Scrounging Firewood (and other stuff)

[cantoo]

It's been a little warm here too. I bought a little patio furnace and lit it up just to mess with my wife. Our little dog liked it but the black dog Tucker wasn't impressed. That's my wife cutting grass on the front lawn.

 

[cantoo]

And to keep it firewood related. I bought this saw to also mess with my wife. She was real impressed. And to wet everyone appetite, I bid this up to about $900 but let it go. It's a Hesson stacker that tilts and has forward and reverse. Would make a pretty sweet log deck really easy and cheap. It was hard to keep my hand down.

 

[svk]

I love those "chimnea" style burners.

My neighbor got a terra cotta one and we overfired it the first time using it and cracked it. Too much beer may have been involved. He got an iron one after that and it's still going.

 

[Just a Guy that cuts wood]

To keep the mozzies away?

Yes it will clean up under load

 

[crowbuster]

View attachment 591993 It's been a little warm here too. I bought a little patio furnace and lit it up just to mess with my wife. Our little dog liked it but the black dog Tucker wasn't impressed. That's my wife cutting grass on the front lawn.
View attachment 591991 View attachment 591992

Mr. Cantoo. What do you have to say about those windmills? good bad or other. They are tryin to get em in round here. Oh, they mite cut some trees down I could scroung to stay on topic

 

[cantoo]

crowbuster, I have family and friends on both sides of the issue. They are noisy and they are expensive. Rather than waste my time, energy and money on trying to stop something that I could not stop I decided to put more thought into reducing my electrical needs. Someone has to pay for all that expense and when the dust settles that means me so I bought an OWB, put in a bunch of new windows and doors, insulated where I was short and started scrounging until I got a good deal on all the wood I can use. I can see 33 windmills out my kitchen window alone. I figured the mills were coming so might as well make the best of it. My cousin said they would never allow any on his property and he stood firm. Real smart move now he is surrounded by mills and receives $1500 per year instead of $28,000 for each of the 3 wind mills that could have been on his property ( he rents the land out anyway) and the mills are a couple hundred feet off his fence lines. Yup, real smart move there. I feel that my neighbours and I have done our part but now we have enough in our community, time for someone else to step up and host them. The money was going to be spent anyway at least my friends and neighbours have benefitted from them. As for the health issues there have been windmills for years all over the world and nothing that I am aware of has been proven. People say they are being driven crazy by them but I think some of them might have been crazy to begin with.
And I can proudly say that I climbed to the top of one and lived to tell the tale. It almost killed me but I did it and free hand too, no lift assist on the one I climbed. Heck of a view from up there. I also have tons of family in the Nuclear business and they rag on wind mills every chance they get.

 

[JustJeff]

My comments on wind power is that it's great as long as you're willing to run off battery when the wind ain't blowin. Otherwise the nuclear plant has to keep that turbine turning so the power is there when the demand comes. Cant just flick a nuclear reactor on and off like like starting a generator. Don't matter any way, in our lifetime we will see the end of grid electricity with advances in solar and battery technology. The technology is already there, just needs to get cheaper, and it will.
Either way, I'll still burn wood!

 

[KiwiBro]

Wood is just concentrated/compressed solar energy anyway.

 

[Jeffkrib]

Incorrect KiwiBro, Wood is concentrated compressed nuclear energy... The sun energy is derived from Nuclear.
Only difference is Nuclear has a slightly higher energy content. E=MC2 Energy (in Joules)=Mass (in kg) x Speed of light (299792458 m/s) 2 . It ends up being a massive number, I remember working this out years ago, the energy content of 1 gram of uranium is equal to about 2000 ton of coal. Once you take out the inefficiencies of both its about 2 -3 million times the energy content of coal or about 4 – 6 million times wood.

First law of energy conservation: Energy can be neither created nor destroyed mealy transformed from one form to another.
All energy on earth is derived from the suns energy (or nuclear energy), with one exception...... Anyone know what it is?

 

[KiwiBro]

Crikey. Think of all the people with nuclear panels on their roofs. That's one massive class action lawsuit against the clever marketeers who sold them "solar" panels.

 

[Sandhill Crane]

All energy on earth is derived from the suns energy (or nuclear energy), with one exception...... Anyone know what it is?

Gravity?

 

[Sandhill Crane]

Wood is just concentrated/compressed solar energy anyway.

You made me laugh....
Worked in nuclear plants. Not a fan, not even a milli rem (spelling?)

 

[Jeffkrib]

Correct, not for hydro power as the sun lifts the water to the top of the hill.
Tidal power from the moons gravity.

 

[MustangMike]

Tidal power could easily power everything, but we are prohibited from using it!

It is as reliable as a clock, and very, very powerful.

 

[Marshy]

You made me laugh....
Worked in nuclear plants. Not a fan, not even a milli rem (spelling?)

Milirem.
One of the best ways to harness large scale power generation IMO.

 

[LondonNeil]

Geo thermal is using the residual heat left from compressing a dust cloud into our planet, so that doesn't really derive from the sun.

Those sums, 1g of uranium doesn't disappear, it becomes less than one gram of a heap of isotopes of different elements, so M is a small number, but c squared is very very large.

Working in metric is easy, but what is the fudge factor to convert mass in pounds, light speed in mph to energy in Btu?

 

[woodchip rookie]

My comments on wind power is that it's great as long as you're willing to run off battery when the wind ain't blowin. Otherwise the nuclear plant has to keep that turbine turning so the power is there when the demand comes. Cant just flick a nuclear reactor on and off like like starting a generator. Don't matter any way, in our lifetime we will see the end of grid electricity with advances in solar and battery technology. The technology is already there, just needs to get cheaper, and it will.
Either way, I'll still burn wood!

I don't know what country you live in but the government of the UNunited States of America will never let that happen. You think they want people to be independent? You think they are going to lose the billions they make from utilities? Not in THREE lifetimes. If they wanted people to be independent there wouldnt be welfare. Instead of spending money on all the other crap they would be setting aside money for grants so people could get off the grid. Theres laws in states that PROHIBIT "off the grid" procedures.

 

[JustJeff]

I don't know what country you live in but the government of the UNunited States of America will never let that happen. You think they want people to be independent? You think they are going to lose the billions they make from utilities? Not in THREE lifetimes. If they wanted people to be independent there wouldnt be welfare. Instead of spending money on all the other crap they would be setting aside money for grants so people could get off the grid. Theres laws in states that PROHIBIT "off the grid" procedures.

Canada. But I lived in America for 14 years. I hear you. Don't think governments can stop the technology but I agree, they'll find a way to tax you for it. Be a solar home surcharge on your property tax or something.
Anyways back to topic, I am currently loading some scrounged willow and Pine into my truck for camp fire wood!

 

[KiwiBro]

I live in a district that includes one of the biggest tidal harbours in the world, with almost 100,000 Ha flooded with each high tide and about 270,000 cf of flow each day peaking at about 5 knots of speed. The entrance is only about 3 miles wide. There was a 200MW tidal generator proposed but was (informally) shot down and formally bought by a predominantly petro energy company and shelved. I can see both sides of the argument but it would have been great to get at least one turbine in there and see how well it did or didn't do.

 

[Cowboy254]

All energy on earth is derived from the suns energy (or nuclear energy), with one exception...... Anyone know what it is?

I was going to say disco. Anyway.

Now that scrounging is much harder than it has been in recent years, I figured I might as well work on the stuff that I already have. This one that I cut in April...



has now been mostly split, debarked and stacked. The small stuff is split and in a separate pile to eventually go down to my brother. The wood is nice burning but the bark is maybe 2cm thick and has so much ash in it that if you burn it you regret being lazy for not taking it off earlier. It comes off more easily when it's dry but I can fit more in the shed if I take it off now and I want to pack as much as I can in there.



This bay is 2m across and stacked 2.4m high. I was up on my tippy-toes to toss it up there but as it all dries it'll come back into easy reach. The view was nice tonight.



Debarking isn't as fun as cutting, who knew .