Silence

We've had a couple of difficult weeks, and so I've not been posting. Partly malaise, partly nothing to say.

The biomass installation, which was basically complete by 3rd March, hasn't been a success. The installation had a number of pitfalls, which we managed, but the system isn't working as expected. The log boiler's fuel consumption is much, much higher than expected: although I'd got figures for efficiency in advance, and worked on the basis of a figure reduced from this (which seemed wise!), the actual in-use efficiency has so far been about 55%, instead of an expectation of at least 80%.

This poses a real problem: it means that our per year wood use rockets up by 50%, which takes it out of the realm of straightforward, and into logistical nightmare. It also hits the cash saving per year quite hard, and also makes the day-to-day operation difficult (physically larger volume of wood each day requiring loading, and we're not in the house all day to keep topping it up).

Secondly, the delivery side seems less effective than the oil system. That is, where the oil system burnt, say, 100kWh worth of oil for a day's heating, the biomass is using, say, 110kWh on a comparable day. This is after the heat's been produced (measured by a proper, Class 2, heat meter). So, in all, we're looking at a system that's about 50% efficient compared to about 90% for the oil. Not good.

The only saving grace, at this point, is that we haven't paid the full invoice, only the deposit, so we still have a lever when dealing with the installer. However, at the moment, we simply can't process, season, and store enough wood for a winter, so the whole system's not fit for purpose: we may well have to rely on an oil backup, which we didn't want.

In brighter news, when we haven't been madly cutting, splitting, and stacking firewood, we have managed to sow plenty of seeds, and now have a lot of baby beetroot, leeks, peas, celeriac, salad leaves and radishes. The kale, sprouts, parsnips, and carrots aren't up, yet, but there you go.

The over-winter alliums (onions, garlic, elephant garlic, and spring onions) are all still doing well, and look they're starting to bulk up. That's pleasing, as we're going to start running low on last year's autumn-harvest onions soon.

The spring bulbs are doing nicely, with lots of scilla and puschkinia up now. The daffodils are starting to come out in force: there are just about enough to start cutting some to bring inside. The 'winterized' front garden's looking great; we're very pleased with it. The dogwoods, hellebores, primroses, and the winter hanging baskets (heathers, sedge and cineraria) have really made it look good. The clematis outside the kitchen door is coming back up, too, and the buddleja is sprouting. Some of the early tulips ('Pinocchio') are up, too, though the Cheerfulness daffodils aren't.