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Logging just looks very simple,
a lot of people think that it's not a big deal.
But in reality it's really difficult.
It's hard to find qualified workers for logging,
in particular, an operator.
This particularly is a harvester operator
so he needs F category license
and plus he also needs knowledge
about logging and woodlot forestry.
And this knowledge is most difficult to obtain in Latvia,
because the training of the forwarder and harvester operator
has been going on for a few years.
Before we trained the operators ourselves,
but it was only damaging the machinery.
But it proved that the best way to train them is to let them learn
themselves and get the result. And we can appreciate them.
You can't just become an operator. It takes time.
You have to work to achieve it, in order to do it professionally.
The workers who are professionals don't leave the job.
They understand what is a forest, how they need to work
and why they need to work.
The new workers who are looking for a job cause big problems.
They want to work, but they can't.
They have finished schools, but the schools don't give the knowledge
to allow the company to work to take responsibility.
A lot of the workers leave the job themselves, give up,
because it's too hard for them.
Also there are people who canĂ¿t do this job and
we have to ask them to leave.
They just don't get it and don't have enough skills to do it,
but the situation is bad with the qualified workers.
The log house production process covers sawn timber drying,
defecting, it means, that we saw out damaged material spice,
these are decays, branches, that is enough
for material grown in our latitudes.
After that it is grown long till seven and a half meters.
These finger-jointed boards are then grown in thickness and made
into glue laminated logs.
These glue laminated logs in the size 7,5 m are one of the best
especially for further log production.
Afterwards the profiling is done.
It means, that the same profile is created for log house,
so that the walls hold onto to other walls.
It means that the each row hold on to each row.
And the incorporation of different milling is the last in this process,
starting with the partitions, the corner joint, the ceiling beams sits,
as well as the different type of deep connection types
that are in the project.
Like I said it has a wooden construction.
So when it was constructed it was very important
that the wooden material shouldn't get wet.
So the had to put up the giant tent
over the whole constructions site in order to keep it dry.
during the whole building construction phase.
It was something they had to come up with.
Is this wooden house? Or wooden construction?
The framework is wooden.
But then the facade is from concrete.
Construction?
Construction is wooden, yes.
It's not easy to see it if you don't know it.
But i think when we will walk into the entrance we will see it.
If we are talking about the cost then the figures that I got is that
are calculated that by using passive house technology
and wooden construction, it was they say about 10% more expencive
if they had used ordinary technique, so to say.
But then 5% comes from using passive house technology
and about 5% higher expense from using wooden construction.
Was that correct?
Yes these were the calculations they gave us.
One thing here also to mention, that you are metering everything
and you can read what you are using
and you can get feedback from the service provider.
And also you can say that
the total energy balance (in kWh per m2 per year)
is that 15 for heating, the (hot) water 25 and for electricity 10.
So the heating is not the main, the hot water is.
But also then you have the heat exchanger for the sewage water
heating the incoming cold water.
This is not for the payback. Its for technology.
But its not that very bad. It's something like 20 years.
In direct payback.
We produce the amount of sixty cubes shawings every week.
It is enough for us to provide the basic processes in summer and winter
It is heating, and, above all, that is material drying,
so we sell the shawings to the shawings processors.
What you see is a boiler house, we use self-produced shawings.
Then the water is heated and with it we heat dry-houses.
Boiler capacity of 1,8 megawatts, and it is enough for us.
We can ensure our operations in the winter cold months, we can heat
all the rooms and provide continuous materials drying with extra capacity.
Of course, the boiler has extra power.
We have ideas for future, we want to develop thermo-timber production
and so we will need the whole of the boiler power.
This ash comes from fluid bed boiler.
Which are the best boilers, often the big plants use fluid bed.
And it makes very well burned ash.
And as it is well burned it hardens. And the process in the ash processing
(making ash granules) have very good and fast process.
The trees will continue to grow here.
I don't think that we start to make something completely different
on our forest land compared what we have done so far.
We have long tradition on forest management and the knowledge
and skills how to handle the forest have existed
for tens and hundreds of years.
It will probably stay so that we are growing trees
and somewhere in South Europe somebody will grow tomatoes.
I think these roles will last on general scale.
Speaking of the nearest future then in next ten years
as we talked earlier we have to grow the amount of forest maintenance.
Especially in private forests.
Making even more maintenance work like thinning
and we actually should repair more of these old-time draining systems.
and the road infrastructure, especially in private forests.
These are important areas for making investments into Estonian forest.
I rather would be optimistic.
But there is nothing that will happen overnight.
We wont get it done within year or two.
But the direction will be towards this.
Some years ago when I was visiting Finland there was one leader
of forest cooperative who after seeing how finnish forest was managed
said that its clear that finns are growing the forest but
for us forest just grows.
It's clear that we have to move towards really growing our forests.
But we also have to leave some forests for natural development, as we have to
have abut 10% of the forest highly protected according to our
National Development Plan. So there are plenty of these forests where
the nature is left to its own.
Other then that the forest has to be managed according to the peoples needs.
Nobody is cutting the trees because it's so much fun to do that.
Trees are cut because somebody will use that timber. We need that to survive.
We need wood and wooden products.
So in our forest we have to keep these economical target on our sight.
Tartu Regional Energy Agency 2013