Someway down the to-do list (far enough that it would never get to the top unaided), is to get a shredder for piles of garden waste which I seem to be accumulating. This is mostly long lengths of (now dry) privet branches.
I happen to have come across a second-hand Al-Ko H1800RS, which looks quite substantial and made of steel. It doesn't seem to be a current product, but looks same as their current H2500RS model. The model number seems to be the power rating, so one concern I have is if the 1800 model might be underpowered for what are now dry branches. Anyone any experiance with this make, or even model?
there's a cheap shredder in aldi... PS Is it possible to use the chippings from a shredder to heat my house, or would it tar up my chimneys and cause fire?
Not if you use a boiler that is fed air under high pressure and volumes, as that takes the combustion temperature high enough to consume most of the tars. The end result is of course, as with most 'organic' products, a pretty nasty mix of gases that wouldn't pass any MOT test, but it is substantially tar and carbon free.
You will need a specialised chimney liner though, and an industrial grade boiler designed to work on sawdust and wood chips.
And be contributing just as much CO12 and a hell of a lot more NO2, and SO2 and various other nasty chemicals to the atmosphere, as if you had stuck to gas or oil.
If noise is going to be a problem then personally I would avoid both the
1800 and 2500 types as they are of the high speed spinning cutter disk variety.
I would personally recommend the gear type - rather like a large horizontal mill type cutter which rotates slowly (about 60rpm) but has enormous torque for crushing and cutting - plus are extremely quiet.
The Alko SP3500 is of this type, not too dissimilar to the Bosch AXT 2200HP which I personally have and would highly recommend.
That carbon goes back into the atmosphere anyway, regardless if you burn it or not, so you might as well get the benefit of burning it. As you're burning new wood, this isn't releasing carbon which has been locked up for thousands of years like oil/coal/gas, and isn't part of the CO2 issue.
Having found an online manual, it says it works better if the branches have been allowed to dry -- less likely to clog up. If it needs new blades, they seem to be under £20.
I can't remember if I got my shredder from Aldi or Lidl - it was around =A380 a couple of years ago. It has a fairly hefty induction motor that drives a single crushing gear and looks like the one in Aldis now. The collection bin is large and the machine's capacity is impressive.
Strongly recommended - it's been used pretty heavily over the two years and shows no signs of weakening. Also doesn't make a lot of noise. A good =A380's worth
Well, I bought it. Construction is superb - typical solid german engineering. Blade looked a bit blunt. Fired it up - not noisy with no load. Pushed in a twig, and it did bugger all to it. Hopefully that's due just to the blunt blades. So I set about removing the blades to see if I can sharpen them. (I'll skip the bits about going out to get some penetrating oil, so I can undo the securing screws.) Anyway, take the blades off, and realise they're reversible and the other side looks unused. Since I've got them out, I polish up the cutting edge on an oilstone, but it only took about 6 strokes, so I don't think that side has ever been used. Reassemble and fire up again. Push in another twig, and it grabs it and pulls it through before I realise what's happend. Fantastic, so all that was wrong was blunt blades, and they didn't even need replacing, just flipping over.
I need not have worried about being underpowered -- it coped with everything I dared to put into it, which was up to about
3/4" diameter. I tried a few 1" diameter pieces and it did them too without slowing down, but made a lot of noise, and I didn't want to break it. It pulls the larger branches in at about 2 foot per second, which is much faster than I imagined it could. Smaller branches tend to break when being pulled through and need to be fed in.
So I now have 4 dustbin liners full of dry chippings. If anyone can suggest something more imaginitive than taking them to the tip, I'd be interested.
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