Eucalyptus Firewood

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PDQ Mobile
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Re: Eucalyptus Firewood

Post by PDQ Mobile »

Mick F wrote: 2 May 2021, 10:37am Store more?
It's difficult to store in the dry without a suitable place etc. Not easy here, but there are loads of lengths behind the bungalow on the southern side. Drying nicely.

This huge eucalyptus hasn't been fully cut up yet, but will be now that I cn split them with "ease".
"Ease" noted!
Yep, you've still got to get it to the splitter or vice versa.
Storage is easy though- just four or six uprights and some other bits of timber and a bit of roof.
Or a lashed Tarp over a nice neat stack!

The weather has been exceptionally conducive for drying. My twelve months ahead dry supply is secure!
I have neighbours that roof with "shingles" that they purpose make with their splitter (another splitter plus is very accurate long splitting) for stack corners etc.
Such a covering doesn't stop our western driven rain though.
I much prefer corrugated sheeted and Yorkshire boarded, though obviously it doesn't look so pretty.

I haven't swept the Rayburn chimney for 12 months at least. It's a 6" pipe! There is little tar or sooty deposit.

I'll get me coat. :shock:
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Mick F
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Re: Eucalyptus Firewood

Post by Mick F »

I've not swept the Stanley chimney ever. Maybe once.
It's been fitted for twenty-odd years and we burn anthracite in it. Does most of our cooking and provides some hot water. Lit maybe ten months of the year, but needs letting out every few weeks to clean out the grate and the passageways round the oven.

It's one of these, but not as clean and shiny! :wink:
errigal-blackenamel-955x472-20160322004026.jpg
Mick F. Cornwall
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Re: Eucalyptus Firewood

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I'm not trying to enter a non chimney sweeping competition!
Just trying to say if you get it dry you get a lot more heat including water and cooking, cleaner burning including flues.
And you use a deal less wood too.
It is simply less work all-round - in the end.

The Rayburn doesn't burn coal, I am exclusively sustainable!
I think your splitter may perhaps change how you do things.
Or maybe not?
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Mick F
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Re: Eucalyptus Firewood

Post by Mick F »

Moved here in 1997. April 27th, so it's 24 years now.

Lived up the road in No3 for a dozen years before that.
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@50.51601 ... 312!8i6656
We had a front garden back then, but the present people dug it out and made a car park. :shock:
We had a perfectly good car park area round the back and it was room enough for both or our cars and once or twice three of them.

Since moving here - further down into the valley - and having 3acres of space including woodland .......... into a tumbledown bungalow needing modernisation and TLC .................. without mains gas, poor water pressure, no mains drainage, solid walls and solid floors, poor insulation, iron-framed windows, overgrown with weeds and trees, no garden, difficulties to even access the place ................................ need I go on? :D

Took us years .............. we still have no mains gas, and we still have poor water pressure, but we have modernised the place and dug out all the garden and hacked our way into the jungle. We have a ready source of wood and due to the constant conveyor belt of dying trees, some of them, I don't have to fell ............ they just fall, but keep out of the woodlands when it's windy.

Never ever have run out of firewood as yet. Constant source of trees and windfalls in only three acres.
Mick F. Cornwall
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Re: Eucalyptus Firewood

Post by pwa »

PDQ Mobile wrote: 2 May 2021, 9:02am "pwa" ^^
It could only reduce your fuel bills if you used electric for simply producing heat?
Which is a poor use of electrical energy really.

Electric energy is very efficient at driving machinery.
A good electric splitter that can split quickly and efficiently, without running on "idle" for long, is a very effective cog in a low carbon heat energy cycle.

Such a machine will split around a ton of wood in an hour. (Obviously this varies with size and difficulty.)
A typical 6 ton splitter will draw at full pressure around 3 or 3.5 kw and use somewhat less at "idle".
So say (just roughly) 60p of leccy to split a ton.
A ton of dry firewood has an energy equivalent to around say 3-5 hundred litres of heating oil.
((I looked it up on the net!; (quote:-"The typical house needs 14 m3 loose volume of wood chip, or 2200 kg of wood pellets, to replace 1000 litres of oil"))

So the sum is exceptionally favourable.

There are other costs involved in large quantities of wood fuel, of course.
Fuel for saws and transport. And the cost of maintenance and repair.
The splitter is likely to require little in the way of these however, if decent robust quality.
My splitter has split hundreds of tons, over a decade or so, and once required a motor condenser.
(Three Phase leccy, if available, is even better than normal 240v at driving biggish induction motors.)

The really big advantage however comes from being able to easily and quickly process enough wood fuel to "get ahead". Therefore getting one's wood really dry and using a lot less.
It's a win/win.
It will be interesting to see if Mick now starts to store more. My guess is that he will.

Buying wood in, especially kiln dried, with long transport and drying energy costs can reduce any favourable energy considerations regarding wood fuel.
Dubious, distant and/or unknown sources add problems to green credentials.
We import into the UK a fair bit of firewood I believe. Nuts!
Thanks for those thoughts, especially the information about the efficiency of a splitter.
My own bought-in wood comes from a local workshop that produces it as a by-product of making stuff, so it is pretty sustainable. They process large diameter conifer trunks and as they square off the rounds they end up with substantial offcuts that they then cut to size for firewood and season. It is always very dry.
Our central heating is gas fuelled, but of course it does use a bit of leccy too, notably for the pump. So when we have one of our power cuts when a line comes down the central heating shuts down. Then the log burner comes into its own.
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Re: Eucalyptus Firewood

Post by Tim Holman »

Hey, all, what about this new "Law" I seem to have heard about which outlaws the burning on open fires or on stoves of what some clever clogs has called "wet wood"? It sounds like a typical piece of meddling from some bored politician and their researcher on a Friday afternoon while they wait for the super to let them off for the weekend. Watch out Mick and the rest, it only applies to England, my woodburning correspondent reports from a coppice somewhere in The Countryside. It;s so bonkers I think it'll turn out to be true. What'll I do with my Clearview?
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Re: Eucalyptus Firewood

Post by Cyril Haearn »

Even worse, the sale of coal is to be restricted, no more steam railways, dirty diesels instead :?
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Re: Eucalyptus Firewood

Post by Paulatic »

Tim Holman wrote: 3 May 2021, 1:11pm Hey, all, what about this new "Law"
viewtopic.php?t=135619&start=90
If it does stop the burning of wet wood then it will be good thing.
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Mick F
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Re: Eucalyptus Firewood

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Cyril Haearn wrote: 3 May 2021, 1:59pm Even worse, the sale of coal is to be restricted, no more steam railways, dirty diesels instead :?
We had a delivery of Anthracite a few days ago, and me and the chap had a chat about this subject.

Coal merchants have TONS and TONS of coal.
What's expected?
Put it back into the coal mines? :lol:

He said to me, that they can carry on delivering coal, but they have to open each bag as it's delivered. Basically, no sealed bags allowed. Open ones are fine.
Mick F. Cornwall
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Re: Eucalyptus Firewood

Post by Cyril Haearn »

Opened bags only, why?
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Mick F
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Re: Eucalyptus Firewood

Post by Mick F »

All I can say, is the chap from CPL told me this.
Seems to me quite sensible really.

Real coal merchants, the sort who supply real coal users ........... steam railways, heritage users, old cottages ............ you name them ........ cannot be deprived of their coal.

It's stopping supermarkets and shop outlets from selling plazzy bags of household coal retail.

Also, as I alluded to, what are they going to do with the coal they already have?
Put it back into the ground?
Mick F. Cornwall
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Re: Eucalyptus Firewood

Post by Jdsk »

Cyril Haearn wrote: 3 May 2021, 2:15pm Opened bags only, why?
I can't find the answer.

My best guess is that it's part of the long-term restrictions on availability, and specifically to remove supermarkets, garages and similar from the supply chain as it's difficult for them to handle open bags.

Mick F wrote: 3 May 2021, 2:28pm Also, as I alluded to, what are they going to do with the coal they already have?
Put it back into the ground?
Use them up up through the remaining routes of consumption?

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Mick F
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Re: Eucalyptus Firewood

Post by Mick F »

I managed two pieces of the eucalyptus this morning, and I'm knackered!

The trunk where I'm cutting it, is a foot thick, and I'm cutting 11inches of it at a time. The resultant piece weighs just about as much as I can carry, so two was enough. From now on, I'll be doing 8inches at a time.

The two pieces now split using the electric log-splitter and now on the hearth. Maybe 16+ splits per piece.
Mick F. Cornwall
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Re: Eucalyptus Firewood

Post by pwa »

Mick F wrote: 20 Jun 2021, 10:20am I managed two pieces of the eucalyptus this morning, and I'm knackered!

The trunk where I'm cutting it, is a foot thick, and I'm cutting 11inches of it at a time. The resultant piece weighs just about as much as I can carry, so two was enough. From now on, I'll be doing 8inches at a time.

The two pieces now split using the electric log-splitter and now on the hearth. Maybe 16+ splits per piece.
Is it dry? Eucalyptus burns nicely when it is really dry, but it carries a lot of water if you haven't dried it.
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Re: Eucalyptus Firewood

Post by Mick F »

If you go back to the beginning of this, I explained that the tree was dead ......... because I killed it.
The tree stood there for a few years, and eventually dropped. No issues to where it dropped as it's not near anyone or anything, other than a wire fence which is now crushed.

We planted it some 20 years ago, not knowing how fast these things shoot up. I procrastinated about doing anything with it, but it grew and grew and grew, so much so that cutting it down would have been difficult. I "ringed" it maybe a foot or more wide if only to stop it growing, but after a few months, nothing seemed to have happened.

I Googled to see what I could do, and found that by drilling deep holes into the trunk and squirting Roundup into them, it would be killed.

Nothing much happened for another year, then slowly it was evident that the tree was dead. It had probably been dead or dying before the Roundup application. Friday 12th Feb overnight into the Saturday we had strong winds, and in the morning, I noticed it down. It had broken a branch or two of a nearby Ash, and a nearby Oak, both of which are logged up.

I cut off all the twiggy bits of Eucalyptus for kindling, and shredded the thinner bits with the leaves on in our electric shredder. The branches have been stacked and some logged up and burnt, and the trunk is slowly being cut .......... but it's damned hard work, mainly due to the weight and where the trunk is lying.

Remember, Eucalyptus wood doesn't float as it's so heavy - even when completely dead and dry. I didn't weigh yesterday's logs, but I will do next time. Lets say a foot diameter and a foot long is a cubic foot? Near as dammit for the figures to have meaning. Those pieces I cut yesterday must have each been 30Kg .............. heavier than a bag of coal.

Chucking it down out there now, so just done some chainsaw maintenance in the workshop. The issue now with the rest of the tree-trunk, is that it's maybe 20ft long and over 18" thick further along and it's solidly lying in the ground. The ground round here is very very stony and yesterday I cut through and into the stones. One tooth of the saw has broken off and all the others were rather blunt. 32 teeth normally, so the 31 left are nicely sharp again and ready for duty.

Next thing, is to try and get something underneath it. Perhaps the whole thing weighs well over a tonne, so it won't be easy. I have a scaffold pole than I could drive underneath and with the trolley-jack I could get it to lift and perhaps get a log or something underneath. That way, the chainsaw wouldn't touch the ground as it cuts through.

Next time I'm there, I'll take some photos.
Mick F. Cornwall
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