What are you all up to
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But how long before they are banned?
David
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😁 You need to ask Mr Monbiot. He was an avid user during his time in Wales, but now he’s moved back to Oxford, I think they are considered spawn of the devil🤣 Nothing like a reformed sinner. Not quite sure how he keeps warm nowadays, but then he doesn’t really have to worry about paying his bills.
We have lots of friends and family with a stove. Used properly, approved type and installation, well chosen, stored, dried wood, only approved smokeless coal if it’s multi fuel. Lots of houses up here are solid fuel, legacy from all the pits. Lots of places to buy a stove as well, and have it fitted.
Sadly, lots of green credentials will not be honoured if ordinary folks have to choose between saving the planet and sitting in a very cold house trying to keep loved ones warm. Another knock on of the current cost of living crisis.
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Never will they be banned. All the while folk want to be warm & not held to ransom by rogue states & broken Govt’s they will be used. DEFRA has approved certain stoves to be used anywhere for wood burning.
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Exactly what we did when we moved to our current house, 10 years ago. Moved from a barn conversion with two wood-burners and Aga to a comparatively modern house and virtually re-built it - and a high priority was a wood-burner in the sitting room. Stainless steel flue up the outside wall and a hearth and tiled surround completed the installation. Instant 'character' to an otherwise featureless room and it keeps the whole house warm.
It's not cheap to run, though. Price of smokeless fuel and logs has been steadily rising over the last year or so and I dread to think what our next log delivery will cost, because inevitably, we will be told that 'supply and demand' has affected that as well.
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I’ve used a stove in a canvas tent, as long as it’s recognisably safe there are no issues. No heat is better than self foraged heat as it brings warmth to the soul as well as body👍🏻😊
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This ‘waffle’ may saves lives as TDA’s story of the Miners proved.
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You would contact a stove centre local to you & request a survey they will continue from there with advice & support. Our local supplier has a 4 month waiting list. Last winter it was a 6 month wait list. They are super popular & will pay for themselves dependent on the owner of course. I use wood exclusively. No oil, gas or coal.
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A lot of wood burners over here and there has been quite a bit of activity as folks get their wood supply for winter a friend of ours has just bought 12 steres of wood ready for the winter and now her OH is now retired he feels the cold more than she does, we saw that the local diy shop getting all the wood burners and pellet burners out on display and electric heater and radiators.
Some of the smaller steam fairs in this part of France have been cancelled due to high fire risk and no steam trains running either.
Well again no storm last night could lightening in the distance but not here lets hope next weeks storms appear as we really need rain now although we have had a couple of days with dew on the cars and grass so it is getting cooler at nights.
Have a good bank holiday weekend folks. Our friends are collecting his sister today from Toulouse airport but not until about 6.30pm this evening and the roads could be busy as last weekend for folks leaving from their holidays although our friends will not be on any of the main roads.
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Both the French & Germans know how to use wood intelligently & appropriately👍🏻
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Forgot to ask how much is a stere of wood in UK here it is about 50-60 euros a stere, we had a friend in Somerset who used to do wood and said we were a bit too pricey here but did have his own wood he and his wife were good friends of ours but just over two years ago he passed away with cancer it was a shock to see him whilst we were there in 2019.
Rocky you would love to see the stacks of wood around some of the villages around here some of them look like small trains about 1metre high and 50-100 metres long, sorry to say we do not have one as it is a modern bungalow may think again this year though as we do have a chimney on the roof and all the right fire proof stuff on the ceiling and walls, over here you have to send a copy of the chimney cleaner's invoice to the insurance company every year otherwise no house insurance it is compulsory here not sure about UK.
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Dorset steam fair ,it reminded me of a trip to it some years ago a good friend of ours and his OH had a motor caravan and he had been blind since about nine we were all staying in Dorset and we took them to the fair OHs did the stalls him and I did the vehicles he liked traction engines but had never been up close! It made for an "interesting couple of hours" as many owners allowed him and i to get on the footplates and one let him steer a showmans engine that was an experience!!!
So after that we went to the fair ground on the dodgems ,of course I let him drive 👍good job he new his left from his right as I gave instructions 😬
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Buying in logs😱😲 We seldom have to buy in, and if we do we shop around. Someone has cut down a very big tree on the edge of our local dog walk woods, a huge Ash I think. All the wood is just outside their garden fence, and has been drying out all Summer. Most dog walks, we both grab a log and take home, or if it’s a big one carry it between us. We often meet others doing the same, it’s quite a Club now. Likewise, the gardeners who look after Mum’s garden, they often take down smaller trees, so I get them to drop it off here, give them a bit for it, and then we cut, store and dry it. We are just coming to the end of the wood we had from having our beech trees cut back three years ago, so we have had a bumper three years. One of BIL’s does gardens and trees as well, his son was an Arborist, (sold his soul to Banking now, he’s earning a packet, but doesn’t look as fit🤣) so that’s more wood shared. We forage woods for dry kindling as well. Tesco bag for life every dry walk, soon fills our store, great dried out. If we could be bothered to take a wheel barrow into woods, we could fill it easily day after day with fallen stuff. We are fit enough, and happy enough to do this at the moment, so it’s a win win for us. Our stove is DEFRA approved. And fitted by an approved fitter. We are just about to do a bit of maintenance on it, new bricks, clean flue, new door rope seal, then a polish. It warms the whole house, best thing we ever did.
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Don’t you have a window wall Debsc? You can fit a stove into the corner of a room, so long as the steel double walled flue can go to outside? Even if the only outside wall has something like a conservatory on it, they can exit the flue through wall high up, then take it out of conservatory.
Well worth investigating if you fancy one, but the prices have rocketed lately with all the energy costs.
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I would too enjoy seeing them👍🏻. I used to create the stacks particularly weed trees(not to your extent) in hard to get to woodland that the forest fellers & forwarders couldn’t get to. I still play at it but no big jobs mind my tickets have lapsed😊
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I wonder if the installation of a wood burning stove without an existing chimney is a bit like the conundrum of whether to install solar panels? Given that a log burner will heat one room, depending on the layout of the house you will still need central heating for the rest of the house albeit probably at a much lower level. So you have to balance the cost of the logs at around £120 a cubic metre, using between 2 and 6 cubic metres over the winter period depending on how frequently you use the stove against the reduction in gas or oil, or even perhaps electricity. Add to that the system initial cost of between £1500 and £5000 you do really have to be sure it will achieve the savings you think it will. In the longer term you will likely have to deal with the possibility that they will be banned, certainly in urban areas and there are several campaigns trying to achieve that end.
David
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Our stove heats the rooms downstairs that we live in DK. That’s what we call our Winter room, which is on shady side of house, and we now have it open plan with wide square opening into kitchen area. All we have other than the stove in this area is a tiny radiator, which is seldom on. There’s currently a doorway into hallway, but no door on it, so the heat from the stove rises up the stairs, and heats the landing and takes the chill off the bedrooms. My plan this Winter is to experiment with a curtain to the hall door, trapping the stove heat in the two rooms we live in by day, then open the curtain mid evening, so that it goes upstairs, and only use the central heating for an hour or so before bed, and an hour as we get up. We have never had heating on overnight, neither of like it warm at night.
Stoves are about getting the draught’s right as well, you want the heat pulled through and circulating, so there’s always a couple of windows cracked somewhere in the house. All our windows have proper quality curtains with thermal linings, doors have curtains, and we are careful about sealing the draughts we don’t want, but letting the house breathe. we had underfloor insulation put in a few years ago, which has also helped.
The jury is out on just how polluting DeFRA approved stoves are. Modern ones, used properly, with approved fuels, and dry wood aren’t thought as bad as they were initially. Not good for places like London I’d agree, but that a geographical anomaly as much as anything else. Besides, who would police it🤷♀️ Our little street of ten houses has four with stoves, but I doubt occasional visitors are even aware. Open fires and stoves have always been popular up here, more a necessity for some to keep warm than something pretty to have as an option. Living with lots of woodlands around means that we don’t worry too much about wood. We have quarter filled one store on a walk today! Simply picking up fallen branches, tinder dry, practically ready to burn. Our stove has been in seven years now, and I think we have bought about two loads in that time.
There’s work required sometimes, but a task I love is swinging a big axe onto a very dry log😁 Biggest issue in our house is shifting pooch from his rug. 🤣
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We have two wood burning stoves - a large one in our main kitchen/living/dining/office room, that is really our only heat. We have a smaller one in the sitting room, but that’s only used when we have visitors. No central heating - but the heat spreads out and upwards to the bedrooms and other office.
We don’t buy in wood, and the winter storms we’ve had these past few years provide enough fallen trees for both us and our son.
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The only window wall we have is at the front of the house and has a full width window in it. The back wall has bi folding glass doors. A few that we know about in our road have checked, like us, and the high cost, due to the design of the living room is prohibitive. Also, as We intend to put the house back on the market again soon, not worth doing now, but something to consider if we do move.
Having a very difficult time at the moment with visiting dog, why do things go wrong when their owners are away. All very stressful and will be very glad when her family are back next week. Our son is abroad as well and his dog has just had to have an operation, so glad that we don’t have that one as well.
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DEFRA is a Govt department, DEFRA is actually giving certain wood burning stoves accreditation & recommendation to be used, I doubt that would be the case if they will ever be banned. The Govt can’t stop criminals due to the Police service being woefully underfunded, I doubt they will ever be charging the Police service to track down folk burning wood to stay alive tbh. DK if you had any concept at all of the World of trees, stoves & wood burning I may be willing to listen to your points. With no nastiness whatsoever-you don’t have any idea of stoves or wood burning because if you had you wouldn’t be making these errant statements. The use of stoves are too ingrained in this Country’s culture & soul to be banned. You have an opinion I respect that but fundamentally disagree with said opinion. I would never try to argue with you re anything Moho as I don’t know enough about them.
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We have an open fire, stoves are more efficient but if we put one in now we'd have to demolish a nice hamstone fireplace built by people we knew and they managed to get us a hamstone hearth from the local quarry on Ham Hill. So a bit of a palaver to replace! The mantlepiece came from an adjoining farm, it's a solid oak beam from an old plough system, the horse rein hook still sits in the middle, a bit of history. All our wood is gathered by us, mostly from our trees. A toasting fork, an iron chestnut pan and my grandpa's heavy duty Birmingham made brass poker complete the winter picture! However we rely on gas to heat our radiators and don't light the fire everyday but it's great for power cuts. I'm going to get our gas kettle down from the rack as I've read it's cheaper to boil water on gas than electric!
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Thanks for that. My point re ‘this Country’s heart & soul’ you have eloquently written about. FWIW I wouldn’t touch your set up either. I hope who ever follows you into your home has your heart & soul & respects that living history.
PS-I have a flat top stove with a whistle kettle on it. The tea does taste better👍🏻
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Our friends used to have a place in France before the husband became so ill. Anyone who was staying with them who went for a walk in the surrounding woodland was not allowed back in the house unless they brought some wood for their stove with them!
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I don't think I was expressing a personal opinion on wood burning stoves but more going through the thought processes one would have to go through if deciding to invest in such a change? I was talking about people thinking of installing from scratch not people who already have them. I don't think it unfair or biased to point out that wood burning stoves could be subject to restriction in the future in order to reduce emissions. If you are starting from new and investing a lot of money installing a stove and chimney it would make sense to take that possibility into consideration, wouldn't it?
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A tale of two motorhomes - part 1
Yesterday it was cold enough that for the first time that I could remember this summer I had to put a fleece while today it's back to lovely warm to hot sunshine.
A cycle ride up to the Tyne where crossing the Tyne Bridge I spotted a large queue and stopping to have a look I found out there was a zip wire from the bridge across to the other side down to the quayside. If you look carefully at the second photo you can spot someone below the no in north on the bridge and in-between the two bridges behind. I did enquire if I could take my bike down with me but alas no...
Then the lovely red MH (or it is a camper van?) which was the first interesting MH find of today.
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A tale of two motorhomes - part 2
Having my lunch at North Shields fish quay where I spotted this coach, now at first I though it was a tourist bus but then I noticed five bikes on the back, not normally done on a coach trip? I looked further and found out that is was actually a coach that had been converted into a motorhome, what do you call this type of motorhome? It even had a waste water drain on the opposite side so must have it's own facilities.
I must say I'm very impressed!
Then up along to Tynemouth, a great day out.
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Great looking bus, Corners. I’m not sure I’d like to take it to the Altnaharra site though😀
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