Dealing with garden waste that won't compost

ART6

I live out in the countryside, and I and my nearest neighbours have quite large gardens. Mine and my nearest neighbour have Leylandii hedges that need regular trimming, and which reguilarly get infested with briars that have to be cut out. The end result is large volumes of woody waste that will not compost, and although I invested in a shredder, it won't deal with the soft briars without endlessly choking up. Traditionally we would leave the stuff in a pile to dry out, and then burn it, but a couple of years ago my neighbor did that and got in trouble with the local authority, who told him doing so was illegal and he would be fined. The fire brigade actually attended and put it out!

OK, so we each have several cubic metres of material that keeps on increasing throughout the summer. It's far too much to go in the wonderful brown bin that gets collected once every three weeks, and to take it to the nearest local tip, eight miles away, would need many trips given the number of bags that could be put in the boot of a family car.

Clearly this new legislation is very environmentally friendly, with a zero carbon footprint etc etc, but I wonder, could someone in our super-efficient county council explain to me what the heck I do do with the stuff other than burning a lot of motor fuel to take it to one of their centres and paying them a minor fortune to accept it?:(

Shiny

I know this might sound crazy but have you considered making the
waste into Charcoal?

When it is finished you can mix it in with the soil resulting in a huge
increase in the quality of the soil as the charcoal is quite absorbent
and prevents nutrients from leeching out of the soil.

ART6

Shiny wrote: »

I know this might sound crazy but have you considered making the
waste into Charcoal?

When it is finished you can mix it in with the soil resulting in a huge
increase in the quality of the soil as the charcoal is quite absorbent
and prevents nutrients from leeching out of the soil.

Yes, but to make charcoal you need to burn the material in a starved air atmosphere. So while I like the idea I'm sure our local government busybodies would argue that making charcoal is still a bonfire by another name. Even a charcoal fire makes smoke, and it seems that is what upsets them

I wonder if claiming spontaneous combustion would work?

CJhaughey

make sure it completely dry before burning it on a hot fire.
if the material is damp it will produce a lot of smoke, it needs to be bone dry and it will burn with almost no smoke.
burning small amounts will also be more discreet, by the time the council appear it will be ash!

Ddad

I'd suggest saving it up and hiring a proper shredder from a tool hire place between the two of you for a morning. You can normally negotiate a lower rate for a saturday morning in my experience. The chippings are an ok mulch or you can layer them with grass when composting. i had a similar problem and I tried a DIY shredder, uniformly rubbish, the idustrial yoke is the job.

Or borrow a trailer and go to the dump once.

Mahatma coat

Charcoal is the best way, make a few small mounds, and if you get it right there should be very little smoke, and when the council come you can deny any responsibility and blame it on an infewtation of Stoner Gophers

Del2005

I always though you could burn in your back garden once whatever you use has a chimney. I've seen plenty of places burning stuff in a 40 gallon drum with a bit of pipe out the end. Obviously you can't burn toxic material, but timber should be fine.

But if that's wrong buy/make yourself a big one of these Chimenea

Cookie_Monster

Can you burn it in the house fireplace??

Another possible alternative may be to see if there is a local campsite or scout troop who would take the wood from you for their own fire use.

ART6

Del2005 wrote: »

I always though you could burn in your back garden once whatever you use has a chimney. I've seen plenty of places burning stuff in a 40 gallon drum with a bit of pipe out the end. Obviously you can't burn toxic material, but timber should be fine.

But if that's wrong buy/make yourself a big one of these Chimenea

I don't know the answer to that, but when my neighbor got in trouble for having a bonfire I looked up the regulations, which simply state that you are not allowed to have bonfires. Whether or not an incinerator, or one of those pot things counts as a bonfire or incinerator is not at all clear -- another regulation that has not been thought through at all perhaps. I deal with environmental regulations all of the time in my business, and generally they are utterly bewildering and lacking in any form of common sense. For example, if I had a decorative pot burner and burned garden waste in it, would it conform or breach the regulations? The answer from the public service always seems to be "Ah. That might need a test case." I don't want to be a test case thanks lads.

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

Can you burn it in the house fireplace??

Another possible alternative may be to see if there is a local campsite or scout troop who would take the wood from you for their own fire use.

My wife would love me trooping into our sitting room with several cubic metres of brairs and hedge cuttings alright. And scout troops? Are they really allowed camp fires? Think of the carbon footprint and the health and safety issues. Anyway, youngsters shouldn't be outdoors. They might get wet.:eek:

Shiny

What about burning it all at night ?

Cookie_Monster

ART6 wrote: »

My wife would love me trooping into our sitting room with several cubic metres of brairs and hedge cuttings alright. And scout troops? Are they really allowed camp fires? Think of the carbon footprint and the health and safety issues. Anyway, youngsters shouldn't be outdoors. They might get wet.:eek:

The stuff sounded a bit more substanical in the OP.

Of course Scouts are allowed campfires :rolleyes: Most major scout sites will gladly take any surplus of wood, maybe not cuttings as such. The usual fodder these days is pallets but in Powerscourt you simply chop up trees to burn

YFlyer

Shiny wrote: »

I know this might sound crazy but have you considered making the
waste into Charcoal?

When it is finished you can mix it in with the soil resulting in a huge
increase in the quality of the soil as the charcoal is quite absorbent
and prevents nutrients from leeching out of the soil.

Is it not called biochar when you mix it into the soil. The Terra Preta soil in the Amazon was made this way 1,000s of years ago.

netwhizkid

I'd still burn it op, burning organic waste is hardly an eco hazard and from a green point of view burning waste like this is actually better for the environment than letting it rot down producing methane which is a far more potent greenhouse gas. Burning plastics and waste is a totally different kettle of fish and burning branches like this would be fine and I tell the Council and Authorities where to go, the way things are now they can't afford to take cases and probably won't be going up in Helicopters anymore (due to costs) spying on people like they did before, (which is surely illegal in its own right).

Maybe burn it at night to prevent smoke nuisance for noisey neighbours, douse it in Diesel to get it started and pile them up on each other. Leylandis are a curse and won't burn well either unfortunately. If it was me I would chop them down and erect a nice new high fence instead, they are a horrible type of tree from a maintenance prespective but nice if you have the time and patience to keep them trimmed.

freedom of info

Del2005 wrote: »

I always though you could burn in your back garden once whatever you use has a chimney. I've seen plenty of places burning stuff in a 40 gallon drum with a bit of pipe out the end. Obviously you can't burn toxic material, but timber should be fine.

But if that's wrong buy/make yourself a big one of these Chimenea

you can still burn in an incinerator as long as the woody matter is dry and contains no green leaves, although the incinerator must be small and must have a chimney,b and q used to sell them