Newsletter 6

Posted on May 14, 2012 by admin

Newsletter 6.
14th
May
2012

A Tranquility House Newsletter

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The Story of a Tree &

A Limited Edition Series of tables
I hope you enjoyed or were at least intrigued by the 2nd paper in the Climate Book Series which you will probably have found contained information you never read or heard of before. I am often baffled by the debate or argument surrounding the subject, partly because for me the science is rather clear, and partly because much if not most of this ‘information’ in my series doesn’t even seem to be in the scientific domain.I intend the following Climate Book Series Papers will be equally clear and many if not most will contain science and some material not published before – to the best of my knowledge. The Newsletter following this one will consider Carbon Dioxide as an atmospheric gas.Very few of these newsletters will have anything to do with selling product though half of this one does. But only half.
picture of the Pinus radiata – Monterey PineWe have long wanted to get ‘The Story of a Tree’ on our website but it has been difficult getting pre-advice that a really big and maybe historic tree was to be felled. Many of you are interested in the activities we have to get up to in order to produce the products we offer from a standing tree, but that ‘Story’ must start with a standing tree. Then some weeks ago we were told a big Pinus radiata – Monterey Pine and seen here standing – was about to be felled in Westonbirt, so backwards and forwards with cameras to bring the start of the story to you all. We will film and record the activities right through to the products being ready for delivery, so there is much to come.
If you would like to go to The story of a Tree you will find visuals and explanations that ended with all of it on the ground. Next it must be hauled to us and then milled but what to do with such a big tree?
It turned out it was planted in about 1851 (we counted about 161 rings); to the top it was over 100ft (30M); the main trunk (felled in two pieces) was 21.9m; the basal diameter is 1.4m, and the final piece was 16.5m long and weighed in at about 16 tons. Or it was a rather big tree, so what to do with it?In order to give the most pleasure to the most people, it seemed best not to make flooring from it, so we have decided to turn most if not all of it into Tables (and possibly benches). But for such a wonderful tree it seemed better to number them so we have decided to produce a Limited Edition Series of Pinus radiata tables and here is where the ‘selling’ part of the newsletter comes in!

If you would like to go to our Pinus radiata tables you will find the details including the prices and the way to order one. As is explained, while it could produce maybe 90 tables, we are only confident to accept orders for 65 right now as we don’t know how it will mill or what size tables people will order. It has to be ‘first come first served’ as the limited edition numbers will be allocated as the orders are confirmed. Two comments from the market this last Saturday were that ‘They are collectors items’ and ‘These will be heirlooms’.

We are racing to produce an image of the finished wood colour and feature, but already on both the above documents you will find photos of the fresh sawn timber so there is already a good representation of it – look at the head and butt end photos.

We have also recently gone on the Westonbirt web sites and these tables will obviously be offered there as well. Regardless of your interest in owning a historic table, we hope you will really enjoy our ‘Story of a Tree’

Mike

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Newsletter 5

Posted on March 15, 2012 by News Admin

Newsletter 5.

15th
March
2012

A Tranquility House Newsletter

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Working with Westonbirt Arboretum

And ‘The Friends of Westonbirt’

Westernbirt logo
Nearly 3 years ago I was in the arboretum at the far end of Silk Wood when I found a funeral pyre of huge logs. I was aghast, and as one of the Tree Team was managing the burn, I asked what was going on. He was really sorry to be burning them but said they found it extremely difficult to sell their logs and as the space for storing felled timber is quite small – this was the result.
Arboretum trees photoWhile walking out of Silk Wood I realised the cost of using skilled arboreal people to spend ages sawing up such huge logs for firewood was a nonsense, but I also decided to try to solve the problem. The list of species that have a market value is very short – Common Oak, Sweet Chestnut, Douglas Fir and Larch mostly, but the Arboretum has a huge number of species and occasionally some have to be felled. And with over 350 wooded acres much planted around 150 or more years ago there are many trees that have to be felled out. Tranquility Timber Products was the outcome. Westonbirt Arboretum has an incredibly valuable collection of trees, and with possible or probable climate change coming (or already with us); with the global forest coming under ever stronger threat from many elements – it needs supporting. Our tree heritage is incredibly amazing when you really think about it.
Tranquility Timber Products has therefore decided to donate a share of our gross sales direct to ‘the Friends of Westonbirt’, and this Newsletter explains the agreement which is now in force. They are also trying to invest heavily in a new project. As we will soon be milling on the land adjacent to the Arboretum, logs from there are now simply dropped with us which is extremely efficient. We don’t have to travel to see trees before felling nor do we have to collect them, so working with Westonbirt’s logs is much more efficient. We therefore decided to donate 5% of the gross sales value of all products made from Westonbirt grown timber, and 2% of products made from non Westonbirt logs. The Friends is a charity so the full agreement is as follows:
Friends of Westernbirt logo Tranquility Timber Products Ltd. will donate 5% of the retail price of every timber product made from wood sourced from Westonbirt, the National Arboretum, and 2% of the retail price of every timber product sold made from wood NOT sourced from Westonbirt, the National Arboretum, to the Friends of Westonbirt Arboretum, registered charity no. 293190.
You can also read about this in the news section of the Friends of Westonbirt web site
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Newsletter 4

Posted on February 11, 2012 by News Admin

Newsletter 4.

12th
February
2012

A Tranquility House Newsletter

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The Climate Book Series

Part 2

by

Mike Hillard
With Part 2 of the Climate Book Series comes one of the biggest questions of all. Is man changing the climate and if so – When did we start doing that?  Nothing like dropping in at the deep end is there?It is all very well the scientists telling us they have huge confidence that we are changing our climate – but that statement neither appeals to those who hope we aren’t nor persuades the sceptics to doubt their arguments. Yet this is as fundamental as it gets. If we aren’t – let’s crack on with solving as many of the other problems as we can – but if we are, then maybe this is the biggest challenge mankind faces. After all, in Part 1 we have glimpsed the implications of even a mildly warming world (up 2° to 3°). Without even considering anything beyond agriculture (and therefore food production) we can see the impact such a small temperature rise could or would have on humanity. It could be sufficient to transform our future with radical implications for population numbers. And whatever concern we don’t have for us – our children’s lives could or would be dramatically altered by such a change. It wouldn’t be easy to handle a rapid drop in the global population – would it? So it matters. Burying our heads in the sand is not the answer.

The research in this Paper, as in Part 1, also breaks new ground, with many plots and much information shown that have again not been generally published. There would anyway not be a lot of point re-publishing well circulated material unless I could use it differently, but in this case it is pretty much all new. At the very least I have never seen, heard or read any of this anywhere before.

I will not pre-empt the Paper itself, because I hope the information flow in it leads us to some clearer or even clear conclusions, but as an example the detailed  history of our changing temperature (and CO2 levels) has not to my knowledge been published. We may have seen the Al Gore chart (in An Inconvenient Truth) but not much can be concluded from that nor did he try to conclude anything, but without conclusions or at least an information flow that leads to conclusions – it doesn’t achieve much. Except to raise awareness.
Chart of carbon dioxide levels about 238,000 years agoSo here is one chart in the Paper that shows in detail what the climate did through the Warm Period about 238,000 years ago. Working with this level of detail, real conclusions may be able to be, or can be drawn.
Photo of modern wheat

It may also be surprising just how many different things have to be taken into consideration when doing this work as even modern wheat gets in on the act. As I have said – this is a completely new approach.
Mike (Hillard)
You can read the full article here on the Tranquility Library site
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Newsletter 3

Posted on January 31, 2012 by News Admin

Newsletter 3.
24th
Janurary
2012

A Tranquility House Newsletter

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Tranquility – Living sustainably for the Future

by

Mike Hillard

Timber business developments
Nothing seems to move at the pace we want it to, but we do now have our own mill and are in the process of moving into a permanent home for the logging and milling part of the business.

The Mill: is a Petersen Swing mill (WPF) which is unusual as most mills use band saws – where a constantly moving blade about 40mm wide moves through the logs and simply mills the logs into planks. Ours does a horizontal cut every time the mill head moves away along the log – and a vertical cut on the return. And the blade is a large circular one powered currently by a 24HP petrol engine. On each return cut a board is produced sawn on all 4 sides. I attach a couple of photos showing the mill as we use it now.
 Westonbirt Dougles Fir on the mill

On the left: A Westonbirt Douglas Fir on the mill showing the plank just milled and the progress across the log.
Home Farm Poplar being milled

A rare native English Poplar from Home Farm being milled in a clamp on the farm
The disadvantage is that while a band saw blade takes out a 2 to 3mm cut – our takes 6mm so we produce a lot more sawdust. The advantage is that it is so accurate we can mill to tighter tolerances which:

  • allows us to get the same if not a higher yield from the logs
  • produces less timber to air dry and kiln dry; saving time and energy
  • saves the secondary operation where each plank taken on a band saw mill must be then cut into boards.

Our milling capacity is about 6 cubic metres or 6 tons of logs a day.
Moving the logs: We have a rather elderly Volvo BM log lifter, but it is perfect for our purposes.
Our BM (locally ‘The Beast’) with a 12m long Larch log from Westonbirt in its jaws.  Of 1972 vintage it is wonderfully simple to operate (I exaggerate!) but simple to maintain.  NO electronics!  Weighing in at 14 tons we have ‘recycled’ her. The Beast log mover
Air Drying the timber: We are often asked how we dry our timber. Well it is currently done in two stages – the traditional way. From the mill the boards are put ‘in stick’, allowing a lot of air to pass around the boards and bring their moisture content down from around 45% to around 15%. Timber rots if left above 20%, so getting the outsides down below that is the first stage. The picture here shows some of our stacks ‘in stick’ in our temporary location. After this it is currently put into a kiln to be dried to below 10%. Timber air drying ‘in stick’
Our new home: is an acre of field immediately outside Westonbirt Arboretum’s back gate. We were meant to be moving into the arboretum but internal problems got in the way, though, to be fair, we are in a considerably better location where we can operate much closer to optimally than if we were inside. Westonbirt’s logs are now being passed through the gate which they greatly prefer, and on the other side we are masters of our operation. Further we have equipment they don’t have like the big Volvo BM log lifter, as they cannot lift the logs they fell.

The planned Milling Operation: We have designed a semi-permanent milling solution that should give us increased production and hugely lower manpower costs. Currently each board is manhandled between 5 and 6 times between being taken off the mill and going for machining. This will reduce to 1 (by hand) only as it comes off the mill!We have also designed a solution for drying the boards that will use minimal energy, and nearly all that energy will be from the waste timber. With logs coming from next door (Westonbirt) to around 50 miles away, and with the entire converting and drying process done on this site – we believe our energy and carbon costs are about as low as we can get – and rather a lot better than rainforest timber brought through China and moved umpteen times and thousands of miles to reach the customers.
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Newsletter 2

Posted on January 9, 2012 by News Admin

Newsletter 2.
09th
Janurary
2012

A Tranquility House Newsletter

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The Climate Book Series

Part 1

by

Mike Hillard
In the first Newsletter I indicated that most of them will not be of a marketing nature (if any!) and that they will cover particularly the subject of Climate along with other lightly academic works and developments in the business, which seems to be growing rather quickly – another new product being displayed in the Shambles Market in Stroud on the 6th January. Concern over climate naturally leads to working to reduce both energy consumption and C02releases, so there will also soon be Newsletters to help us all in these areas. I am not interested in publishing what others already have so it should all be new to most of us.

The full document which is Part 1 of a Series on Climate is published through the web site, where all of them will be posted as they are published. Here is a taster so you have some idea of the content. It is between impractical and impossible to publish the whole Paper through the newsletter, because the presentation is altered and it is impossible to use all the images that are in the paper – and will be in subsequent parts of The Series.

I hope you will wish to open it as none of this work has been published before and the content is also very different from anything you will have read. A big bold statement but I am of the opinion you will agree when you have read it.

Part 1 focuses on the impact a warmer world would have, because it may be much more dramatic than you currently imagine, and without understanding the scale of the impact on humanity – we won’t be bothering too much about it. It focuses on the impact of a changing climate (warmer or colder) on our food supply – but I won’t pre-empt the Paper. However, I could already add (not in the Paper) that we are witnessing right now some greatly increased ‘wind events’ around the world, which are doing ever more damage, and in due time we will explain why a warmer world will be a windier one. But here is an important fact about the energy in wind! If you double the wind speed you don’t double the energy in it (and therefore the damage). You don’t even increase it by the square of the wind speed – so 2 x the speed = 4 x the energy. The energy is the cube of the wind speed – so 2 x the speed does = 8 x the energy – and damage. We might feel after reading the Paper that our very future depends on the climate not warming too much. After all, unless you are reaching the end of your life – you will be witnessing the changes.

Just to indicate what the paper includes, here is the map of the world (explained in the Paper) showing the habitable areas when the temperature is just 8½° colder than now. But even the scientists have a figure like that in their sights for the increase we might have to cope with.
Global Glacial Map
We also glimpse some population truths, after which I explain how I have approached Climate research and how I have therefore done the work. I argue against climate modelling and indicate how my approach is real and based on facts rather than incomprehensible computer programmes.I hope you will ‘enjoy’ this Paper and the Series, and if you feel there are others who might like to, or should, read these papers, please invite them to enlist for the Newsletter.

Mike (Hillard)
You can read the full article here on the Tranquility Library site
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Newsletter 1

Posted on October 17, 2011 by News Admin
Newsletter 1.
15th
October
2011

A Tranquility House Newsletter

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Tranquility -
Living sustainably for the Future

by
Mike Hillard

Many people contact us and have done so for a very wide variety of reasons – from landowners to academics to those interested in our timber products.  It therefore seems sensible to communicate with as many of you as possible on a semi regular basis, as both our range of products and hopefully my academic publishing grows. The newsletters will simply be informative and hopefully – interesting.

The hope is that we can bring developments to your attention, be they in the products field; new Papers published or events that reinforce or contradict Papers already published. The truth is not for sale. Some of you will be aware how close I believe we are to major changes on the planet and to our societies, so I continue to watch as many events as I can in as much detail as I can manage.  There is an inevitability about where we are going.

I have also decided to publish my climate work (heading towards being a book and hopefully a documentary series) in its totality, steadily through the web site, so as each section is published we will inform you all through the newsletter.  It is a ground-breaking approach but not so complex we cannot all understand it, and I hope you will be surprised by what you will read.  The first Paper is written; awaiting illustrations, and asks the question “When did man start changing the Earth’s Climate?”  I will be happy to take questions but hope I don’t live to regret that offer!

My personal Objectives are:

To get as many truly sustainable, truly low energy and low carbon products into the market
as fast as we can – across the spectrum of the population.
All designed to last a lifetime.
All beautiful to live with.

AND to publish as much as I have time to about our environmental, economic and social futures.

As for the products I have a number of serious inventions most of which are ‘Patent applied for’. Most therefore involve new technologies (or amended existing technologies) so before they can be brought to market, prototypes need to be manufactured and tested to prove the products – and this is expensive.

  • The first is a new way of cooking which is designed to use tiny amounts of energy – but uses many technologies to achieve that. The only technology I was only 98% confident about has been tested and works! But we have to manufacture the prototypes which will cost many thousands of £s after which we start low level production before expanding it. ALL production will be in the UK and there is quite enough technical competence here to achieve that viably. Besides, British products can be made to last.
  • The second (linked) is the Tranquility Solar Hot Water system. The fact that I have an annual (fossil fuel) bill of less than £10 doesn’t help the Planet as T is one house. But marketed for retro-fitting on many of our buildings it will have a huge impact. Further prototyping (several) and software controllers have to be ‘built’ so more investment.
  • The biggest impact product involves a new way of generating electricity from a moving mass – primarily wind but the same would work in a liquid. It is clearly ‘revolutionary’ in concept and if it does what I am extremely confident it will – we will all be very excited. The next step is to build possibly 3 fully working scale models for wind tunnel testing, and a huge amount of money.

There are further products, but all are designed with zero carbon living as the prime objective and true zero carbon can be achieved. Tranquility has shown it can be done though I need the ‘Windy Wizzie’ and a few other concepts to get the house to full zero carbon.

At the moment we have to focus on cash generation, so all energy and finance is going into the timber ‘business’ to drive down costs and provide the cash for product development. Hopefully the first new product launch will generate the funds for further prototyping and product development.

I hope you will be happy to receive this periodic newsletter and if there are others you know who would like to be included please do let us know and/or forward this link to them. The world is moving into interesting times, and human civilisation has never faced such challenges before.

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