Cycling UK Forum

Pebble^^
Your experiment is working.
Keep going!
The curve will become less steep but it will continue to lose weight for a while.

The indoor piece of oak has lost 254 grams in 8 days.
So 4 pieces would have lost a litre, 8 pieces 2 litres, and so on.
A saucepanful thrown on the carpet, or perhaps better described as trickled over the hot wood-burner.

I see the outside piece latterly gained a bit of weight - wind driven rain?

The outside curve is slow too.
No wonder folk say you need to stack it a year or more.
The curve would be much steeper in dry hot summer conditions of course.

I think you are right about hard dense oak being around 35% moisture by weight.
(it is under normal outside drying conditions impossible to get all of it out.)

Some woods are considerably more in percentage terms though.
Many softwoods (and others) approach or can even exceed 50%.

And are of course considered by "quick dry Mick" to be poor fuel for obvious reasons.
Nothing could be further from the reality.
The pines (I mostly have here) make fantastic fuel wood.

While oak is considered by many to be a fine (finest?) fuel wood on account of it's dense long burning quality, I rate pine as a rather better cleaner burn.
Pine gets the Xmas oven really nice and hot!

Oak contains a lot of tannins, and without careful seasoning and hot burning makes a lot of flue tars fast.
It bears a bit more resemblance to a carbon rich fuel like coal and less of a hot-burning gas emitter.

((I might add I am exclusively wood fuelled, so I am using a LOT more than eight logs a DAY.
And I am not burning ANY on a bed of coal, or using coal to dry the wood, which I consider a pretty half hearted system.
Here is a low carbon, totally sustainable into the distant future system, and that includes some nicely regenerating old woodland and some new stands on poor ground.

It can of course be criticised on the basis of smoke emission but I do my best to avoid that (by seasoning fuel) and it's not much of an issue in darkest remotest rural Wales.
(Many (most?) farmers here burn old silage wrap. Yuk. It's vile practice, and an area better worthy of stricter controls.)

When I told my neighbour, a big sheep man, thirty odd years ago, that he would be glad one day of better regeneration of his "billiard table" grazed woodland floor, he was unsure. Oil was cheap then!
Now he is less critical !))

Nadolig Llawen i bob.

PDQ Mobile wrote: 25 Dec 2021, 10:44am
Nadolig Llawen i bob.

A blwyddyn newydd dda i chi.

I had a ready supply of pine (Parasol Pine) when we had one taken down in our garden. It was much too large (60 feet) plus near the house for me to attempt it.
I logged it and stored the wood for 3 years before burning it.
It gave out a lot of heat and burnt for a long time as long as the log was a decent size.
I think with a little planning there is no need to burn wet wood.

Radio 4 today. 'Average yearly household fuel cost to reach £2000 by summer'.
In the article it was suggested we could generate enough green electricity to supply the UK by over 20 times.
As there has been problems with zero wind preventing enough electricity from wind farms it would seem the race should be on to find, and more importantly, rapidly building means of storing electricity for lean times.
With the proposed move away from gas will we get ahead of the game or will we have energy crises as we move away from gas?

Apparently Nuclear Fusion is only a decade away
https://interestingengineering.com/toka ... ear-fusion

(although I seem to remember it only being a decade away when I wasat school, which was many decades ago)

Pebble wrote: 28 Dec 2021, 8:23am Apparently Nuclear Fusion is only a decade away
https://interestingengineering.com/toka ... ear-fusion

(although I seem to remember it only being a decade away when I wasat school, which was many decades ago)

I can remember the promise of nuclear fusion when I was at school - I left in 1957.
There was a promise of a utopian future with free energy.
Having said that it seems to me that nuclear fission is the only reliable low carbon source.
I was listening to a spokesman for Ecotricity today. In recent days we have had insufficient wind for the wind generators - he said this was a rare event - I can recall in recent years two periods of very cold weather combined with still air lasting about two weeks.
We don't have any where near enough energy storage and this is unlikely to change in the near future.
Meanwhile the government are pressing ahead with a low carbon initiative which will increase the demand for electrical energy.
Glib promises with no detailed planning.

Revisit tidal. Predictable, reliable, cant understand why the birdies 7 estuary mudflats are so important. They will just go somewhere else. Flood a few fields somewhere...

Al

al_yrpal wrote: 28 Dec 2021, 9:48am Revisit tidal. Predictable, reliable, cant understand why the birdies 7 estuary mudflats are so important. They will just go somewhere else. Flood a few fields somewhere...

Al

there is no where else for them to go, we have lost 90% of our wetlands. We have to preserve what biodiversity we have left, it is as important as our atmosphere in keeping our planet habitable.

francovendee wrote: 28 Dec 2021, 8:02am Radio 4 today. 'Average yearly household fuel cost to reach £2000 by summer'.

We don't pay far off that anyway,around £1800 IIRC.Like anything else it costs what it costs!

Might be scrapping the AGA at this rate. Predicted energy bill is £2200pa. The AGA is approx half of that.

Modern AGAs and look alikes have induction hobs on top and electric ovens.

Al

Can't you get a model that uses wet logs like Mick F's wood burner?

Hellhound wrote: 28 Dec 2021, 10:39am

francovendee wrote: 28 Dec 2021, 8:02am Radio 4 today. 'Average yearly household fuel cost to reach £2000 by summer'.

We don't pay far off that anyway,around £1800 IIRC.Like anything else it costs what it costs!

Great if you can afford it but many people's budgets are already at breaking point.
£2k or£10 k the rich won't notice it.
Middle and lower earners most certainly will.

francovendee wrote: 28 Dec 2021, 2:23pm

Hellhound wrote: 28 Dec 2021, 10:39am

francovendee wrote: 28 Dec 2021, 8:02am Radio 4 today. 'Average yearly household fuel cost to reach £2000 by summer'.

We don't pay far off that anyway,around £1800 IIRC.Like anything else it costs what it costs!

Great if you can afford it but many people's budgets are already at breaking point.
£2k or£10 k the rich won't notice it.
Middle and lower earners most certainly will.

But what is the way out of this mess? Time travel seems to be needed for the best solutions!

I dont really understand it? Surely 12 months ago we had much the same temperatures and similar demand. Its usually shortages that force up prices. How is there suddenly a shortage, is it just economies restarting? Wont supply increase to cope? The yanks are fracking like mad so no extra demand from them? In the short term we should be too. Dam the Severn estuary and build a few more nukes - perhaps the French might build them for us they have plenty of experience.

Al

Wet logs?

They are "wet" coz they've been outside, not coz they're sappy.

Posh thermometer yesterday evening.
Note the outside of 10deg and the inside of 22deg
Note the time.
22:10
Coincidence eh?

I thought it would make a good photo!