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  • From: Graham <grahamburnett@blueyonder.co.uk>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Wood
  • Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 22:41:39 +0100

We have just installed a wood fuled Rayburn to do our hot water, central heating and cooking into our very urban situated Victorian terraced house. Previously we'd had to heat our house in winter using 2 gas fires plus some small portable electric heaters, which was fossil fuel based, very unsustainable and inefficient. Also we used a gas cooker to do our cooking before. The wood we are using to fuel the rayburn is all properly seasoned logs cut from local woodlands that for centuries have been coppice managed, combined with scrap timber scaveneged from around the town from skips (or 'dumpsters' as I believe our US cousins call them...), pallets, etc, etc, that otherwise would go for landfill or just clutter up the streets making them look unsightly...

Some of the trees in these woodlands are centuries old, having been cut on a regular coppice cycle they do not die when cut down, but are permanently renewed every 10 to 15 years, depending on the frequency of the cutting. If they weren't managed in this way the trees would have reached the end of their 'natural' lives proababy after 100 to 200 years depending on the species. Some of them are doing so now that coppicing as a woodland management techniques has been abandonded since the advent of 'cheap' coal fired electricty, gas and nuclear power. So by using sustainably harvested wood to fuel my home and provide my cooking needs I'm actually actively contributing to the longevity of the woodland and individual trees within it.

I'm also helping to maintain the biodiversity of that woodland by promoting coppicing, which periodically opens up the woodland floor, letting in light so that ground species can flourish in the niche this creates. There is a species of butterfly specific to this woodland that was thought to have become extinct when the coppicing regime was abandoned in this woodland for some 50 years or so following the decline of wood as a major fuel in the UK. When the coppicing was re-instated recently for 'conservation' reasons (tragically, such coppicing practices are still uneconomic as there is still not much demand for the timber, so most of it gets chipped for municpal mulch) this butterfly re-appeared again after some 4 decades of having thought to have been lost forever.

I'm also helping to provide a livlihood for a local person who cuts and supplies the wood and delivers it to me. I don't own a vehicle other than a bicycle and small trailer, so wouldn't be able to transport it myself.

Also, I see my wood pile by my kitchen door diminishing as I use it, which makes me think more carefully about how and when I use it. I'll put a jumper on before firing up the Rayburn to heat the house. With fossil fuels the supplies are invisible, I just flick the switch and the power and heat is there on demand, thus I take it for granted and don't think too much about how much is getting used...

Our next steps, proabably in the spring, will be to install solar water heating panels, and then make the house much more energy efficient by putting in double glazing, draft proofing, etc. proabably doing things in not quite the right order, but its a question of what and when we can afford to get stuff done... It also feels nice coming off of the National Grid as far as cooking and heating are concerned...

Cheers Graham



Andrew French wrote:
Honestly, it seems that urban folks can be overprotective about the
harvesting of small plots of trees. It's like in the movie, I Heart
Huckabees, where the main character is protecting that rock at the beginning
of the movie? Funny. I am urban but spend a lot of time in the rural areas.
There are a lot of trees that come down in storms, or underbrush that can be
cleared in a few acres of land. Every habitat is sacred, but so is human
habitat. I think that once you have designed your Zone 0 to use passive
technologies, like mass and solar water, then wood is the next best energy
equation.
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--
Graham Burnett

Integrated Design for Local Environmental Resources

www.spiralseed.co.uk

www.grahamburnett.net






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