Fastest growing firewod

timbur, whereabouts are you?

Question, what’s the purpose of this wood burning fashion? I don’t get it.

You get to buy big boys toys and be condescending to urban hippies. 😀

seosamh, warmth mostly. plus it’s carbon-neutral for those who care. And everyone loves a real fire, don’t they?

thecaptain – Member
seosamh, warmth mostly. plus it’s carbon-neutral for those who care. And everyone loves a real fire, don’t they?

How is it carbon neutral? You’re burning carbon and releasing it into the air. How are you recycling the burnt carbon and keeping it out of the atmosphere?

How are you recycling the burnt carbon and keeping it out of the atmosphere?

By growing more trees.

Admittedly that doesn’t offset the petrol, oil, chainsaws, quad, 4×4, trailer, log burner….

Question, what’s the purpose of this wood burning fashion? I don’t get it.

It warms the house, which seems to be drier from the improved air circulation.

It’s nicer to look at than a CH radiator.

Some of the fuel is a freebie.

By growing more trees.
Admittedly that doesn’t offset the petrol, oil, chainsaws, quad, 4×4, trailer, log burner….

So it’s not carbon neutral then! 😆

Don’t get me wrong I don’t have a problem buring wood, I enjoy a camp fire as much as the next person, but it’s not sustainable.

If we all started burning wood to heat our homes there’d be no forest in short order!

Unless we curb world population there will be no forest anyway due to logging for agriculture/pulp/building etc. At least most people burning wood are actively replanting at least as much, if not more than they burn (well I am anyway!)

At least most people burning wood are actively replanting at least as much

I’d doubt that. I’d guess the forestry commission probably does though currently mind, while it’s small scale.

But everything in moderation is obviously fine, even burning fossil fuels. I just don’t see the argument that tree’s are better. It’s not scale-able.

Coppicing is reasonably sustainable. Fuel consumption is outstripped by carbon sequestration usually. Also given the ratio of fuel wood to total organic matter in a coppice there’s usually a higher co2 lock up each rotation (in mulched matter) than re-released through burning.

Most pellet manufacturer (for accreditation anyway) is from dedicated new plantation.

The younger trees and biomass used in pellet and chip production fix co2 in far greater volumes than mature trees too.

Guess it’s an interesting question actually is it scale-able?

Time for some fag packet mathematics! 😆 Feel free to change the numbers to suit!

So according to the forestry commission there are 3814 million tree’s in the UK.

there are 26.7 million house holds in the uk.

Say an average household would burn 10 tree’s in a year?

So the uk have capacity, only to keep uk house holds warm for around 10 years or so.

We’re obviously looking at before you factor in forestry operation and transports etc to make this carbon neutrual so you’d need to plant more tree’s than you cut down.

That’s before you get into the need for business’s to heat.

Guess it might be sustainable if we bought up 3 or 4 uk’s worth of Amazon (and replanted with quick growning tree’s)to keep us going!

The carbon released from my chainsaw fuel is very very very small indeed compared to the wood I’ve got stacked (which was grown in the garden, and needed to be disposed of anyway). A few litres of petrol versus several tonnes of wood (when dry) makes it 0.1% as a rough estimate, definitely no more than 1% at the upper limit. A 99% reduction in fossil fuel emissions would certainly solve the problem of anthropogenic climate change in short order.

It doesn’t need to be scalable to everyone, for it to be worthwhile for some, even many.

Plus, it’s effectively free – in fact I’d have had to pay for disposal if it was not usable as fuel. If it had been left to rot then the carbon would have gone back into the atmosphere anyway – worse, there would have been methane too. It all came from the atmosphere over the last 100y or so, and will be taken up by other trees grown in the same area, that’s why it is carbon neutral.

10 trees a year? Depends how big your tree is. Mine is certainly going to last for multiple years though admittedly it only provides a part of the heat required (in a big draughty house). One tree per year might be more realistic, on your figures it would be a 100y old tree so many tonnes in weight.

Plus, it’s effectively free

If you have the capacity to grow a small forest at the bottom of the garden I’d guess so! 😆

thecaptain – Member
10 trees a year?

Like I say feel free to change the numbers, the above is just a starting point for the discusion. I’m well aware my numbers are out (and i’m willing to have my mind changed).

How many 10/20 year cycle tree’s would you need to burn to heat a home? Bearing in mind that heating a home involves having a wood burner in every room in the house most likely.

I’m out of the office for now, but I have all the data for the last 5yrs of heating my house with biomass so will put up the calcs later

Nobody growing/burning Miscanthus then?

Cheers stoner, be interested to see that.

Stoner gets his pellets delivered bagged?
🙁
Part of my addled brain seems to remember you building a hopper. Isn’t blown bulk cheaper?

Don’t forget, the current RHI and fashion for biomass means that UK and European demand outstripped supply. That now has a huge export of pellets from the USA / Canada in big, oil-burning ships. Unintended consequences and all that.

TT I built the hopper before I bought the coppice. Now that 80%+ of my fuel needs are met by my own coppiced logs I don’t need much in the way if pellets. 1 tonne a year is all I use which is too little to have delivered blown, not to mention hard to keep dry kept for 12 months in a hopper rather than in individual bags.

If you’re claiming RHI payments for a system, they are increasing more hoops to jump through, to prove source and quality. Pellet has little financial benefit compared to oil around here. Lot of people are installing batch boilers around here now, just fill them with sticks/billets. Easier to source, less processing involved = cheaper. Know a man with a 26ton splitter who is now very busy billeting oversize mill logs.

We’ve always been dubious of pellet and chips due to the large handling inputs. Pellets from sawmill waste certainly make sense as it is utilising a waste. Chip is quite intensive on oil and storage.

Not much chance of UK forestry being self sufficient with the use of biomass power stations (but they do have a good knock on effect for timber prices) which also burn a lot of millable timber. Far better to build with more timber as that ties up carbon. Bit of proper grading required.

Suspect I have deviated from the OP, just plant trees, look after them and use accordingly.

MrGFisher – I’m in the Brecon Beacons. Not sure of the Glastir contacts now as they are not beneficial to us, gone through FC, consultants, WA and NRW in the last 5 years.

Whereabouts in the Beacons Timber? I am over this side in the Blacks, not far from the border.

Why? Petrol etc for the saw apart, it’s free.
As for co2 etc. Bugger that . Wood for fuel was going long before electricity for computer games and driving bikes to the woods so I claim the right to be correct. 😀
I’ll stop burning wood when all the modern luxuries stop first.
Welshfarmer, where are you? I am sure I know you?

Just outside Brecon, but work sites on Sugar Loaf and Skirrid amongst others.

Hehe, was riding on the Sugar Loaf this evening. I am up near Llanthony Priory. If you are on the forestry job I think they are about to start logging the wood opposite me very soon as they have just been upgrading the track.

seosamh77 – just how many houses do you think have the capability of actually burning wood? The greater majority these days have central heating from gas or electricity, most newer homes don’t even have chimneys, so your argument is fairly redundant.
And there are more trees in the UK now than for decades.
Although various diseases threaten increasing numbers of our trees, which does mean that culling diseased trees produces wood for fuel, or whatever.
Hornbeam, beech, ash and oak used to be coppiced for firewood or charcoal for iron smelting, I think hornbeam grows fairly fast, it’s used for hedging, and is pretty hard, it was used for tool handles, wheel-spokes, etc, and burns well.
Might be soil-specific, though.

We’ve spotted the work going on up near Llanthony if they are the headlands you can spot from the Hereford road.
We’re slightly smaller fish working for a charity across a mixed estate, hopefully taking a more considered approach.

CountZero, I get your point about finding houses with chimneys, even in a rural are we struggled to find a house with its chimney still intact and the estate agents viewed them as a negative thing that could be removed.

Hornbeam is a bit regional I think, about this way it is/was used in hedges as a marker tree of boundaries, if you can still find any mature hedges. Beech grows fast, but not the easiest to split compared to others. Good firewood if you have the time or machinery.

I have some bamboo flooring offcuts.. it burns very well and pretty damn hot.
Not sure if you could grow the right flavour in this country to burn but im pretty sure its one of the fastest growing tree / shrubby things there is

Bamboo is horribly invasive and a right bugger to keep under control (I know there’s 2 types but the largest is the bugger to control). It’s not a great idea to introduce foreign invasive species when other alternatives are available.
It grows wild here in Virginia and makes a real mess.

Miscanthus is a perennial grass similar to bamboo but it is a more efficient producer of biomass. It is still being developed as a crop but there are commercial UK plantings and it is burnt at Drax power station

Hornbeam is a bit regional I think, about this way it is/was used in hedges as a marker tree of boundaries, if you can still find any mature hedges. Beech grows fast, but not the easiest to split compared to others. Good firewood if you have the time or machinery.

That’s what I thought, seems to be more of a South-east timber than South-west; Ive spent hours scouring woods and hedges for hornbeam around my part of the world for walking sticks and such, but it doesn’t seem to grow wild. Masses of old Hazel stools in the valleys around Castle Combe showing coppicing used to be very common.
Lots of beech around, but mostly big mature trees.

Welshfamer.
with an interest in 4wd and downhill buggies?