Newsletters

Autumn 08 Newsletter
Issue 2

Latest News
Guidance documents
The Forest Fuels Team
Hot Chips Keep Crocs Smiling
Woodland Holiday Haven Goes Green
Woodfuel Solutions – Cost Saving Expertise

Latest News

As the trend for renewable energy gathers pace Forest Fuels is meeting demand head on.

MOD goes green
Forest Fuels has been awarded the contract to supply the MOD at Royal Marines Hamworthy, Poole, with woodchip for their 500kW biomass boiler. We are also delivering 150 tons per annum of woodchip on a long term contract to Allenby Barracks, Bovington.

Devon strengthens its green credentials
Devon County Council is installing a 840kW biomass boiler in its County Hall campus, Exeter, in late autumn and Forest Fuels has successfully won the contract to supply approximately 500 tonnes of woodchip per annum.

Lessons in Farming
Farms for City Children at Iddesleigh has installed a 300 kW biomass boiler and has taken its first delivery of woodchip from Forest Fuels. Started in 1976 the Devon based charity offers children and teachers from urban primary schools, the chance to live and work in the countryside for a week.

On-site chipping and delivery at Iddesleigh

School Fuel
Forest Fuels has just begun the contract to supply Penryn College, Cornwall and it has just taken its commissioning load of woodchip for a new boiler from Forest Fuels’ depot near Eden.

Heating Eden
The woodchip boiler at The Eden Project takes three deliveries of woodchip per week from Forest Fuels.

Forest Fuels now generates over 3,500 tonnes of woodfuel supply from a range of sources including forestry residues, sawmill waste and recycled material, which is delivered to 33 clients in the South West.

Guidance documents

As part of the South West Bioheat Programme, managed by Regen SW, Forest Fuels was commissioned to produce a series of guidance documents covering the whole fuel supply chain.

We have produced five booklets covering the following topics:

Wood fuel guidance documents

Forest Fuels can send you PDFs of these documents or hard copies are also available from Regen SW. They are available to download from the FAQ’s page of our website.

The Forest Fuels Team

Due to growing demand for woodchip Forest Fuels is expanding quickly and currently has 11 members of staff. Meet the team!

Sam Whatmore is the founder and Managing Director of Forest Fuels, with over eight years’ experience in woodfuel production and a further 20 years’ managing woodlands. He also heads up Woodfuel Solutions – our consultancy and advisory service.

Dave Rickwood is the Operations Manager (Woodfuel). He is a chartered Forester with over ten years’ forest management experience in the South West. Dave’s primary role is to negotiate and oversee the establishment of new woodfuel supply contracts to our customer base in the South West.

Will Frost is the Operations Manager (Forestry). He joined Forest Fuels this summer. He is our Operations Manager, managing forest operations and chipping contracts. A qualified Forester with a wide range of forestry and small business development experience in the South West of England and East Africa!

Office support

Janette Newell is Forest Fuels’ longest serving employee. She keeps the whole operation running!
Barbara Askew brings order to the accounts department.
Sarah Lindley is Sam’s PA and doing a grand job at keeping him organised.
Linda Ashton is an administrator at our Shebbear office, and is responsible for typing up all Sam’s reports.

Forestry team

Jacek Gwozdz is our jovial and experienced Forest Foreman and machinery driver.
Rafal Pohl loves any job, be it chipping at the Eden depot, forest harvesting work or improving his English doing log deliveries.
Pawel Wasielewski is the youngest and quickest of our forest harvesting team.
Jack Machin delivers most of the logs locally around Shebbear and North Devon.

Hot Chips Keep Crocs Smiling

The South West’s largest woodfuel supply specialist, Forest Fuels, has been chosen as the fuel supplier for Paignton Zoo’s latest attraction, ensuring some particularly snappy inhabitants are kept at tropical temperatures in their new home.

The £1.5 million Crocodile Swamp, which opened in May, is heated by a 150kW boiler supplied and installed by Econergy. The air in the 500 square metre glasshouse is heated to 22°C and the pool water is 25°C. As well as three species of crocodiles there are also turtles and giant snakes for visitors to view.

Forest Fuels chips, transports and delivers the wood chip, which has been sourced from the Clinton Devon Estates, which are managed to the highest environmental standards under UKWAS certification. In the future the Zoo is also keen to use some of the timber from its own land to contribute to the 50-70 tonnes required annually.

The woodchip comes from low grade timber produced as a by-product of forest management operations. Such material would normally either have remained unharvested or transported many hundreds of road miles to larger users of low grade timber.

As part of the service, Sam Whatmore and Dave Rickwood of Forest Fuels visited the boiler site a few weeks before it was commissioned to ensure fuel deliveries could be undertaken with maximum efficiency. They discovered a concrete box sheltering a control unit, which had been overlooked by the architects when they were planning the fuel delivery bay. This box would have impeded the lorry delivering the woodchip because it was positioned precisely where the cab of the lorry would need to be to tip into the fuel store. Forest Fuels quickly spotted this and suggested an alternative delivery route. Because construction was still underway the loading bay could be altered and a potentially costly mistake was avoided.

Delivery of the chip is undertaken in an eight-wheeler bulker from Forest Fuels, which delivers 28 cubic metres at a time to a purpose built below ground fuel store that can hold 80 cubic metres in total. This method of delivery is extremely efficient and will reduce costs in the long term.

There is no fixed delivery schedule as the chip is used at varying rates dependent on the weather. Even during very cold snaps the biomass boiler can supply 80% of the necessary heat needed, any extra is topped up by the back-up kerosene boiler system, which also operates as emergency back-up.

The current woodchip depot is at Dotton, near Aylesbeare, but Forest Fuels are planning to open another depot closer to Paignton, which will service the Zoo’s needs but also other contracts in the pipeline in that area.

As renewable energy technology the boiler qualified for a grant from the Low Carbon Buildings Programme, a Government scheme to support the installation of renewable energy technologies.

Sam Whatmore of Forest Fuels comments: “The running costs of woodfuel will be less than half that for an oil boiler. Also, as a result of using a carbon neutral source of fuel the Crocodile Swamp will save over 74 tonnes of CO2 a year. Paignton Zoo are committed to running their operations in as green a way as possible and being eco-friendly was a key part of the design of the Crocodile Swamp.”

Phil Knowling, spokesperson for Paignton Zoo adds: “We are a flagship organisation when it comes to our green credentials. Our commitment to sustainability has been assisted by Forest Fuels and their involvement has helped us plan a long-term solution to reduce our dependency on fossil fuel.”

Crocadile at Paignton Zoo

A snappy inhabitant of Crocodile Swamp basks in its heated environment

Woodland Holiday Haven Goes Green

A green vision is paying off for the owner of eight holiday cottages surrounded by woodlands.

Braddon Cottages at Ashwater in Devon now offer the ultimate low carbon solution for reducing holidaymakers’ energy consumption. Guests’ heating and hot water needs are met by wood chipped from the 150-acre estate and neighbouring Forestry Commission woodlands.

Estate Manager Derek Griffiths, says biomass had been on their radar for a while, even before they installed the system at the end of 2007.

“We started looking into biomass about four years ago when the industry was embryonic. It was obvious there were a lot of people looking to make money but it was also clear that there were also very few that were prepared to offer an after sales service, which I knew was crucial to the success of the venture. It was very important to sort out the professionals from the rest.”

It was Forest Fuels’ knowledge, expertise and commitment to establishing a long-term fuel supply relationship and contract chipping service, which impressed Derek Griffiths, who says his previous career in manufacturing had made him very focused on bringing on board the best supplier.

“As well as helping us organise our own timber supply, Sam Whatmore from Forest Fuels advised us on the location for the building to house the boiler and chip store,” says Derek. “The building is 300 metres away from the properties so it does not impinge on the stunning views and also means any noise is kept well away from the houses. As you can imagine this meant a lot of trench work to lay the pipes.”

Because of the financial implications of closing down the business while the work was carried out a tight schedule was set for installation of the system and commissioning.

The cottages were closed for October, November and the beginning of December 2007 to enable the switch to be made from propane gas to biomass. The work was successfully completed on the properties in time to fulfil the fully booked Christmas and New Year period.

Although the capital costs were high, the estate successfully applied for a government grant to help towards the cost of the 110kW Fröling Austrian boiler, which was supplied and installed by Econergy. “It was a complete turn-key operation which was what we were looking for,” says Derek.

“Now that we have the timber supply issues resolved, ordering fuel conversion simply means a phone call to Forest Fuels who visit approximately every eight weeks with their chipper to fill our barn with fuel,” he adds.

Savings of more than 50% have already been logged for the electricity bills, mainly because the immersion heaters are things of the past. Monitoring of the other heating costs is still ongoing but similar substantial savings are predicted.

“We are extremely happy with the system but we would advise anyone else interested in biomass that it does take more time to manage and we are still fine tuning certain technical issues,” admits Derek. “This is where the after-sales support is proving invaluable and we are still working hard on reducing the time we need to spend on moving the chipped wood to the augur, without the need for some manual support at certain times.”

“Ultimately we aim to be able to supply the cottages completely with wood from the Braddon Estate thereby becoming completely self-sufficient for our fuel needs. The reliable and efficient fuel conversion service from Forest Fuels will enable us to achieve this goal, without the need for investing in expensive chipping technology which is only needed six days each year.”

Braddon Cottages supply their own timber

which is chipped by Forest Fuels into the store.

Woodfuel Solutions – Cost Saving Expertise

When we set up Forest Fuels it soon became clear that supply was only one part of the picture and there was a huge need for a separate company to advise clients on how to ensure their biomass installation could fulfil its potential to cut down fuel bills due to the unique issues surrounding bulk woodfuel handling, delivery and storage.

If you’ve made the decision to use biomass one of the big attractions will be the projected cost-savings. However failure to grasp the differences between oil tanker deliveries and woodchip can lead to very expensive mistakes - in some cases virtually wiping out any savings.

Our consultancy and advisory service, Woodfuel Solutions, covers all aspects of woodfuel production, processing, handling, storage and delivery.

Woodchip requires nine times the volume of oil. That means more frequent deliveries and a true understanding of how delivery of a solid fuel needs to be handled. Woodchip has characteristics unlike other bulk material such as grain and neither flows nor can it be delivered easily pneumatically. There are therefore a wide range of possible fuel receipt mechanisms that can be employed on different sites: to-date we have utilised nearly a dozen different technological solutions to the issue of on-site fuel delivery. The choice of solution is always a function of the many site and budgetary constraints presented by each unique project.

Woodfuel Solutions was created after Sam Whatmore realised that their woodchip customers were often faced with large bills to change their storage, or deliveries, because something had been overlooked in the planning stages, which they had signed off with M & E consultants, the boiler installer or architect.

“It is a service we offer alongside the delivery because over the years we have seen literally many hundred installations – both the good and the bad - and have gained a complete understanding of what the best options are,” explains Sam. “This consultancy service is offered throughout the UK and is not being provided by anyone else. We have demonstrated that due to our extensive knowledge and experience gained overseas and the experience of being the largest woodfuel supply company in the South West we have gained a unique level of expertise.”

“It’s like hiring a good accountant. You have to pay out for their expertise but they actually save you substantial amounts of money. It is at the planning stages that our advice is invaluable and our recommendation is for the client to build our fees into their initial budget in conjunction with the installer or architect. The feedback we get from customers is that our service offers excellent value for money. If we are on board from the beginning we can guarantee significant savings. Far better that than having to be called in afterwards once the job has been started or even completed and the problems begin presenting themselves.”

Bringing on board Woodfuel Solutions means you won’t hear those dreaded words - ‘redesign costs’. A recent re-design incurred an extra £35,000 in costs – all of which could have been avoided if Woodfuel Solutions had been brought on board to consult at the planning stages.

Size matters! Woodchip is a bulky fuel so size your storage entrance appropriately.
(chip store entrance is right of the window)

As part of Woodfuel Solutions service we examine in detail for each project:

Budgetary, site and client constraints unique to the site.
How the layout of the site will affect and can best be utilised to ensure the best fit fuel delivery solution.
We examine all aspects of delivery vehicle requirements, be it ensuring that access issues are resolved at an early stage or matching the suitable delivery vehicle to the specific site.
We examine in detail other aspects of woodfuel use that may affect the proposal, for example, noise, dust and other issues unique to wood as an energy source.
We carefully select from the wide range of available options the most suitable fuel receipt mechanism for the site, be it below ground storage with chipped delivery or the use of transport augers where necessary.
We closely examine and determine the best fuelstore location and, most critically, the sizing and design of the fuelstore to ensure efficient deliveries and avoidance of unnecessary construction costs.
We provide a detailed blueprint of the fuel delivery operation from start to finish.
Where clients have their own source of timber, for example private woodland estates, we provide detailed advice on harvesting techniques unique to woodfuel production and silvicultural effects of woodfuel production on woodland management.
We also advise on on-site fuel production and bulk storage facilities as a unique, efficient design.

“Often all the interest is directed towards the new boiler and customers forget that fuel delivery is going to be taking place for 20-30 years and it needs to be done as effectively as possible,” says Sam. “The right kind of approach was one we had from an architect who asked us to organise a dry run fuel delivery with a large bulker lorry before he even put the tenders out for the boiler installation work. The project is now going ahead with every confidence that fuel delivery won’t be an issue.”

‘Shouldn’t there have been a stop bar?!’
(photo courtesy of RDI Ltd)

Contact us on info@forestfuels.co.uk or call us on 01409 281977 to speak to Sam Whatmore about your consultancy requirements or contact him by email at sam@woodfuelsolutions.co.uk