the daydream fund challenge thread

Lotus-eater

alfie_1 wrote: »

i got some by the Q yd and it arrived in big white bag, when i put in woodshed, it was HALF the quantity by the truck load.....same price.....RIP OFF !! so be carefull!!
iv just found a great supplier and im storing it up while hes still got it.!!

lostinrates wrote: »

I'm going to buy some wood in January, and I've already decided to buy from the people who sell by cubic metre not the ones who sell by tonne to help guard against that.

You never buy wood by weight, otherwise you are paying a premium for unseasoned wet heavy wood.

Buying wood by the cubic metre is good, but make sure it's a proper cubic metre and not a builders bag cubic metre, because as alfie says, the way wood is tumbled into one of those bags, they actually get about half a cubic metre to fill one.

And it's worth getting a moisture metre and testing the wood, either before you buy if possible, or when it's delivered. Split a bit of wood and test the inside bit.
At best it should be less than 20% moisture.

The best advice is to send any wood back that isn't that moisture level. However it's up to you if you want to tell a huge bloke with a truck and trailer who has a pitchfork in one hand and has just used it to tip a whole load of cut wood onto your drive, to take the whole lot back and you're not paying him anything.
Word tends to get around Which is the reason I now can't get a plasterer, nor plumber :rotfl:

But you should stress before you buy wood that you want to know the dryness of it, the bloke selling it might not know the moisture %age content, but he'll have a very good idea how dry it is.
I don't mind buying wetter wood, but I want to know before I purchase it, not in the least because you really can't burn it straight away.

lostinrates

Had any one else forgotten what the colour green looked like? Its amazing to have no frost outside. ESpecially as its still nice and dry here! Not much mud at all.

Nice break before it hits again next week!

choille

Had to run around yesterday like headless chickens!

Torrential rain & our bridge OH made over to the veg garden is holding up but it is like white water flooding over it - There must be flooding in built up places.

Supposed to refreeze next week so I want to get out to Inverness but OH is still not back from a survey.

The tax credit thing was bad & we kept querying it but - like you, were still getting it. It's been tight but I wouldn't want to go back to having to pay money back so we jsut struggle on.

Well it's typical West Coast rain today - curtains of the stuff moving across, obscuring the mountains - yuck.

alfie_1

Poppycat1 wrote: »

Just wanted to say hello again, I am still lurking but don't post. When I saw my name come up I thought I had been posting in my sleep, lol.

Still trying to save for the dream small house with big garden and no morgage. Seems ages away but I take small steps each month towards it.

I am collecting two more chickens on Sunday from the rescue centre, Mr Fox got three since September. The two that are left get on really well. I hope that bringing two more in will be ok and they wont fight too much, will see.

poppy....well done with the weight loss... hope you feel better for it. my mother is always saying shes too fat ! shes 79 and iv just visited my parents today and saw her in smart black trousers and top with a cerise cardigan lookin half her age ! there was i stood in their kitchen in mank jeans, hay strewn wooly jumper and welly socks to my knees:o feeling like a poor mans refugee in comparison !! i always say its not what size you are , its what you do with it!!
iv been told we are due snow late sunday/monday... hope its not sunday, supposed to be going to the O2 for WAR OF THE WORLDS !! driving will be a "war" getting there/back otherwise!:(
oh well, im off for a soak and to use that "bottle" that says im not really going grey,i just need a bit of help !!:rotfl:

lostinrates

No mortgage sounds a REALLY long way away! I wan to join MFW but ATM I think it would be more daunting than helpful. We were overpaying for a couple of months after paying for moving costs and before starting to get big bills, but ATM no chance!

The thaw has come through to the troughs at last, they are very slowly dripping through,hope they fill soon,we'll turn water off again tonightand on in the morning.

An amazing thing happened this afternoon, neighbours, whose familyhave lived in the village since the time the new part of our house was built(1740!) dropped in to say hello. Really amazingly sweet people who remember our house before half was pulled down, and who sai they'd hoped we'd reinstate it They also suggested very strongly that its no0t a spring but laziness on the part of the water compnay....they themselves helped their father put water supply from their farm to ours in 193Os!

alfie_1

thats better... clean and hair looks 10yrs younger!!:T i wish !!:rotfl:
anyway i too have been pleased that the water troughs are LESS frozen. we had no problem with the underground pipes freezing just the ballcocks tank frozen solid! have now freed them so water is a flowin !
i was gobsmacked to see children and adults playing ice hockey on our local frozen lake.... IT IS DEEP! i have passed them most early evenings and have been mortified that these adults are risking thier kids lives..?? it is getting dark and god forbid anything happened i would be angry that vital emergency services would have to deal with it! i was also amazed that they were throwing balls for dogs over the ice?? last winter a dog drowned there by doing this.. they are all "locals" who obviously think they are invincible..... makes me so :mad:
im heading towards being one of the GRUMPY OLD WOMEN ...

Davesnave

Spent the whole day driving today. It's end of term, so had to pick DD1 up from Poole, but that was after DW's nasal x-ray in Barnstaple, 22 miles in the opposite direction!

We have hardwood logs coming tomorrow, but I think the sheep are paying for those. We had some softwood in the week. A trailer load of that is only £35, but I'd not call it fully dried. Now we've repaired the log store roof ,I'm building up a collection from that source and hanging onto it for a year.

On the subject of Tax Credits, we were once underpaid the child element, and by the time we realised, they told us it was too late to claim. By some miracle, I actually got through to a human being on their 'phone line, who showed some sympathy, but she said that they couldn't consider our claim unless we'd been misled. She spelled the last bit out very carefully and I took the hint.

So, I wrote a letter claiming that the communications we'd had from the Tax Credits office had been misleading, and spelled out why. It wasn't hard, because they really had confused us. I sent it off, without any real hope of success, but about a week or two later, we were told that our claim had been accepted and the missing amount (about £1000) was paid.

We were never overpaid, but in the early days a lot of people were, and as some of you have said, it was pretty well impossible for the recipients to know this, until it was too late.:(

lostinrates

alfie_1 wrote: »

thats better... clean and hair looks 10yrs younger!!:T i wish !!:rotfl:
anyway i too have been pleased that the water troughs are LESS frozen. we had no problem with the underground pipes freezing just the ballcocks tank frozen solid! have now freed them so water is a flowin !
i was gobsmacked to see children and adults playing ice hockey on our local frozen lake.... IT IS DEEP! i have passed them most early evenings and have been mortified that these adults are risking thier kids lives..?? it is getting dark and god forbid anything happened i would be angry that vital emergency services would have to deal with it! i was also amazed that they were throwing balls for dogs over the ice?? last winter a dog drowned there by doing this.. they are all "locals" who obviously think they are invincible..... makes me so :mad:
im heading towards being one of the GRUMPY OLD WOMEN ...

Its crazy to be so foolhardy about ice. Terrifying. I've been insisting our dogs don't even go on our own ice rink (front drive) and the muck heap, which is an old slurry, so gathers rain but was frozen solid. Most of all, if they are allowed on there four days in a row, how will they know not to on the fifth, milder day when the ice might no longer be up to it.


Our troughs and supply pipes froze even though well lagged . DH just been out and says they, particularly the most favoured one, are barely dripping through, so the thaw was too little too late today. And three are frozen solid again, even though the weather sites say we should be a low of 2 degrees tonight. I think we'll try thatching the favoured one with hay tomorrow (we don't have any straw this year)

Tomorrow we have some fence patching t do (not dog proof ) and must do some poo picking while its milder.

Rummer

lostinrates wrote: »

must do some poo picking while its milder.

Something to look forward to :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

zarazara

I picked 3 wheelbarrows full this afternoon.