One Resource

One of the most readily available resources available to us is so abundant that many people often miss it, its the humble pallet, wooden pallets are all around us in most of the places we go, they are at factories and warehouses, they are at building sites, and even some of our homes if we have larger items delivered to us; so why are they ignored when for a little of our energy we can collect them and turn them into other useful items.

Burning them for heat is an obvious use if you have a log burner or open fireplace and it requires little more than cutting them up to the required length and throwing them on the fire for them to provide us with heat, and as all pallets have either the full runs of timber between the top and bottom layers, or at the very least they have square blocks on the cheaper pallets, and either can be used to supplement logs if you have a limited supply of them, or they can have their borads cut into sticks to light a fire.

If you save the sawdust and place this in equal quantities of paper into a barrel and add water and leave for a few days, you have a mixture which you can compress into logs, if you add around 20% well rotted horse or similar manure you can compress this mixture into manufactured logs and use waste products to make more logs to supplement your existing stock, you waste nothing and recycle disposable products into a usable item for your benefit.
You can fire any shed, workshop, greenhouse, outbuilding, garage, or even your home with them, but they need drying first.

Building materials is a less obvious use, but if you break off the boards gently they make a useful building material from waste.How many boards do you buy to make a shed or other outbuilding, how much does this cost you? in reality you can adapt a design to accommodate the shorter boards and make some very useful buildings for very little cost.
Greenhouses from a certain era had the bottom half made from timber, so why don't people replicate this; by simply splicing the central dividing sections together to form a frame and nailing boards on the outside you can construct a decent greenhouse and you only have to glaze the upper half, if you so desire you can insulate the bottom half by laying insulation into the timber and covering it on the inside with any spare boards.
You can make some excellent sheds using pallet boards, if you have an adjustable circular saw or a router you can rebate the boards before attaching them to the frame, and you can bond the joints to make it a stronger structure, you can make a large shed in sections by making one shed and lengthening it as boards become available, you can also insulate it by adding insulation and lining the inside with spare boards to make a shed or workshop you can work in all year round.
Garages can be made in the same way as workshops, you can insulate them or leave them as a double skinned item without insulation, or leave them as a single skinned item.

Many gardeners use pallets for a variety of projects which may include cold frames and framing for compost heaps, you can even use pallet boards for steps or decking around a shed to stop your muddy boots trampling mud into your garden shed.

many people rue the day creosote was abolished and many still acquire it from legitimate users such as farmers; but you can make your own simple mixture by mixing one part old engine oil to one part red diesel and simply mixing, using this method gives you an excellent type of creosote wood preverver which you can use on any wood, and as it penetrates the wood it is much better than the water based, paint type wood preservers which simply sit on the surface of the wood, and it is an excellent mixture where wood is in contact with the ground.