[Robin Redbreast]

just spent the afternoon clearing the allotment and had a huge fire with the proceeds. to give you an idea of how big the clearout was the flames were reaching around the 20 foot mark and thats how far i had to stand away from it when it got going! i love bonfires it was great to see all my hard work go up in flames!

[peapod]

Your fire sounds like a few of mine on the first few months on my plot. I actually lost my eyebrows and eyelashes at one point     Now I stand well back 

[newatthis]

im looking forward to having my own bonfire next weekend or so, (once we have cleared the lot )..still lots to do but getting there more brambles and old wood from the trees that where there...

[peterjf]

the hull city council in their wisdom have banned all bonfires,

there is a chap who is comopsting all waste materials from the 200 plots on our site ,

can anyone tell me if we can compost tomato plants and potato greens after they have finished growing ,

[Robin Redbreast]

the hull city council in their wisdom have banned all bonfires,

there is a chap who is comopsting all waste materials from the 200 plots on our site ,

can anyone tell me if we can compost tomato plants and potato greens after they have finished growing ,

i believ ya can as long as there is no blight or disease present!

[sunshineband]

Your fire sounds like a few of mine on the first few months on my plot. I actually lost my eyebrows and eyelashes at one point     Now I stand well back 

Th eplot we used to have I tried to burn off some brushwwod and ended up fighting a huge fire... thank goodness for the water pipe running to the cow sheds, as I detached this and used it to quench the blaze. Foolish me --- keep flames under control 

[oldbean]

With so many people around ruining my day by forcing me to breathe their fire smoke on otherwise pleasant days, I realise how much of a problem I possibly caused for others, even far away, so now I do it rarely. I use one of the corkscrew type shredders for brushwood and prunings. I have a strategy to deal with the waste which has proved to be quite useful.

There is useful fuel in the wood, even in small pieces. Shoving through the mincer chops it into bits about 3/4" long. I have a 20 litre plastic pail, a bit like these. It had lemon curd in it before I got it for 50p. I cut the bottom out of it and use it with a sprout net (bag) to make filling the net easier. As I mince up the waste, I sieve the fine bits out, which go in the compost bin, and tip the bigger bits into the net. Now why on earth would I want to faff around like this? Well I also have one of these (actually I have several as they are so useful in the event of a power cut, and they're fun ) which just happens to run very nicely on the minced prunings.




More can be seen here where there is probably a link to a video.

The idea of the nets is to allow the chips to dry instead of going mouldy. When dry they are also good for getting the fire started at home instead of kindling. I shorten the drying time by leaving them in the summerhouse, along with some logs for the fire.

All soft stuff like soft roots and potato tops etc gets drowned in an open topped water butt if there's any disease problems. After a few months the diseases are probably dead too.

For the few items I do burn, I built an incinerator which burns with no smoke for most of the burn. I made this from two steel drums. A 45 gallon, and a 30 gallon.

Prep.

I cut the top out of the 45 gallon, leaving a 1" lip round the edge.
Drilled a few 2" dia holes round the drum about 6" from the bottom.
Cut out the top of the 30 gallon drum and drilled a 2" dia hole in the side at the bottom.
You also need a hole in the outer drum to match the height of this one when assembled.
Drilled lots of 1/2"dia holes round the  30 gallon drum at the level of the top stiffening ring.
Made a plate with a hole in, to go over the top of the 45 gallon drum.
The hole was made by cutting 3 slits like a star and then bending the pointy bits up, so the hole was about 6" dia.

Assembly.

The 30 gallon drum fits inside the 45 gallon drum, and sits on some celcon blocks. Handy that the heights matched so the tops of the drums were level.
I stuffed rockwool in the gap between the drums at the top so the air for the inner drum came up through the 1/2' holes.
A short piece of scaffold pipe is pushed through  the hole in the outer drum and the inner drum to get controllable bottom air for the burn.
Next you need a cheap cast iron pot-bellied barbecue.
The top grid goes in the bottom of the inner drum sat on three 1/2 bricks.
The plate with the star slits goes on the top of the outer drum.
The top casting of the barbecue goes on top of the plate, upside down so it is like a stubby funnel pointing up.
In the "top" goes a suitable size piece of flue for a chimney, about 3' long.

Lighting.

Fill the inner drum with whatever. A bit over filled is ok.
Put something to light it on top, then put the top on.
Light the top, and put the barbecue section and flue on top.
After a minute or two it should be roaring away with either flames or just heat haze coming out of the chimney.

Improvements.

It could probably benefit from some.

Nanny state.

The top gets HOT!!!.