30-05-2009, 11:04 AM
posted to uk.rec.gardening,uk.people.consumers,alt.consumers.uk-discounts.and.bargains,rec.food.cooking,misc.consumers.frugal-living
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Jul 2007
Posts: 49
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fire pits on your patio and newspaper paper compressors
"Lou" wrote in message
...
lid says...
tesco are selling those 'fire pits' round bowl fireplaces that
you
could have a small log fire on your patio.
then they sell for £19 a paper compressor (apparently you make
newspapers wet and then stuff them in and compress them, then
when they dry out, kind of solid; they burn like logs of wood).
has anyone tried all this? the idea sounds great (who doesn't like
a bonfire, even a tiny one) but how does it work out in reality?
i'm
thinking if it was really good, people would have been doing it for
years.. i know these compressors came on to the market years ago.
I don't know about the firepits or the paper compressor. But...
Firewood, say oak, has a density ranging from 590-930 kg/cubic meter.
Paper
ranges from 250 kg/cubic meter up to 1500 kg/cubic meter. Printing paper
typically is around 800 kg/cubic meter (50 pounds per cubic foot). We
might
expect newsprint to be somewhat less.
Still, it looks like newsprint falls into the density range of oak. You'd
probably do as well to just stack up the newspaper in the fire, and save
yourself the bother of compressing the stuff or making logs of the stuff.
Heh - ever tried to burn a stack of newspaper in a fire? The top few pages
burn and the rest just smoulders!
I've got a wood compressor and it does work, however it's a hell of a lot of
hard work for 5 mins burn time!
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