Garden waste batch incinerator

[Dave]

My experience of leylandii was not good. I had them chain sawed last May/June. I did this because holding the hedge trimmer at the hight I wanted to cut them to made my arms ache. The last time I cut them after the spring growth, it took me 2 days to cut, rake up the trimmings and dispose of them. I decided that I was getting too old to keep doing this job.

Another problem I encountered was that the growth of the shoot's thickness prevented me getting the top of the hedge down to the level I wanted, becausde the hedge trimmer did not have a large enough entry gap for the shoots. Many is the time I have had to get out the pruners, or even a bow saw, to cut back the thick shoots. I always trimmed them twice a year, after the growing season, or they would get out of hand.

I'm glad to see the back of them.

Dave

[R]

As I mentioned in my original post I will be removing them on a regular basis, I don't have the time or energy to do them all in one go. The plan is to remove one or two a week, this would make hiring a shredder/chipper very expensive. I should have pointed out that I am talking about the disposal of the foliage and smaller branches. The larger stuff will be put aside for a later date when we will be reinstating the open fire in the living room. The garden is large but there is no area I would want to bury such a quantity of foliage, I have most of the garden producing food!!

Leyland produce a sticky soot residue that will catch fire up the flue if used excessively. So watch out.

[Steve Firth]

Err yes, that's because someone let them grow into trees. All hedges have to be kept artificially stunted. Have you seen the size of either beech or yew left to grow wild? Yet people plant beech hedges and yew hedges and manage to keep them in check.

[Tim Lamb]

In message , johno writes

The 210 litre steel drum incinerator was in agricultural use until being banned (for plastic spray cans) from last year.

I believe the design was tested by Silsoe College of Agriculture and specified as follows....

From the bottom.. 11 holes equally spaced, 50mm dia. 150mm from the bottom.

then 8 holes equally spaced, 60mm dia. 440mm from the bottom.

You need a grid/grate at 190mm from the bottom. Mine uses strong expanded metal but anything above 3mm wire will probably do. Big chunks of wood, incautiously thrown in, will bend the red hot grate!

There is no lid. Stand well clear of overhanging branches as flame length can be several feet.

regards

[Tim Lamb]

I was 15 years younger when I planted my hedges. Anytime you are up in Hertfordshire I'll oil up the hedge trimmer in readiness:-)

Done once this year and ready for a tidy up now.

regards

>

[Steve Firth]

I'm wondering if the OP has in mind the incinerator that I found at my home when I moved in? It was extremely large, made out of circular fireclay sections, with a stainless steel conical lid. Inside it had a firegrate supported about a foot off the floor. It was fairly good at burning things, and being about 6ft across it could burn quite a lot of things. Sadly what it was best at burning was families of hedgehogs so we got rid of it. Even if we chased them out before lighting it, they would sneak back in when the fire was out and then die as the CO2 settled in the stack.

No idea where one would get them from - seriously heavy and we had to break ours up on site and cart it to the dump in lumps.

[Tim S]

Huge coughed up some electrons that declared:

Usually accompanied by some curious yellow smoke.

The only "good" thing about these (I've used them) is that they contain whatever you're burning, should you need to have a fire withing 3m of your house.

The bad news is they are as stinky as f*ck. Unless you get the fire so host the gasses spewing from the chimney ignite - that is a sight to behold.

[Steve Firth]

I've got a Leylandii hedge that I planted at the front of the house fifteen years ago. It's five foot high over most of run with sections by the gate that are seven feet high. Passers by think it's yew - the neighbour has a yew hedge it was planted thirty years ago and it's nowhere near as compact as the Leylandii. Presumable if we sell up and move on the next person in will not trim the hedge and then act astounded when there are 30ft high trees in the front garden.

That's all it seems to take. I was thinking of getting one of those hedge hoover things advertised on TV just to give the hedge the light trim it needs each year.

[Steve Firth]

I managed to resurrect one like that. It takes dedication. I climbed inside it with a chainsaw in hand and cut the trunks down to about 2ft then cut the inside of what was lef to a "V" parallel to the lin of the hedge to allow light into the centre. Then I kept the tops down to something reasonable. I also fertilised it with a high-nitrogen fertiliser, watered it and spent lots of TLC on it. After five years it was back to a decent hedge. I drive past that house from time to time and the current owners have looked after it well. It looks as good as the one outside this house now.

[Derek Geldard]

Easily achieved by blowing air into it from the bottom with an industrial Vac. :)))

Derek

[Andy Dingley]

Probably unrelated, but a quarl from a ship's boiler furnace (ring of heavy firebricks where the oil burner enters the furnace) makes a good start for such a device. Handy for Scrabble too.

[Andy Dingley]

The zinc doesn't melt, it evaporates (this is one reason why zinc metal wasn't smelted in the West until the mid 18th century). If the zinc merely melts, surface tension holds it in place and the coating isn't destroyed. The problem arises if the steel gets too hot, hot enough to boil the zinc.

So to keep a galvanised incinerator galvanized, you need to keep down the peak temperature of the steelwork. Don't overheat it. Allow a layer of wood ash (great insulator) to sit inside it (although clean this out afterwards before leaving it to get damp). Don't overheat the edges of sheets, or the edges of the vent holes.

For a "dustbin" incinerator I wouldn't pay too much heed to this. Just keep it dry over winter and it will last OK. For a box incinerator made of galv sheet, then I would try to arrange stainless steel (all obviously made from scrap) heat shields on the inside of things, around major hot spots like the flue outlet.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Derek Geldard saying something like:

Bingo! I used a 45gal drum with forced air from a paint sprayer turbine for a clean burn of waste veg oil.

Can't find the pic, but it was excellent, with a flame a good two or three feet above the rim of the barrel and no smoke at all. Un-aired, the normal mode was smokey as f*ck.

[John]

Thanks to everyone for their input, I have now decided to do the following,

1. Buy a shredder to deal with the greenery and smaller branches
2. Create a habitat pile with the heavier un shredable branches and burn them in a small open brazier on an as and when basis.
3. Use the trunks for some form of garden construction, ie as edging for a border or a low raised bed.
4. Keep a few of the trees minus their foliage but still in the ground as hammock slinging points!

Thanks again for the very useful and constructive advice.

John

[G Boyes]

Does ANYONE have any information about the Silsoe Oil Barrel/Drum Incerator conversion ? I need to get the correct drawings or specific dimensions of the vent holes & internal grate height for this incinerator.

geebee

url:

[Andy Dingley]

I've always made the vent holes with a precision broaching operation over a tapered self-piercing mandrel.

Or "pickaxe", as most people know it.

[Tim W]

Andy Dingley wibbled on Friday 20 November 2009 11:40

Didn't use the Clarkson sheet metal hole boring method then?

(Shotgun)

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "G Boyes" saying something like:

Tim Lamb's post in reply to the OP was as follows:

============================

I believe the design was tested by Silsoe College of Agriculture and specified as follows....

From the bottom.. 11 holes equally spaced, 50mm dia. 150mm from the bottom.

then 8 holes equally spaced, 60mm dia. 440mm from the bottom.

You need a grid/grate at 190mm from the bottom. Mine uses strong expanded metal but anything above 3mm wire will probably do. Big chunks of wood, incautiously thrown in, will bend the red hot grate!

There is no lid. Stand well clear of overhanging branches as flame length can be several feet.