I have spend hours on the forum reading, so I apologize if this was discussed somewhere and I missed. Please just point me in the right direction.
We are a company that produces wood products for the restaurant and hospitality marketplace. Our wood source comes from working with local municipalities to obtain logs from their reforestation programs, so all our wood comes from trees that are already coming down. We use a number of local mills to have the logs milled and dried and this has been great.
One of the cities we work with cuts about 500,000.00 bd ft of useable timber a year (Cherry, Oak, Sycamore, Elm, Walnut, Locust). A central storage location is shared among a number of cities and a large quantity of wood goes to waste, being wood chipped for mulch or sold to landscape companies to be mulched.
We have been approached by the city as a partner to build a mill and kiln on the city property. We have the availability of a 50,000 city building that was used as the recycling center, but sits empty since they have contracted the recycling to a third party. The community is very green and has some of the first reatilers in the country running net zero energy locations.
Milling we have done and understand. We are wondering what options are for building a kiln/s? Since it is a revenue share with the city, and the concept needs to prove beneficial, we want to start small/medium in size and grow.
Are there hybrid kilns that are powered by electricity and solar power?
Can the entire kiln be off grid and run by alternative energy or is the power consumption to much?
Should the kiln be built outdoors, or is indoors inside the building better? We want to use the building for retail sales to the local communities, as well as storage for our use.
Is there an excel document or worksheet on the cost to build a kiln/cost to operate?
Finally, we would probably bring in a consultant to help design, build and get us started, are we better off working with a company like Nyle Systems or an individual?
Thanks in advance for the input. Joe