Small things matter

[Joeboy]

Wondering if anyone else has used significantly less wood in their WBS this Winter?

I ask as I seem to remember emptying both woodstores by end of Spring (June) last year. This year we have 2/3rds of the big woodstore remaining. At a rough guess that's about half the total start Winter volume left over?

I did do some further sealing around the house and added more insulation where I could across last year but not massively and not to a value of 6 cubic mtr split logs surely?

Just checked my year end 21 & 22 figures and they are very similar in kWh combined across both grid fuels although the volumes used of each swapped places with our using more electricity in 22 and minimal gas. Could be the effect of the second PV system or the efficiency of the storage heaters over gas?

Not sure at all but its a bit of a shock (pleasant) when the penny dropped and its all just sitting there being proof of something....

[Moxi]

Same here, we ended up with a third of the wood store still unused, albeit a much smaller wood stack than most people have on the forum, for the most part I put it down to a very mild winter here in North Wales.

Moxi

[Mr Gus]

Joe hit me up with your address, as per PM, your box is ready to go.

[Joeboy]

Joe hit me up with your address, as per PM, your box is ready to go.

Thanks Gus, PM sent.

[Joeboy]

Well, that's the WBS back on. Like we've never been away. It is heating big lounge, doing its tumble dryer bit, heating through a chicken and lentil balti. Cooking rice and also pasta .

I have missed my multipurpose pal!

Odd, I felt like a bit of a daftie messing about with the Dubai style bulbs a few days ago Yet here we are, dinner for two days cooking on WBS, classic FM blasting through the vintage B&O's. House is lit up for a handful of Watts and we still have 250W incoming as it absolutely BUCKETS down! There is the merest flow of electrons to the batteries while the aforementioned background daily life is ongoing but its there. Might even add up to 1% stack charge by close of play

I don't want to sound smug but I swear I could hear a click as it all effortlessly fell into place.

The 5 day forecast is lashapour but I think I'll hold off any grid charging and see if my low use talk and oversized array will do what its been designed for. Exciting!

Edit- Next morning, 40% SOC in the stack to begin the day. HWT fully hot from battery stack overnight as this is critical to survive the Wrath of SWMBO. Grey skies abound but with 2kW+ incoming at 08.30hrs.

[Mr Gus]

That's an expensive yankee candles habit you have there Joe

[Joeboy]

That's an expensive yankee candles habit you have there Joe

Certainly is! Recently melted the remains of the lot of them on the WBS and made up two new ones with narroli essential oil from India trip and wick from Turkish bazaar.

[Bugtownboy]

A nice ‘circular’ meal tonight.

Decided to cook in the outside cooker - used the prunings (those round about an 1” in diameter) from the garden fruit trees (Apple, Pear, Cherry, Olive and Fig) to heat the stove.

Cooked roast summer veg (only courgette and garlic from the garden, unfortunately) with Za’atar flat bread (accompanied by Tzatziki with garden grown Cucumber and garlic).

Interesting thing with the prunings, Fig wood burns with a strong smell of Coconut. I knew fig leaves can be used to give a coconut flavour to dishes, just hadn’t expected the wood to smell the same.

It’s not brill in the fire - quite light, burns quickly without embers.

Not be good on a cold winters night

[Mr Gus]

Might not be winter calorific needs as you say, but that's not to say it likely works in late spring - now for exactly what you are doing, ..better get some bags in, & a bigger storage area (under the cover of that hot tub)

[Joeboy]

A nice ‘circular’ meal tonight.

Decided to cook in the outside cooker - used the prunings (those round about an 1” in diameter) from the garden fruit trees (Apple, Pear, Cherry, Olive and Fig) to heat the stove.

Cooked roast summer veg (only courgette and garlic from the garden, unfortunately) with Za’atar flat bread (accompanied by Tzatziki with garden grown Cucumber and garlic).

Interesting thing with the prunings, Fig wood burns with a strong smell of Coconut. I knew fig leaves can be used to give a coconut flavour to dishes, just hadn’t expected the wood to smell the same.

It’s not brill in the fire - quite light, burns quickly without embers.

Not be good on a cold winters night

Would you try a homebuilt smoker on the fruit woods?
That could be quite good on fatty pork? I like the circular idea especially at 1" dia. Not going to use that for much else but to cook and infuse, nice.

The day was quite harsh, didn't see any real sun until after 5pm but it went straight up to 5.8kW incoming when it did appear. No regrets as we are ending up at 78% soc. Hopefully get a few kWh's into EV tomorrow but so far we are still offgrid..

WBS is on gentle, 1 knotty awkward log per hour culled from the bottom woodstore restack and folding solar is on It's holiday yet continuing to charge the phones!