Site Discussions

The problem with the majority of outdoor boilers is that they aren’t used correctly… because the manufacturers don’t always tell you how to use them correctly. Almost all of these boilers are designed to gasify their fuel. Air is introduced in a way that the fuel is supposed to smolder, releasing flammable gases (largely CO), more air is then introduced to burn off the gases. The problem is that if you attempt to slow this gasification process by shutting down the air (damping) the flammable gases never burn, and leave the chimney as the thick whiteish gray smoke we see. When a wood fired appliance is hooked directly to a thermostat, this is exactly what it will do; when the thermostat stops calling for heat, it closes the dampers on the boiler, and you get incomplete combustion.

For this to work, the fire must be burned flat out as hot as possible, and the heat collected and stored in, for instance, a large tank of water. Then the heat can be taken from the water as it’s needed without having to control the fire. This is similar to what the Garn does. It has a huge reservoir of water that it heats up. With the addition of a properly sized heat storage tank, any modern gasifying boiler can become very efficient.

I had a catamount on my property in 2004. It was during daylight hours and I watched it from inside my house for about 5 minutes until it returned to the forest. I’m in the woods a lot as a fishing guide…etc. Definitely a catamount. I compare its size to larger than my border collie but smaller than my St. Bernard, probably 110 lbs. I recently (12/18/09) came home to find fresh prints of this animal. I have pictures of the print. When I make a fist, that is the size of this print. Please contact me for the picture or any info about this amazing creature.

Vermont Wood Pellet is located in North Clarendon, VT just south of Rutland, VT.  Our pellets are marketed as premium, but actually qualify as super premium based on the PFI standards.  In our last testing our pellets came back as: 

BTU/lb Heat Value 8389
Ash Content 0.27%
Moisture total 4.80%

If you have any questions or need any additional information please feel free to visit our website (currently being redeveloped, but still functional) or call us at 802-747-1093.

I grew up in a birding household and have gone on many birdwatching trips over 40+ years, and every one of the birders involved have used the term “pishing” rather than “spishing” to describe the sound we use to attract birds.

These folks are/were all from Connecticut; could it be we have a regionalism here? A Southern New England vs. Northern New England accent?

“Pish,” to my surprise, is actually in the dictionary, but the definition has nothing to do with birding: “[an interjection] used to express disdain or contempt.”

“Spish,” however, is a made-up word, surely devised for the purpose of attracting birds. It’s pure onomatopoeia: a word that sounds like the sound it’s describing.

Anyone know of other variations on this theme?

One of the many things I love about Northern Woodlands is that it includes art as part of its consciousness about the environment and associated lifestyles. The painting referenced in this blog beautifully captures the whole.

As the impact on roads increases with increased weight on an axle a single 40 ton truck can create the equivalent wear and tear as 9,600 cars. Personally I would prefer that damage to go to the Interstate as it gets better maintenance.

Great story.  I have never really considered how insects survive—I just figured short life spans—laying eggs which hatch in the spring.  Thanks for your article!

A trip through the digestive tract of a bird greatly increases the chance that a juniper seed will germinate. Although the seeds retain their viability for several years, the germination rate of seeds that have not been excreted by an animal is typically very low.

I worked in the pulp and paper industry for my entire working career. I watched chip trailers break while unloading on the chip dumps and saw the lack of good maintenance on the log trucks. I for one always had concerns and feel that rather than increase the load limit on interstate highways the limit should be at 80,000 pounds gross weight. It is well known that it takes longer to stop, the heavier the vehicle is. I don’t believe the brakes are maintained any better than the trailer. If anything we should be pushing for lower weight limits since we are not maintaining our highway infrastructure, we should at least extend the life of what we have.

Thanks for this interesting article! A refreshing take on the season.

Good that the trucks can get around better . . . but all I can think of is the poor souls in any vehicle trying to get across central Vermont to New York (and vice versa) who lost the Champlain Bridge. Now their routes are several hours longer!

How does efficiency of use of biomass in producing biochar compare with that for producing heat?  When one produces biochar, less heat is obtained than by burning, but then the biochar has important value as a soil additive and a means of sequestering carbon.  How does its value as such compare with that as a heat source?

Richard is a very warm and gentle soul, and this has been his love for many many years!  I respect and love him.

Dane

I know truckers won’t like to hear it, but there IS a practical limit on what highways can tolerate weight-wise. Every time a new housing development goes in here in the country, the concrete and block-delivery trucks annihilate the pavement and we run on wall to wall potholes for a couple years until the state gets around to repaving the roads. The irony in your neck of the woods was allowing them to run on the little roads, but not the big ones. Safety alone should have dictated otherwise.

Don’t forget Winterberry, Ilex verticillata, in our wetlands, too. Brilliant red berries if the migrating robins (and fawns, arggh) leave them alone!

Nice essay. Really captures the feeling of that first snow, especially when it comes late.

Reminds me of one of my favorite snowfall moments: The only times in my life when I experienced true and total silence were during soft snowfalls in a calm.

That Dave Mance who writes forest management plans is my dad. I’ll be sure to forward this to him, Mike. He’ll no doubt enjoy the trip down memory lane, even as he’s disappointed by the notion of veneer firewood.

Small world…

Totally unrelated to the article, other than there was crusty snow in Hardenburgh yesterday, I walked a property owned by the Zen Study Society that Dave Mance wrote a management plan for. It was a well written plan. Unfortunately, over the past twenty years, they allowed loggers to high grade their forest for their annual 100 cord fuel wood allotment. I’m afraid it was pretty expensive firewood. It is a good site to grow timber; but work will be needed to control beech suckers and it needs decades to recover from this cutting.

I thought you might like to hear a reminder of days past.

When first married, we ate lots of porcupine pot roasts. After a few helpings, one remembers how the den trees smell which cuts the appetite. Too many porcupines in an area can have a significant impact on hemlock and hard maple timber. During one week in the early 1970’s, I shot 53 out of rage over their damage. Jae, the dog featured in the article by Doug Allen, Autumn of 2007, only encountered one porcupine. She even let me pull quills from in her mouth without trying to bite me.

I moved after living in 1 location 23 years due to outdoor stove no neighbors had a stove in new location for 4 years now there is no clean air to breath even inside my house. Can’t wait for the outlaw of these smoldering pieces of junk. Need representatives to pass laws.