Preparedness for when

S_Wales_Saver

Elantan that's exactly the one I want! OH is slooowly coming round to the idea. What do you burn?

Frugalsod

Re that missing plane.

It may have been stolen! Not sure what to make of this

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/03/13/mh370_disappearance_could_the_missing_malaysia_airlines_plane_have_been.html

elantan

S_Wales_Saver wrote: »

Elantan that's exactly the one I want! OH is slooowly coming round to the idea. What do you burn?

Thanks everyone :-) will look into getting a rug once were all sorted with the house

S Wales saver, this is the 33 we have the 23 as well ( also air kits and remote controls) so if I can help in anyway let me know currently we are burning wood and briquettes but will be getting a bag or two of anthracite as well

We using a lot of pallets as well, we were very unsure about using them as there are nails etc in them but we have been assured that it is ok

As I say anything else feel free to ask

S_Wales_Saver

El thanks for that. I'm looking to get one to put a kettle on and do more than heat up mince pies at Christmas - remember mum doing that in the late 50s with a Rayburn stove. Very new fangled at that time (changed from an open fire with back boiler for hot water)

This one is ideal for heating and second string cooking isn't it? I may well come for more info. Did you have an existing chimney or did you have a flue added?

elantan

I cooked the casserole on it today and plan in cooking steaks, pancakes etc on it I have heated water for a wee cuppa on it, I will say this ... It tales time about 30 mins for a kettle, I had the casserole on for 4 hours today and it was just ready to eat, so don't expect fast food, I was putting the fire in today anyway so it wasn't a problem, but I wouldn't put the fire on just to cook

We had two flue's fitted at a very high cost, in fact the whole project has been very expensive and an awful lot of hassle, we still don't have a working living room and our house is a disaster tbh.

If I knew before we started what exactly would be entailed then no I woulnt have done it, it is far far far more money than budgeted or hoped for, I doubt if we will ever break even, but all of that aside, I do love my fires, I love going and collecting wood, chopping wood, building wood stores, cooking on the fire, cozying up at night time and the feelings of usefulness relaxation and happiness that I get from the fires...

Si_Clist

elantan wrote: »

We using a lot of pallets as well, we were very unsure about using them as there are nails etc in them but we have been assured that it is ok

Well, fwiw we scrounged over 100 pallets a couple of years ago when they built a little ghetto of deluxe executive-style homettes with bat boxes on at the back of us, and in our experience ...

1 Most pallets are put together using annular ("ring") nails which are to all intents and purposes impossible to pull out

2 The best way to cut them up is with a small chainsaw (we use an electric one) and a lot of care - the best order in which to cut is a matter for trial and error, but it's a lot easier with a helper

3 If they have hardened mortar splatted on them, that will gubber up your chain so you need something like a bushman saw with a half-dead blade

4 The corner blocks burn OK if they're solid wood. The "chipboard" blocks don't

5 Burning pallet wood is in general like burning any other building timber - you need to watch the temperature. Personally we wouldn't burn it without getting a stove thermometer first.

In the end, we burned some of our stash including all the useable corner blocks, but cut the rest up into 6" or so lengths and stacked it under cover. We now have at least one lifetime's supply of nice dry wood ideal for chopping into kindling

BTW, if you're burning logs, IMO a moisture meter is money well spent. We've had one of these for years. Odds on if you get one, you'll find that logs which you were sure were dry aren't quite, and vice versa.

GreyQueen

Morning all.

Love the pic of the stove.

I've tried to dismantle pallets on the lottie (I inherited some) and they are beggars. I ended up borrowing a 'gorilla bar' from a neighbour and wrenching them apart. An excellent workout.....:rotfl:

Re blackcurrants, I accidentally gave my solitary blackcurrant bush just what the doctor ordered. I was offered the chance to remove this small blackcurrant bush from the flowerbed behind a rented house where a pal lived. They'd been given it and were now moving on to a flat. So, I planted it and it basically did nowt for a couple of years. Think of about 12 berries and you get the picture.

Then, it got in the way of a 4 tonne delivery of mixed farmyard manure (cow and pig) and spent several months over winter semi buried in the heap. Darlings, it was like nothing you ever saw, blessed thing quadrupled in size and fruited heavily. I read later in a book that there is nothing that a blackcurrant bush loves more than heavy manuring. I'd ignorantly turbo-charged it.............:rotfl:I chuck a bit of manure under it whenever I have some and it's large, rumbustious and fruits heavily.

I sort-of prune it in the autumn by thinning out some of the older branches, or it'd take over that end of the lottie all on its ownsome. It hasn't objected to my actions yet.

paidinchickens

That is why I'm getting bigger then GQ, because of all the carp that keeps coming my way


I need a book for all these quick tips!

PiC x

thriftwizard

I ignore them, I don't fuss just leave them be,plenty of water and sun and that's it. my sister is a qualified landscape gardner thing tree surgeon etc... and she cuts hers down every year and gets a pathetic return on them, I gave up even cutting them down and I get a great load every year. she cant understand this my motto is if it aint broke don't fix it. maybe just let them do their own thing as they would in the wild and see what happens hth xxxx I am no big gardener just a potterer so will prob get grilled for doing that once a proper gardener comes along.

That's more or less what we do! Heaven only knows what "brand" ours are, as they've all been donated or scrumped from the wild, but we're usually eating raspberries from late May/early June to clear through to December. Mostly they just get ignored, mulched with chicken run straw in late Winter/early Spring, and anything obviously dead removed. However, from time to time Him Indoors will get excitable, dig some up & move them, but it doesn't stop them for long. Oddly, our big redcurrant bush also gave us two distinct crops last year; it's never done that before, so I was half expecting it to die, but it seems have good sturdy buds on it again.

Another one suffering from stove envy here. We only have a tiny living room, so can't go very high in terms of heat output; I want one of these - the Typhon to be precise, which has a tiny oven on top, just big enough for a small casserole dish, baking tray or handful of baked potatoes. But we'll need some surgery to the actual fireplace, the original Edwardian one having been replaced by a 1980s low brick hole, plus a replacement chimney pot, and that's the expensive bit!

the_cake

Unless your garden soil is already acid, coffee grounds can help your raspberries:
http://voices.yahoo.com/gardening-tip-coffee-grounds-2863311.html?cat=32
I also put them on our roses and geraniums; drinking 'real' coffee is one of my (sadly few!) vices, so may as well get some extra benefit from it.... oh, and they deter slugs. Win, win, win, slurp. x