A woodland house

Lovely bit of timber there. 

Go get 'em, SWMBO!!!

You should have asked SEE.  A neighbour here had a massive tree very close to the lines that he wanted down.  After a bit of asking about he contacted SSE ans they came round and felled it for him for free.

@ProDave we had a lot of chat with them. Their policy depends on how they perceive the risk to their lines. If you go to them and ask them to take a tree down, then they'll do it for free if it's in their interests. If it's not, then you either pay them (and they're tree felling costs are extortionate), you pay a contractor with utility arb tickets, or you just DIY.

That's good to hear you got the grant. The scheme is not that well known and it appears to be just word mouth that allows others to find out about it.

 

Are there any other works you can do to get the quote lower. I went down the route of ducting rather than blinding the trenches and the one of SSE employee mentioned "that everybody would be doing this if they knew it could save £2,000".

 

Our connection fee of 210 meters with a SSE also paying a for road crossing was originally quoted at £9,600 in 2015!

 

After deducting the SSE grant, use of ducting and changing the route slightly this came down to a final net figure of £4,500 after deducting for the cost of the ducting.

Seems to be with the electricity companies if you don't ask you don't get.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

@Thedreamer , indeed, the trust website is well squirreled away, we only found out about it when the SSE connections quoter mentioned it. Nearly all of our connection is above ground - t off the HV line, new pole, new transformer. Small bit of trenching from the bottom of the new pole to our box (5m) which I've said we'll do ourselves. I've had a couple of chats with SSE but not really made much headway in terms of finding another approach (though the price has come down a bit since we got our original quote). Other than that it's tricky to see where we might save. Most of the work is non-contestable.

the milled lumber --I would just keep it under cover but plenty of ventilation ,its the way all wood was seasoned once upon a time ,slowly-is best 

@scottishjohn yep, it's well stickered and now covered. I suspect we'll need to kiln it towards the end, but time will tell.

Paint the ends of the boards with cheap gloss paint. 

 

Couple of scaffold boards across the top, tarp over it but make sure the ends are covered from the top but still exposed. 

30 minutes ago, PeterW said:

Paint the ends of the boards with cheap gloss paint.

 

What does that do? Stop drying out through the ends so that it dries more evenly along the length?

7 minutes ago, Ed Davies said:

Stop drying out through the ends so that it dries more evenly along the length?

That’s correct, it’s been done like this for a very long time, I think they used to use some sort of lanolin mixture..... I just use whatever I can find but floor paint is great !

37 minutes ago, Ed Davies said:

 

What does that do? Stop drying out through the ends so that it dries more evenly along the length?

 

Yep - stops ends cracking open as they dry faster. 

 

The other issue is airflow - I’ve seen people build virtually airtight covers for wood stacks and wondered why they rot as the moisture can’t get out and the beasties find nice moist areas between the boards. The quickest and cheapest fingers are offcuts from the sides of boards as you trim them once you’ve cut them to thickness. 

 

Polytunnels make great drying sheds as you can open them up at the ends to get airflow but can also increase the heat by either the sun or even use heaters. Just don’t use gas heaters as they create more moisture than the remove unless you have them externally vented !! 

My brother set up a firewood drying shed on the farm, using the old Dutch barn we had.  He covered the floor in pallets, stacked two high, then stacked a few dozen tonnes of logs in there to season.  Worked a treat, as air was able to circulated through the stack pretty easily.  The fact that the edges of the stack used to get wet from the rain didn't seem to matter at all, as they ended up just as dry and the logs in the middle after a couple of years or so.