could feel the cold draft coming through the gaps making it useless).
There is no reason any new build house should have gas or oil (and building regs more or less say that now).
Domestic wind turbines a usually useless unless you live somewhere very windy.
Solar PV is still worth considering even though the grant schemes are nearly all gone. You should get a 4kw system for about £5k. My (suboptimal north side of a rainy hill) generates about 3500kwhr a year. The more you use yourself the more cost effective it becomes (run washing machine & dishwasher when it's sunny, mine diverts spare power to the immersion). I'm just about to get an EV which will also use spare power from the solar - I'm estimating I'll get 3 or 4000 miles a year driving from otherwise wasted solar energy.
Woodchip imported to feed power stations is a total disaster but that doesn't mean all wood burning is bad (although demand and prices for wood have gone through the roof so I wouldn't go for it unless you have a reliable local supply).
My gasifying log boiler is brilliant.
It burns logs very hot and efficiently (so next to no smoke, ash or particulate pollution) and heats a 2000L water tank that can store the heat for a fortnight. I burn about 2tons of logs a year for all my hearing and hot water (but that is partly due to having an insulated house - my neighbor has a huge old stone house and burns about 140 tons a year!)
Hopefully, before I die, I'll be able to harvest and burn some of the 6000 trees I've planted for firewood!
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There is no reason any new build house should have gas or oil (and building regs more or less say that now).
Really?
What if there is no natural gas supply and no wind and no space for ground source?
The options are -
woodburner - also now frowned on
bottled gas - lack of pressure
The house I built up north had underfloor oil heating, almost double the recommended insulation with no gaps - you could drop a feather any where in the house and it would float gently down with gravity
That was 16 years ago
There was room for a ground source system but the cost at that time was about £30K. My friend built a house just up the road from me in the same hamlet and was knocked back four times before she got planning for a ground source system plus a wind turbine - due to neighbour objections (all of the others except me saw the wind turbine as detrimental to the area and the ground source as causing major upheaval while being installed.)
I don't know what the answer is, there seems to be reasons against everything just glad I'm not going to build another house
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Building to passive Haus standards is no longer such a niche interest. Good enough house design and construction means you can have a house that doesn't need heating.
My friend (works in planning) was on a course a decade ago where they interviewed an elderly couple in Sweden who lived in a passive Haus with no heating, they were asked "when it's -15 in winter does the house get cold?"
The answer was "yes, the first year it was but then we got a dog and the extra body heat from the dog was enough to keep the house a degree or two warmer in winter".
Air source heat pumps are becoming much more common in new builds and they don't need space like gshp. The two houses being built just now in our township are both heated by ashp.
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So teh answer is to go back to stone age times when your animals lived in the building with you :roflanim:
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So teh answer is to go back to stone age times when your animals lived in the building with you :roflanim:
But just think how warm you would be with a cow in the house😁
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So teh answer is to go back to stone age times when your animals lived in the building with you :roflanim:
But just think how warm you would be with a cow in the house
Fix her up with a couple of bits of tubing and you could cook your dinner on her output :innocent:
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France has decided that oil heating is a thing of the past. So despite us using only a third of the amount the previous owner did, if the boiler breaks and can't be repaired we can't buy a new one. At the moment the only parts available are the jet and spark electrode. Whether more bits will become available we don't know. The only option for us will be a pellet burner and at €6000 they are not cheap. The water heating will have to change to electric. The layout of the house rules out a wood fire, even though our Winter heating period is only 3 months.
We were very lucky buying this place. The previous owner complained of the cold and the cost and consequently added double glazing, extra loft insulation and an intelligent boiler thermostat. The reasons for her problems were very simply rectified. Mice and rats had stripped the insulation off the water storage tank which was also set at 80C ! The convector radiators had never been cleaned, so the output was a tiny fraction of the intended and the boiler was running flat out for nothing. We swept 23 years of dust, cobwebs and dog hair out of them and consequently found her lost car keys (€260 to replace).
We won't be buying an electric car. Just as the UK, the supply grid here is already overloaded and 5% short of maximum demand- electric cars just make it far worse. Still they are good for cleaning up city air. We will eventually buy a petrol car and move away from diesel. Our milage is very low indeed- we use more fuel for motoculture (garden equipment).
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There is no need for France to run short of electricity, you export a fairly constant 2GW to the UK. Just cut the cable and all will be fine. 😆
I'm comfortable with my purchase of an EV as I anticipate about 20% of my fuel will come from my own solar and the rest will be charging at home overnight when there is usually an excess of electricity anyway.
If it is managed well the existing electricity network can cope with a lot of EVs. There are already electricity deals that track wholesale prices of electricity which encourage people to minimise consumption when demand is high. V2G is currently being trialled which basically makes your car an electricity trader, selling to the grid when demand is high and charging when demand(prices) are low. A couple of million EVs doing this would be a big help to balancing the grid. National grid themselves are fairly relaxed about demand from EVs.
That being said a remarkably windless year and issues in Ukraine have depleted European gas reserves and the electricity supply is very tight just now. Prices will go up soon.
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Gas price went up 8% here 2 weeks ago. Given that the UK imports half (might be more) I think at least 4% is on the cards?
Another thing with electric cars is the batteries. Not convinced they really can be 100% recycled because France can only recover 70%.
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Gas price went up 8% here 2 weeks ago. Given that the UK imports half (might be more) I think at least 4% is on the cards?
Another thing with electric cars is the batteries. Not convinced they really can be 100% recycled because France can only recover 70%.
and creating them isn't environmentally friendly due to where the materials come from, plus the weight of them causes vehicles to use more fuel - even if it is electricity
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I have discovered some ridiculous disjointed thinking by the Government yet again, to do with trains. Most of the length of the main lines, east and west coast to Scotland included, are electrified, but for some reason the Gov. decided that certain lengths would not be electrified, so there are gaps. This means that every electric train has to have a supplementary diesel engine to get it through those lengths of lines, with all the accompanying weight of engine and fuel involved.
The most ridiculous one seems to be Bath, where it is the Council which has refused planning permission for the line to be electrified through the city, so the electric trains run up to the suburbs, then they change power to diesel to get into the station and out again, then once out of the city they go electric again. So diesel fumes are polluting the city unnecessarily
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[member=23925]chrismahon[/member] - I wasn't being serious about cutting the cable from France to England but shortly after I mentioned it yesterday it went on fire and is now out of action. Coincidence?
😁😁😁😁😁
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Perhaps it was overloaded [member=25668]oor wullie[/member] ? Too many people charging their cars at the same time? That is an incredible co-incidence though.
I didn't realise the train system was such a shambles [member=4333]Fleecewife[/member] .Is HS2 still going ahead?
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Perhaps it was overloaded [member=25668]oor wullie[/member] ? Too many people charging their cars at the same time? That is an incredible co-incidence though.
I didn't realise the train system was such a shambles [member=4333]Fleecewife[/member] .Is HS2 still going ahead?
I expect so but I don't know. I'm in Scotland and HS2 will never reach beyond the 'wild northern wastes' of Leeds or somewhere far south like that I think, so I haven't paid much attention except to think what a huge, destructive and wasteful expenditure it is, especially as we can now all zoom instead of travelling. But if it doesn't go ahead the destruction and massive expenditure will still have happened but for no end. I remember the cancelling of the beautiful TSR2. What a total waste that was. Governments seem to get carried away with spending vast amounts of money then wasting it all.
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... and as the trainlines north of Edinburgh are not electrified, any train from London to Abdereen has to run on diesel engines all the way rather than changing engines at Edinburgh...
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... and as the trainlines north of Edinburgh are not electrified, any train from London to Abdereen has to run on diesel engines all the way rather than changing engines at Edinburgh...
Some bits are - SAK is (Stirling Alloa Kincardine
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So teh answer is to go back to stone age times when your animals lived in the building with you :roflanim:
But just think how warm you would be with a cow in the house
Fix her up with a couple of bits of tubing and you could cook your dinner on her output :innocent:
And think of that soft carpet of over-floor heating. But - "Mum, Daisy is eating my rice crispies again !"
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I dont see how wood burners are considered to be that bad? Is it not people using unseasoned fuel that is more if an issue?
We got our first wood burner 10 years ago and the one and only load of logs I bought was at that time. It wasnt properly seasoned and wasnt usable until I left it to season for about another year. Ever since that disaster I've always cut, split and seasoned my own, usually from land that needed clearing or storm damage.
Wood burning used to be considered carbon neutral.without wanting to sound like the tinfoil hat brigade, even if you buy logs there's only a 5%vat charge, that's for ones that aren't just paid for by cash. The fancy new heat pumps etc. all generate a bigger contribution towards the treasury!
Isulation and draft sealing are the best steps to reducing your energy usage, if you dont need to apply the heat because your house is warm enough both the environment and your bank balance are on to a winner. The downside to making your house airtight is that humidity levels rise and you need to be able to manage those with either mechanical or natural ventilation.
I live in a house that was definitely bodged by the previous owner, this means that as I pull each bodge apart I can make improvements. So far, fixed the leaky roof which was causing damp all over the place, replaced the very old windows and doors that you could feel the air through. Patched the blown render which was letting damp through. Installed a wood burner into the old stone cottage part of the house as the thick stone walls act like a thermal store and started to top up the loft insulation whilst increasing the airflow up there to keep the room timbers dry.
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I agree with you [member=194689]Kiran[/member] and what you have done to your house will be of great benefit. I don't really understand why wood burning stoves are so vilified now, except that it's a propaganda stance so that government supported schemes will be promoted as the best way forward. As you say, properly seasoned wood, especially that we have grown ourselves for the purpose, coppiced so we don't have to replant, is an efficient system and does not produce vast clouds of CO2. Were we to scrap all existing wood burners and replace with a new system, whichever is currently in vogue, then that in itself would create a mass of greenhouse gases and use virgin metals and power to process them. Don't replace it if it's not broken.
It's like with grass pastured livestock grazers which are accused of being a major cause of Climate Change, but that is true only in certain circumstances such as animals kept in unnatural conditions: indoors all year round, kept on feedlots in the US system, and fed on grain. Our livestock in the British system live outdoors year round with minimal grain supplements if any, and any methane they produce will tend to be sequestered by the grass and trees around their fields. Some cattle are kept indoors over the winter months so as not to damage pasture - research could readily come up with a methane capture scheme for that situation, but the tendency to ape America and use the feedlot system here cannot be good in any way except profits.
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Wood burners generate lots of airborne particles, which are possibly worse than the particles from diesel fumes (in times gone by or from old cars). So if loads more people are using wood burners in cities, and using badly or unseasoned wood than that will cause problems re asthma etc. However in a rural setting that is highly unlikely. So I see why some cities are going to be prohibiting burning wood, but it is not going to happen outside the large cities.
We heat our house almost entirely from our multi fuel stove (but have to buy in air-dried wood from a local supplier, cut and dried locally, we supplement with our own bits and pieces of seasoned wood, but would never have enough), hot water and any supplementary heating from oil fired boiler (house built in 2006). We do not like the idea of underfloor heating, and there is not enough sunshine (or in our case south-facing roof area) in Scotland to reliably heat the water and the house with fancy PV panels. And I absolutely love my fire, I am one of the few people who actually looks forward to autumn/winter - I can put the fire on!
Our neighbours spent a furtune a few years ago to install their solar roof panels and got reasonable amounts of money back - until the converter broke just as they had come out of warranty... so now back to square one. I am very wary of even thinking about an air-source (or ground one) heat pump... in case of what can (and does) go wrong with them.
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I have to sit on the fence as regards wood burners: I do not have a wood burning stove, but I do have a D7 waste exemption for burning waste in the open (and I do that - leaving the trash to really dry out first)).
What I don't get (for folk who have other options) is the hassle wood-burner owners seem to accept. My next-door city neighbours have very recently installed one, with scaffolded chimney mod's to enable, now requiring movement of many kilos of wood fuel around the terrace's rear alley routinely); my opposite neighbours also have one, requiring a large off-load on their garage forecourt and many movements to their log store.
Seasoned wood for burning is not cheap so I don't "get it". Anyone prepared to educate me ?
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We only had stoves fitted because we had come from a very thermally efficient home heated by mains gas that in retrospect was really very warm during winter.
To a 19th century draughty house, with an open fire, heated by oil fired central heating. Most of my neighbours have night storage heaters.
The way we tend to operate is to use the central heating for a couple of hours to take the chill off, then light the stove early evening and then the heating can be switched off.
Its only really a viable alternative if you have access to free wood. If you are in the unfortunate position where you are buying in kiln dried stuff from some artisan wood supplier, then I suspect you would be better off simply using the heating more instead.
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Seasoned wood for burning is not cheap so I don't "get it". Anyone prepared to educate me ?
If you are buying seasoned wood in by the jumbo bag then I'd agree to degree, at current purchase prices there are cheaper and more convenient ways to heat if you are on mains gas for example.
It wasnt so long ago that you could get the renewable heat incentive on certain log burners too. To me the whole thing stinks a bit of moving the goals to suit those who make the rules. Go back a bit and modern diesels were the best thing since sliced bread, then fast forward a few years. All those who wanted to buy a low emission engine car expecting to pay £30/year tax have been told that for 5 years they have to pay £160/year even if the only thing that comes out of their exhaust is butterflies! All because the tax revenues weren't being generated.
Anyway, back to heating with wood....
So I have a few sources that I use for heating logs, all of them require forward planning, this is where people need to change their mindset and not expect to be able to buy to day and put in the stove tomorrow.
My sources are my own land being cleared, dead growth or storm damage, clearance from construction projects and I have a local tree surgeon who drops logs and wood chip round. I process, store and season all of mine so i know that it's ready to burn when i need it. My last house was on mains gas and for the 2 last years i lived there my gas bill was only for the hot water used and virtually nothing on hearing.
I've only ever bought 1 load of firewood and I wouldn't do it again as it was certainly not seasoned as advertised. Chalk that one up to naivety but I wont get caught again.
The tell tale sign that I'm burning clean is the minimal amount of ash and soot when I clean the stove or flue.
Also the way you build the fire makes a difference too, I tend to burn top down fires so air is dragged through the fire wood making sure absolutely everything is dry before it burns.
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My uncle uses old chairs and pallets to Hest his house - every time he sees some wood around when driving he picks it up at takes home :innocent:
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How exactly does kiln drying work? There must be some input of power and output of gases somewhere along the line. This would mean that someone is nonetheless producing gases and using heat to make the wood people buy in for their wood burners low carbon, but for the end burner only. I hadn't thought of that properly before.
We were lucky enough that when some full-grown beech trees came down in a storm, our neighbour kindly said we could have the branches as he only wanted the main trunks. That wood has lasted us 2 years, having been seasoned by us here for a year first, and this winter we will use up the last of that, three years in total. Then we will be relying as much as possible on our own production. When I chose the trees to plant here it was with coppicing in mind, to be a renewable source of wood for heating, also for bean poles etc for the garden, and incidentally as winter forage for the sheep. The big blockage has turned out to be that my husband really hates cutting down trees, not the work but the act of cutting down a tree, even when he can see that they regrow really quickly from the stool. So we have trees which could have been cut for firewood several years ago and they would have regrown nearly enough to crop again by now, but there they stand, beautiful yes, but not doing the job for which I bought them. MEN ::) I was brought up next to an ancient woodland which was routinely coppiced for as long as it has existed, so coppicing is second nature to me. In fact few people where I live now seem to understand about coppicing and hedging and the regrowth which follows. It's so much better than clear felling then replanting.
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I would expect kiln drying to be a combination of heating and dehumidifying. 20% of the moisture content is in sealed cells- seasoning 'rots' the wood so the cells split and the water can then evaporate. If you raise the temperature to 60C the cells split (our experiment) and the wood is 'seasoned' but then needs drying out.
It must be difficult to produce dry wood any other way in the UK because of the inherent air humidity.
Here wood is sold seasoned but not dry, so you need to order it early Summer, stack it under cover facing South and let the sun, heat and humidity do the rest. It is sold by the 'stere', which for logs one metre long would be a cubic metre. If you have shorter lengths, so 50cm or 33cm, the volume occupied when stacked is smaller. It is certainly not sold by weight, as you could then be paying for the water content.
The small amount of timber we get here is stacked uncovered on the West side to catch the wind. We leave it two years and then stack it under cover at the end of Summer when it is dry. But this year Summer was the wettest we've had so it's had to be open stacked under cover first to get air through it to dry. We've found wet wood quickly blocks the flue so that means more frequent sweeping. House insurance won't pay out for chimney fires, so it's down to the owner to avoid them and maintain the fire and flue correctly.
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<< you need about 600-750 kWh or so to dry oak from green and at 12 cents per kWh (including demand and usage; maybe too low), that would be$75 right there per MBF.>>
A random figure from the internet (not sure what MBF is). I have a sneaky feeling that electricity is rather more expensive in the UK. Also the type of kiln must affect the cost. There is a solar powered kiln available, not sure it's in the UK though, but in Scotland that is likely to be not the most successful option. Then of course there's transport costs of the dried wood.
My point is that if you're using kiln dried wood then there is an extra environmental and power cost above the obvious one of the purchase price per measure of wood.
Thank you [member=23925]chrismahon[/member] for the physics of drying wood - that's fascinating.
We have occasionally bought kiln dried wood produced locally but only when our own isn't ready, but I'm not happy about the additional inherent costs to the environment. The more of our own wood we can use the better. We stack our wood initially covered outdoors, where the wind can whistle through for a year or two, then it's chopped and stored under cover in an open fronted shed where the wind can again pass through the stack, and the sun gets to it for part of the day. Given that our neighbour burns piles of old tyres, black plastic and so on on a bonfire, and uses the cheapest smelliest coal for his fire, our wood burner is above reproach ;D I must admit though that the current attitude to wood burners makes me feel a bit guilty for using one......
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Overall - "I rest my case m'lud"
[Of course, scavenging or long storage of waste/harvested wood for natural seasoning has to be a good thing, reducing use of fossil fuels.]
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Overall - "I rest my case m'lud"
[Of course, scavenging or long storage of waste/harvested wood for natural seasoning has to be a good thing, reducing use of fossil fuels.]
Don't folk who live on smallholdings expect to do things the long way anyway?
As for those in towns, they will just fork out for kiln dried and not have the bother (the delivery men usually stack the wood, or so my son tells me)
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Overall - "I rest my case m'lud"
[Of course, scavenging or long storage of waste/harvested wood for natural seasoning has to be a good thing, reducing use of fossil fuels.]
If you have a small wood stove and it is essentially just a feature and you use a second heat source more than the wood stove then I agree, there is a considerable amount of effort involved.
We use oil and typically in the winter the boiler fires up for hot water and very occasionally a small amount of heat into the house. Pre rona everyone was out of the house, there would be a small burn of the heating as people came home and then the wood stove kept the house warm. Likewise the weekend stove on in the morning and the fire stays in for the day. The heating in the house is zoned and in theory if an area of the house dropped the heating could kick in and top up that area although this doesnt usually happen so it isnt a case of having a boiling house in one area and freezing in the other areas. The Honeywell system has probably saved me in oil the cost of my stove to date. The first year we were here we used, and probably wasted, so much.
My wife has been working from home since the first lockdown and our heating bill would have skyrocketed without the wood supply to fall back on (she doesn't do being cold). So it also lessens our financial risk and insulates you from potentially volatile markets as with the gas at the moment.
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On the news earlier was the announcement that natural gas prices are going up again in France. So that's 10% earlier in the year, 8% on the 1st September and now 12.6% on the 1st October. That works out (they said) to a total year increase of a staggering 44%.
So the original subject "Heating our homes from now on"- we probably can't. The practice here years ago was to close off most parts of the house and leave them unheated. Water carrying pipework was then isolated and drained to protect from freezing. This could mean moving your bed into the kitchen?
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The Scottish system was the But and Ben where one end of the cottage had animals in, perhaps a cow and a pig, maybe some hens, while the other end was lived in by the family. The livestock generated the heat (and smell) to heat the but end. There were no other rooms to close off.
In the days of open fires, in larger houses a chimney would travel from the ground floor up through the first floor room above it, thus making it habitable without having to light the fire in the bedroom. The house I grew up in in East Anglia was arranged like that. I missed out because my room was above the entrance hall so was the coldest room in the house, with ice on the inside of the windows. However, I hate a heated bedroom to this day; I just have loads of bedclothes and wear a vest under my pyjamas in winter.
It's a fact that people do now expect their whole house to be warm when they could simply wear extra clothing.
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It's a fact that people do now expect their whole house to be warm when they could simply wear extra clothing.
I make much use of shawls / blankets and hot water bottles.
Why heat an entire room when I can be toasty warm with some good woollies on, sitting on a sheepskin, a hot water bottle behind my back and a shawl over my knees? (And drinking a hot drink helps too.)
I am in and out all day too, so (a) half the time, I'd be heating space that no-one is using, and (b) I'm always warm for a while when I get back indoors, so if the room was warm enough for me after I'd sat for an hour, I'd be peeling layers when I got back from outside.
If it's really chilly, I will wear a woolly hat indoors - works wonders. Woolly slippers too.
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Shawls and knitted wool blankets are wonderful as a modern way of using your livestock to keep you warm. I love my sheepskin slippers too, although they're not made from my own sheep, but they could be :thinking:
Knitting a shawl or blanket is something anyone can do, using big needles, when you might otherwise be doing nothing, watching tv or being a passenger in a car. They take zero concentration and you can use up scraps left over from other projects. Great :thumbsup:
Knitting went clean out of fashion in the 1970s - what a huge shame. Wool is about THE most ecologically sound material after grass and nettles, but decidedly more comfortable, so using this fibre should be up there with the main ways of fighting Climate Change
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Speaking of nettles - German army used nettles to make their soldiers uniforms during WW2 - there were massive cotton shortages at the time.
As for knitting going out of fashion - I can assure you it is seeing its revival - obviously not as many people knit as they used to in 1940s-60s, but I, and many more people make our living selling knitting yarn!
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I have a home grown crop of flax that is ready to be spun. Earlier in the summer I tried processing some nettles but would not like to have to wear the resulting yarn. Lots of hats, gloves, socks and jumper that I have knit.
We run two wood burning stoves, a small one in the living room, lit tonight for the first time this autumn, and a larger one in the kitchen which runs the central heating and hot water. It is not cold enough to be using that one yet. All wood is free localy, either home grown or comes from the compost place down the road. It is amazing what people throw away.
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When I went up to Edinburgh in 1969 it seemed that every neighbourhood had its small yarn store, and many had several. There were also Jenners and John Lewis on Princes St which each had a whole department devoted to yarn, needles, knitting patterns and everything else knitters, crocheters, lacemakers and embroiderers could want. There was also a large dedicated yarn store just round the corner from princes St, which might have been called Drummonds. All those sources of yarn have now gone, went years ago in fact. However, several new yarn stores have opened, some closing again fairly soon afterwards such as one on Bruntsfield. I currently count 5 small independent yarn stores left in Edinburgh, and one in Lanark.
Perhaps some of the supply has gone online, but although yes, there is a return to hand knitting for some, it's a different clientele. When I was growing up, every working girl and woman, and every housewife always had knitting on the go, and mending too. Nowadays it's a bit more of a middle class occupation. Those who used to make and wear woollen clothes now buy short-life cheap clothes made overseas of manmade fibres.
Our weather here has just changed quite suddenly from unseasonally warm to a bit nippy and I reached straight away for my favourite handspun, hand-dyed, hand-knitted, much-mended sloppy wool jumper (I admit it's not wool from my own sheep as for that project I bought in BFL tops). Instantly I was cosy, in fact I was boiling and soon had to take it off again. If only wool could be the go-to fibre for everyone then we would not need to heat our homes so much to accommodate modern flimsy fabrics.
Whereabouts is your yarn shop [member=156019]macgro7[/member] ? Have you noticed a change in clientele over the years?
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Whereabouts is your yarn shop [member=156019]macgro7[/member] ? Have you noticed a change in clientele over the years?
Our shop is in Leicester but we wholesale too - and have customers in different places around the country.
It's people of all ages knitting nowadays. Vast majority are ladies
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I have a home grown crop of flax that is ready to be spun. Earlier in the summer I tried processing some nettles but would not like to have to wear the resulting yarn. Lots of hats, gloves, socks and jumper that I have knit.
We run two wood burning stoves, a small one in the living room, lit tonight for the first time this autumn, and a larger one in the kitchen which runs the central heating and hot water. It is not cold enough to be using that one yet. All wood is free localy, either home grown or comes from the compost place down the road. It is amazing what people throw away.
I tried retting nettles once too but decided I was doing something wrong so I gave up. I certainly have an excellent source of them :D
[member=75709]Buttermilk[/member] I would love to know more about how you grew and processed your flax. Is there any chance you might have time to describe it all for us in the Crafts section? I know I can grow flax here as some of my birdseed fell from the feeders and grew, producing lovely blue flowers. I'm not sure I would know how to process and spin it though - hence my interest :garden: :spin: :knit:
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Whereabouts is your yarn shop [member=156019]macgro7[/member] ? Have you noticed a change in clientele over the years?
Our shop is in Leicester but we wholesale too - and have customers in different places around the country.
It's people of all ages knitting nowadays. Vast majority are ladies
It's interesting that now people think of knitting being a female pastime, whereas in the past soldiers, sailors, miners and many other men could spin and knit, and nearly all weaving was done by men, whereas women spun.
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I mentioned previously somewhere about the French discreetly stripping out the woodlands, leaving the outside untouched but removing 90% from the inside. Well there has just been a programme on TV about this. It showed a machine cutting trees out from around the few that were left and obviously it needed room to manoeuvre, so about 20 metres between the ones remaining. The programme was based around a protest group (one of many) trying to save France's woodlands.
What surprised me was that some of this wood goes to produce electricity and film was taken of this protest group at the wood storage site of a generating station. This site occupied about 10Ha, where the piles of wood were stored and the piles of sawdust kept ready to make pellets, some of which were sold for domestic heating. The station isn't used all year, just when demand is high.
The argument put forward in its defence was that the process is carbon neutral. They added that this wood burning was insignificant when compared to the Drax power station in North England. I didn't know that Drax ran on wood? Says they import pellets from America and Canada to fuel it and it consumes .........50,000 trees A DAY! At that rate no-one will be heating with wood for much longer.
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[member=23925]chrismahon[/member] yes I've mentioned Drax before and the imported wood it uses. The truly awful bit is that that wood is from VIRGIN US west coast rain forests and other virgin forests. There is absolutely nothing carbon neutral about it, and it's destroying irreplaceable ecosystems, trashing the landscape to scrub, every bit as bad as Borneo and the Amazon. Transport of such large quantities of timber from the far side of North America to the UK has to use a vast amount of fuel and produce large amounts of GHGs. They are 'discounted' in calculations because they are 'offshore'. This is a sneaky way of calculating carbon footprints, where neither country accepts them, so international transport of goods is simply disregarded. It seems to be the same with dumping rubbish - if you dump it 'offshore' ie in someone else's country, then you can wash your hands of it. This is so blatantly wrong :furious: :rant: - we are one planet, our junk and waste gases affect us all and have to be acknowledged and prevented.
So few people seem to know about Drax and about pelleted fuel. They think they are doing the right thing by fitting wood pellet boilers for heating, but basically they, WE, are being lied to.
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Between 2 and 3 GW (about 7% of UK demand) of electricity comes from biomass - nearly all American wood at Drax I think. Probably the worst possible fuel for a powerstation. I hope the high prices for timber recently bankrupt them.
On the other hand though, a lot of sawmill waste now goes to be made into pellets and it is probably a good thing that that waste now has a value and so is finding a use.
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Between 2 and 3 GW (about 7% of UK demand) of electricity comes from biomass - nearly all American wood at Drax I think. Probably the worst possible fuel for a powerstation. I hope the high prices for timber recently bankrupt them.
On the other hand though, a lot of sawmill waste now goes to be made into pellets and it is probably a good thing that that waste now has a value and so is finding a use.
When I was a kid, we used sawmill waste as bedding for our turkey units. I used to love going to the sawmill to see what was being chucked out with the shavings - sometimes there were door knobs which had gone wrong in the turning, banister spindles, acorns for the tops of posts and so on. I found these half made items fascinating (I was very young, honestly) The smell was the best thing of all :D . The shavings would be delivered by the lorry load.
A problem with power stations such as Drax (if there are any more like it) quite apart from its very dodgy fuel supply, is that the energy obtained from the wood cannot be used directly to heat homes, it has to be turned into electricity which then has to be distributed to homes. I wonder what amount of energy loss enters the system by that extra stage. With a good old log fire, the heat is direct. You can sit round the fire and warm yourself, sort your mental health by staring into the flames. With electricity and it's tortuous delivery, all you get is a vaguely warm house, no centre of heat and nothing but a white unit to stare at. I know many people can't have fires in their homes, for pollution and modern house design, but humanity loves a good fire so it's wonderful to heat your house that way.
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Ahh but Drax is no longer burning fossil fuel, as in coal, so it must be good - right?
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Ahh but Drax is no longer burning fossil fuel, as in coal, so it must be good - right?
Right. There's the :spin: and then there's the truth :o
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When I was a kid, we used sawmill waste as bedding for our turkey units. I used to love going to the sawmill to see what was being chucked out with the shavings - sometimes there were door knobs which had gone wrong in the turning, banister spindles, acorns for the tops of posts and so on. I found these half made items fascinating (I was very young, honestly) The smell was the best thing of all :D .
That brings back a very pleasant childhood memory of my own [member=4333]Fleecewife[/member] thank you: Mr Smythe, the village carpenter allowed me to garnish wood shavings/sawdust from his small workshop for my guinea pigs and the family rabbit. Walking through inches-thick dust & shavings was a delight all on its own, but the smell .... !!
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Seems this topic has come to us already. Tried to order heating oil on Friday and then chased them up yesterday. Seems their system is overloaded, prices are increasing daily and they are now unable to quote. in November we paid €1.07/ litre. Yesterday it was €1.37 and now it is €1.48. They are delivering, but it seems demand has outstripped supply and there will be no more deliveries until next week.
Can't afford those prices, so the heating is off and we'll have to be cold. On the bright side we still have hot water, but that's oil as well so we may have to go alternate days?
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A friend told me her heating oil bill had doubled from the last time she ordered.
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Oil's gone up, firewood's gone up (it used to be £40 a trailer load 25 years ago, now it's £200 last week here, up from £140 the previous load), I don't know about coal, but I do know gas and electricity are going up, even more so now with the Ukraine/Russia war.
I get really cold these days because I can't move around much. My usual remedy for feeling cold (going for a brisk walk or a bicycle ride) is no longer possible. All that's left is more jumpers - today when it really isn't very cold, I have 3 vests and 3 jumpers on indoors and add coats etc when I go out - I can hardly move they seem so heavy and stiff :roflanim:
It does seem that there's a whole lot more to consider than just what is best for the planet and yet when we get it wrong we all head for disaster.
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We might not need to worry about it soon - the Russians have captured a Nuclear plant!
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We might not need to worry about it soon - the Russians have captured a Nuclear plant!
Thanks Doganjo - that scares me :poo: less
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Said on the news here that nuclear plant is the biggest in Europe with 6 reactors producing 20% of Ukraine's electricity. The reactor shelters were built to be bomb proof- made of steel and reinforced concrete because of the threat of war with Russia. They are running flat out at the moment and therefore carry the major risk of overheating and meltdown if the cooling system is interrupted. So it was incredibly stupid of the Russians to launch a missile strike on it. Fortunately the resulting fire was extinguished after several hours and no radiation leaks have been detected.
It's pretty cold in the house at the moment (15C). In the meantime our oil order has been confirmed for delivery 9th -15th. Can't give us a price until the day before, at which time we say yes or no. Being realistic, with just 500 litres left (result of a very cold November) we can't really say no, because March can be cold as well and we've still to heat water. On average we burn about 1000 litres a year. According to the French statistics a 130m2 house in France burns on average 2600 litres a year, so our usage is pretty small and whilst cost increases are painful they won't be as bad as most. Vehicles have full tanks which usually lasts us 4 months. We have gas for the hob and petrol for the mowers, which don't see much use now since we bought a self-propelled mower/ strimmer- we just let the grass grow because that machine will take down up to half a metre in one cut and doesn't use any more fuel doing it. A neatly cut lawn is a luxury we don't need.
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since we bought a self-propelled mower/ strimmer- we just let the grass grow because that machine will take down up to half a metre in one cut and doesn't use any more fuel doing it. A neatly cut lawn is a luxury we don't need.
Whar make is yours? Looking for something that can take longer grass to be fed fresh to the goats over summer... (I have a strimmer, but it is very hard on my shoulders and runs on electric(not battery) - so I need to be within 60m of a socket, the old petrol one is just too heavy full stop)
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I had never seen one of these in the UK [member=3211]Anke[/member], possibly because of 'health and safety' rules, but they are common in France for cutting areas that the local farmer can't get to. Probably 10x faster than a strimmer- perhaps even quicker? Sold as a Tondeuse- Débroussailleuse (mower- brushcutter).
Ours is a Kiva Odyssee V2 with a Honda 200 engine, variable speed transmission, variable height cut and wheel differentials. Anything less isn't worth having because it will be a real handful to manoeuvre. Runs on three wheels, the front being a swivel and the rear are 45cm with solid rubber tyres. Basically a very beefed-up self propelled mower, but side eject. To cut brush (max 15mm thick) the front of the deck is removed so that the material isn't knocked over by the skirt. You can fit a deflector to the eject side so that the material is left in a neat row for gathering. There is another French make and Husqvarna used to make them. Extreme care is needed to avoid slicing your toes off- it has a 10mm thick hardened steel blade, so safety boots probably won't save them.
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I had never seen one of these in the UK [member=3211]Anke[/member], possibly because of 'health and safety' rules, but they are common in France for cutting areas that the local farmer can't get to. Probably 10x faster than a strimmer- perhaps even quicker? Sold as a Tondeuse- Débroussailleuse (mower- brushcutter).
Ours is a Kiva Odyssee V2 with a Honda 200 engine, variable speed transmission, variable height cut and wheel differentials. Anything less isn't worth having because it will be a real handful to manoeuvre. Runs on three wheels, the front being a swivel and the rear are 45cm with solid rubber tyres. Basically a very beefed-up self propelled mower, but side eject. To cut brush (max 15mm thick) the front of the deck is removed so that the material isn't knocked over by the skirt. You can fit a deflector to the eject side so that the material is left in a neat row for gathering. There is another French make and Husqvarna used to make them. Extreme care is needed to avoid slicing your toes off- it has a 10mm thick hardened steel blade, so safety boots probably won't save them.
OK, will do some further checking... Many thanks.
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www.cheapmowers.com/acatalog/Efco-DR-52-VBR6-Wheeled-Brush-Cutter-Mower--EFDR52VBR6.html
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That's along similar lines [member=4333]Fleecewife[/member] , but it may be a bit under-powered, heavy and difficult to manouvre without the front jockey wheel (I'm not as fit as I was). The rear wheels on our machine are very slim and we have no slipping issues. Ours was €1450, so at current exchange rate about £1200. It weighs 62Kg, so about double a standard self-propelled lawnmower. Perhaps there is something else in the Efco range?
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That's along similar lines [member=4333]Fleecewife[/member] , but it may be a bit under-powered, heavy and difficult to manouvre without the front jockey wheel (I'm not as fit as I was). The rear wheels on our machine are very slim and we have no slipping issues. Ours was €1450, so at current exchange rate about £1200. It weighs 62Kg, so about double a standard self-propelled lawnmower. Perhaps there is something else in the Efco range?
That was one picked at random from those on offer, to show something similar is available here. Plenty more around
We bought an Allan scythe thingy for cutting around our trees but Mr F can barely use it as it doesn't manoeuvre at all, straight lines only ::)