• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

No Smoke with Fire?

Rod

Rod

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A while back I bought a dustbin type incinerator to burn up scraps of wood.
I gave it a go this afternoon burning some dry off-cuts from my shed build with a very poor outcome - lots of smoke!
So much so I had to abandon the task having "ruined" the washing my wife had hanged outside in our other garden [emoji10]
Any suggestions as to what I'd done wrong - I'd thought the incinerator would reduce the amount of smoke - the wood was fairly small stuff and well dry.

Rod
 
Did the fire get going well? A poor fire can produce lots of smoke, so possibly you have inadvertently restricted the air supply. Post a photo, that should give us a clue.
 
ooh ! I like fire !!! .. I'm with MG .. more info please :-)

also

"dry offcuts" .. people pay good money and postage/or collect for those , if you can be bothered with the effort ?

:)
 
It is a cheap Aldi version of one of these

http://www.homebase.co.uk/en/homebaseuk ... 0cm-095958

Wood was scrap bits of trellis, some softwood bits from my old shed (which had been painted on one side with Cuprinol garden shed paint), a few bits of Rose branches (really dry) and some paper to get the fire going (splashed with a bit of turps).
Perhaps it was the paint that caused the smoke?
It did produce an awful lot!

However I've been banned from using it again so going to be hard now to improve my technique? [emoji53]
I was hoping over time to burn a lot of paper but looks like I'll have to resort to the shredder?

Rod
 
paper is hard to burn much of.
a few bits to get it lit, but after that it will tend to smother the fire
Unless you stand and feed one sheet at a time !

As for the wood .. start with a small fire, get it burning well, and slowly add more .
It needs lots of air, so don't use the lid until its burning without smoke.
Once it's going it "should" draw enough air in through those holes at the bottom, but you have to keep them clear with a pokey stick or something :-)

but if you've been banned from using it .. you'll never know ! :lol:
 
I've destroyed 3 of this over recent years doing the same as you Rod, so I suspect it to be the paint. I have given up on those type and bought an old oil can type with only 4 holes at the base and can burn everything in that and being of much thicker metal it is and will last much longer.

I would give it another go on a day when there's no washing out.

Cheers
Mark
 
You can use them to burn paper but it does need a little effort. I grab a handful of sheets of A4, say, using a pair of gripper gloves and basically just scrunch them up a bit. This separates them and lets air get in amongst them. Bank statements and confidential waste etc soon go.

Mind you, now I've lost our dumping ground (see other thread) I've also lost our burning area.
 
I can't see that having enough of an air supply. A good trick to get it roaring (and therefore burning cleanly) is to point an electric paint stripper into the fire through one of those air holes. It's like using bellows, but much more efficient. You'll lose lots of brownie points if you are caught using a hair drier for this job, but that works too.
 
Yes and a lot of washing smelling of smoke!

I even had to change all my clothes and have a shower as I was reeking the house out. [emoji3]

I might give it another try when "conditions" allow - I have a blowtorch I could possibly use to get things started?

Rod
 
Rod":q01mkld0 said:
I have a blowtorch I could possibly use to get things started?

Rod
Click to expand...

It is one of those chicken and egg things Rod. Good air flow comes from a good hot fire inside and a good hot fire draws in lots of air. The process is only limited by the size of the air holes and adequate fuel.
A blower is possible easiest and no fuel used but a blowtorch might help provide you don't insert it too far in such that it starves itself of air.

Bob
 
9fingers":wvypsihj said:
Mike G":wvypsihj said:
You'll lose lots of brownie points if you are caught using a hair drier for this job, but that works too.
Click to expand...

+1 very much along the lines of burning out the oil from brake lining on the kitchen hob and clean engine parts in the dishwasher.
Leads to over emotion I find!

Bob
Click to expand...

And washing smelly trainers in the washing machine.

Or using the microwave to dry wood.
 
I had to get rid of a massive pile of branches and hedge trimmings in the garden (clearing the area where my workshop will go eventually). Hired a woodchopper but unless you get the ones with the power feed it took so long i barely touched the pile before my hire ran out.

Tried burning some stuff but it was fairly wet still and was keen not to upset the neighbours so i found some videos on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cim4WDyHX08

So i experimented with my leaf blower and an oil drum and then bit the bullet and bought a £40 bouncy castle inflator to hook up to it and created this:



it was pretty good, i basically put the metal pipe (100mm diameter) into 3 bricks and built the soil up and over it then placed the barrel with no base or top onto the soil got the fire going then flicked the fan on. Once going there was virtually no smoke it was so hot, quite a few embers flying about mind.

I couldn't do a lot of the bigger branches and the tree stumps i had so i then removed the barrel and simply built the bonfire over the brick cavity with the pipe in it, again got the fire going and it got ridiculously hot. 5 massive tree stumps burned to nothing in about half a day.

 
It works really well :eusa-dance:

Not quite a monastery just a house built in the grounds of an old house with a walled garden. All that cob wall needs some fairly serious work and the tiles re doing. It's on my list to do....
 
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