Seasons Greetings Illustration

[Ed]

Sounds very interesting but scary

A friend of mine recently fitted a wood burning boiler for somebody with a joinery shop.  Prior to the boiler being fitted, they had to pay for the wood shavings to be taken away and disposed of.  Now it heats both the house and the joinery shop, as well as providing all of the domestic hot water and powering several heat-sink radiators in the garden, just to get rid of the excess heat.  It works like the old coal boilers - where an Archemedes screw pushes the sawdust and shavings into the burner from a hopper.  Simple but very effective.

I can imagine it wouldn't be too difficult to hitch it up to a steam turbine and generate electicity from it.  The only problem is the set-up costs as usual, being green isn't cheap, is it?

[JoyceCarter]

Sounds like an excellent system.  As you say, the setup costs are the problem.  All the while we've lived in this town, I've said we ought to use some form of wind-power, as this area is the last of the high plain before it drops into the river valley.  Pay for itself  in a couple of years, they said.  Fine, if I'd ever had the odd few thousand pounds lying around in the first place...