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Veteran
Posts: 275
 
| The idea of some kind of community wood fuel initiative has been knocking around for a while. There's a lot of activity going on in the Cairngorms on this, and I think general interest due to the increasing popularity of log burning stoves, and the difficulty of the wood fuel suppliers in keeping up.
Has anyone got any bright ideas of how we could kick something off on the Black Isle? | |
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Regular
Posts: 62
| Willie Beattie from Forestry Commission Scotland is doing a talk on the situation regarding sourcing firewood from FC woods at the Firewood Festival at Inshriach on 17 June. Looks like being a good day.
A report from the recent community woodfuel day at Laggan, with lots of links to relevant information - and even a design for a wood shed - is now on www.lowcarboncairngorms.org along with more details about the Firewood Festival.
Maybe we should appeal in the local press for people to join the energy group to investigate further, then have a meeting centred round that theme? Calling all wood burners...
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Veteran
Posts: 275
| Alternatively, I was speaking to someone from Strathnairn yesterday. He buys lorry loads of slab wood (23 tonnes) from Raddery Sawmill and chainsaws them to length (and presumably splits them) then sells on to his neighbours. Seems to me there are benefits to taking co-product from Raddery, rather than trying to deal with the FC - but maybe the FC could also deliver a lorry load of suitable wood? | |
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Regular
Posts: 62
| That's definitely a route worth investigating - buying by the lorry load and working as a group to process. Space would be needed for chopping and splitting.
I think a chat with Willie Beattie could be really useful - we've discussed this kind of thing before and he's supportive. He's in the Dingwall Office of FC Scotland.
Teen | |
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Veteran
Posts: 275
| I had a chat with Ian Cowe today at the All-Energy Renewables conference in Aberdeen - Ian's Willie's counterpart for Grampian. He said there are problems with Community Groups going and felling trees themselves - they would need to comply with FCS health & safety standards, which are quite onerous. On the other hand, it would be possible to buy roundwood at road side from them - so the group pays for logs, arranges haulage and then processes. Trouble is, then you could be paying sawlog prices - but if you get slabwood from Raddery (or another mill) it should be cheap, because it can only be used for firewood.
Ian also said that the "foraging licence" the Forestry Commission used to have was discontinued because people were going in with chainsaws and taking sawlogs. | |
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Regular
Posts: 79
Location: Cromarty | Just catching up - I am really interested in exploring this further. I am trying to go over completely to wood firing for my multifuel stove and there are two problems - sourcing a good supply of DRY wood and storing it.
At the moment I am buying kiln-dried hardwood from England (via Highland Stoves here in Cromarty) which is good but expensive and also hardly good on fuel miles! They are also now doing a fuel made of oilseed rape which sounds potentially interesting but I am awaiting details.
I suggest we set up a project to source and store wood for seasoning. In fact, couldn't we do a deal with the sawmill to cut them and store them for us? Then we could collect / distribute as and when needed.
If we set up a co-op or a social enterprise I am sure there would be a growing market for good firewood and this could make a profit for TBI
Ideally shouldn't we be going for hard woods rather than softwood - better, longer burn, less potential problems with the flue and so on? | |
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Veteran
Posts: 275
| I think there's something in this, but it needs a bit of thought, and a fair amount of work! Scale is an issue. A lorry load is normally 25 tonnes, enough to keep say 5 households going for a year. That is one of those big timber lorries, so quite a lot of wood! And it would be a huge amount of work to process using chainsaw and splitting axe, but on the other hand, it wouldn't be enough to justify buying expensive processing equipment (I looked into this recently, and it seemed like about £5k for a decent-sized log splitter, which would also need a tractor to run it). So, we could ask Raddery to do the processing for us, but i don't think they'd be interested unless it was on a big enough scale to mechanise. And then there's the question of how we deliver the logs to customers. Wood is heavy, bulky and low value, so it doesn't make any sense to transport it long distances.
We could certainly try the idea out on a small scale, using a suitable plot of land (our place may be possible, although we'd need to think a bit about planning issues, as we're in enough trouble there already), building a shed, and getting a handful of volunteers to do the processing, I'd suggest in exchange for a contribution towards wear and tear on saws, at the least.
I also think, if we were going to do this, it should be on a commercial basis - otherwise we could end up with a bit of a hobby business that undercuts other folk making a living out of it, and then folds when the volunteers get bored.
And I agree that hardwood would be better, but all wood has pretty much the same calorific value per tonne, it's just that a tonne of softwood takes up a lot more space. Hardwood slabs are generally bigger than softwood, which isn't a problem if cutting with chainsaws, but they need bigger machinery to automate the process. If we wanted to use hardwood, we could maybe see if Cromartie sawmill has slabwood? | |
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Regular
Posts: 62
| Re equipment for processing, Willie from FC in Dingwall was talking about the possibility of getting machinery rings set up in areas where a number of different users may be interested in using them. This might be coz subsidised equipment - bought with thnk ie help of grant funding from SRDP etc - doesn't get used enough to justify the grant.
Think we should have a chat with him.
There's a page containing lots of links to relevant information on community woodfuel initiatives on http://www.lowcarboncairngorms.org/woodfuel/community-woodfuel.asp and the forthcoming Firewood Festival at Inshriach would be a good place to discuss such matters, as well as being good fun.
Cheers
Teen | |
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Regular
Posts: 80
| Has anyone heard anything about the proposed community buyout of the Craig Wood (old railway line between Avoch and Fortrose) ? | |
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Community wood fuel