Sorry to dissapoint, but this is STW, not mumsnet. 😉

So I’ve moved to a house with a bit of space (not enough for my own coppice though, unfortunately) and a wood burner (yes, it’s really STW!) and I’ve been buying cut and seasoned (ish) logs from a bloke of eBay for £175 for a transit tipper load. He said hardwood but it’s definitely a mixed load.

First question; is this a fairish kinda price? It’s certainly gone quickly, 😯 .I’m new to burning wood as fuel.

Second question; I’d really like to get hold of a fair quantity of green wood and process and season it myself for next year, but I’m drawing a massive blank at the moment. Who sells the stuff in bulk, green, in cord length? The only lead I’ve found is the forestry commission themselves, but digging seems to suggest they only sell to businesses, and in fairly large quantities.

It’s doing my head in a bit, I’m now living surrounded by forestry, yet am paying for wood that has been felled, processed and seasoned by someone else despite me being able to do at least two of those things myself.

Log burnerists of STW, please help, thanks!

I get kiln dried offcuts from a local roof truss company for very little. you could try alternative supplies like that

We paid £130 for a tipper load of wood for our stove, should see us through winter, cheaper than gas or electric heating when viewed like that.
What part of the country are you in?

£175 for mixed. You’re being ripped off.

One route is to get a chainsaw (inc PPE and training) and get yourself known as someone who’s prepared to help out getting rid of excess/fallen trees etc. We did once pay for a large tree to be felled (in our own garden) but have liberated a modest volume of wood on top of that. Only relatively safe/easy stuff though, I’m not pretending to be a professional tree surgeon.

Some say that tree surgeons can often be persuaded to dump loads of unprocessed wood, but I haven’t looked into this (no space/need for a few years yet at least).

We’re in the Stourbridge area. Offcuts sound good, I’ll keep my eye open for that. £130 sounds a lot cheaper than I’ve found around here.

£175 for mixed. You’re being ripped off.

I have suspected as much. Can’t find much cheaper (though plenty more expensive!) in this area though.

We’re £65 for a tonne of mixed wood, delivered. It tends to be a mix of seasoned and unseasoned, but you can generally tell by the weight of it. Some of it needs splitting, some doesn’t. We’re usually three loads to see us through the winter months.

I think I’d enjoy it less if I was trying to source green wood, making sure it was properly seasoned, cutting to size, etc.

One route is to get a chainsaw (inc PPE and training) and get yourself known as someone who’s prepared to help out getting rid of excess/fallen trees etc.

Now this is RIGHT up my street. ‘Will work for wood’

Could ask Stoner if he’ll show you his wood.

Pretty much do as thecaptain says, always got someone wanting a tree or two down here. I also keep an eye out on local woodland for fallen trees that require liberation….

Only had to buy wood the first year we had the stove 6 years ago.

What does a tonne look like, TFO? It’s all ‘tonne bags’ (which obviously aren’t a tonne) ‘pick up loads’ and ‘transit tipper loads’ round here :-/

do what my mates did (local public woodland)go in after the power line people have been in felling.
Once there finished go the nest day hivis on and if anyone asks your the cleaning up crew 😀

3 van loads a piece they had out of it*

*This may get you arrested BTW.

What does a tonne look like, TFO?

Wood guy delivers it in a trailer which is then tipped onto the drive. It more than fills our 3′ x 5′ x 4′ wood store with the rest under a tarp in the garage.

A tonne is almost always a tonne bag rather than a tonne weight. If they sold by weight then the better quality (drier) it was, the more they’d have to give you.
I’m like you – surrounded by forestry but it is all really pricy. The other day I got a delivery of “seasoned” wood and some of it still had green ivy growing up it.
I think it is down to who you know.

Don’t think you are allowed to sell wood by weight
It should the size of a cage or something

First question; is this a fairish kinda price?

This really depends on what size tipper it is and how high the fill it!

It’s actually illegal, I believe, to sell wood without saying how much you’re actually getting. Always ask what the price is per cubic meter, then you can compare it to others.

Even a price per tonne is misleading as a) generally the buyer can’t weigh it and b) is it a tonne after seasoning or before?

I’ll almost guarantee that 90% of the firewood that’s sold is a rip off of some kind though (i.e. overpriced or mixed woods when they sell it as hardwood).

Hope you find a supply somehow (have a look on the Arbtalk [firewood] forum).

some of it still had green ivy growing up it

Ivy will continue to live even if it’s roots have been cut – saw it on counrtyfile, so it must be true!

Round here many seasoned (geddit?) stove owners use briquettes. Some are better than others, if you have a home bargains near you they do verdo briquettes for the same price by the pack of 6 as you can buy them direct from the manufacturers for a palletload. 10% moisture, burn for over an hour each and environmentally freindly.
Don’t get me wrong, I like logs and enjoy processing them myself but if supplies are short they are great.

I’d just like to add that the CH aspect of my combi boiler has randomly had some kind of failure (hot water still fine?!).

Anyhow, I am suddenly very grateful for the tree snaffler.

In the winter you may also find driftwood on a beach (including decent sized trees especially after storms). Not sure how good an idea this is – I assume that salt will tend to keep it damp and sand is probably not great for a chainsaw. I picked some up a few years back but probably burnt it too soon (before I’d built up my stocks). Not sure if I’d bother again.

Local saw mill off cuts. You will need a big trailers though as they will just want to lose a bundle.

See this site for guidance…

http://www.ed-knights-logs.co.uk/

… his barn-stored wood is the best I’ve found near me. I’m burning some now. I guess you’ll need more than a year to dry cord-length wood.

Get a moisture meter. Check what you get delivered before he tips.
Over 20%, no thanks at that price..
Buy out of season? Top up in summer when the arborists are flat out chopping trees down and can’t process it quick enough.
Also get to know your local tree guys, they will have times when they can’t cut trees due to nesting birds, they will be flat out before this period. Don’t expect them to give it away though.
Get a vehicle or trailer you can move big bits of wood in.
Get to know your trees, it’s easy to get carried away with cheap or free wood which is crap to process and worse to burn.

Sounds about right for the quantity/area.
Hardwood in cord can sell quite easily for £55-60 / wet ton or dry cube, plus haulage and that is from the forest to the firewood sellers.

Are there any community woodland groups around your way? Quite a few around my way, you help and you get firewood. They can even access funding for ‘saw training.

Contact local tree surgeons or even the local authorities Arb squad, some have to pay to dump stuff believe it or not.

Forestry Commission sell firewood licenses for scavenging, that’s what I’ve got. Different Forest Districts do different things, but try ringing your nearest Forest District Office. Some Forest Districts have firewood yards where you can buy in pre-arranged batches. They dump the firewood in a pen marked with your initials round here. I have heard some Districts do nothing though.

I fill my main winter shed in spring and the wee one over the winter for use the next summer, and that works for me. Both sheds are really well ventilated so seasoning is quick. Your wood is overpriced by Highland standards.

By our old work, we had blokes go along the canal carving ruddy great lumps out of the trees alongside the waterway, they knocked on the door to get someone to move a car and said “if you want it, take it”. Find these people and follow them.

Sadly only Scottish FC do the permits now, in England they leave it for the wildlife.

Around here I buy in April/may

Pay around 300 quid for enough to fill an 8*4*4ft shed to the rafters & 3/4 fill my 8*6*5ft he brings it on a 7.5 tonne tipper. It’s not the driest but it soon days in my sheds.

The same load in November costs near 400

Lasts about 18months. I supplement this with the offcuts and uncollected projects from the wife’s schools techie classes (but not the MDf) for kindling and general whitewood/hardwood from building projects (unpainted)

all of the above.

My childhood was heated by dad pulling wood out of skips and mum going round the neighbourhood asking people who were having trees cut down / windows replaced if we could have the wood. There’s loads of people having work done round our way – plenty of skips to raid ATM.

Also there’s a wood recycling / reclamation yard near me. They sell chunky offcuts quite cheaply, usually dry as a bone too. Nip down in the car, fill a few sacks for £3 a pop, lasts a good while 🙂

Pallets? We have an open fire and I use old pallets cut into strips and small blocks. They’re free and you find them everywhere.

Make friends with your local country park rangers and tree surgeons. The council should be a good shout but ours, Fife, claim that they shred it all. I somehow doubt that when tipper trucks of it vanish out the back door.

I have a couple of friends with big wood boilers who buy it in by the artic load. Twenty seven tonnes are about £700 delivered. If you had a couple of neighbours and a few saws and some space I think that would be a viable option.

Pay for firewood! Just keep your eyes open and be quick about it. Haven’t bought any in 16 years at this address but living in the FoD and having a land rover helps. Alternatively maybe see if any of the local estates have a sawmill . Our local one delivers a full sized forestry trailer of 8 foot logs for 200 quid. All hard but mixed dryness. of course you need some space to dump and saw it but it sounds as if the OP has.

Try kinver sawmill up on the edge they might have some offcuts.

Some of the smaller landscapers / arborists might appreciate you coming to clean up after they’ve felled some trees but the caveat here is you’ll need to know how to use a chainsaw and own a van/pickup/trailer of some description so you can show up and remove large quantities of wood relatively quickly. This might mean you need to be pretty flexible with your time too.

Whatever you buy, be sure to get hardwood. We bought a builder’s bag of mixed (£70) froma local farmer and it’s 50% larch, which we are regretting now because despite it being down to 8% moisture, brown tarry liquid is dribbling down the back of the fireplace. Never again.

Globalti, I think your barking up the wrong tree blaming larch, don’t know what you’ve got going on there. Perhaps you are running your stove shut down?

The larch isn’t the source of the tar. It burns hotter and faster, that’s tar in the chimney being softened and running down.

“Whatever you buy, be sure to get hardwood. We bought a builder’s bag of mixed (£70) froma local farmer and it’s 50% larch, which we are regretting now because despite it being down to 8% moisture, brown tarry liquid is dribbling down the back of the fireplace. Never again.”

correlation does not necessarily mean causation.

I used to live in a cottage in the woods next to a sawmill and burned the fresh off-cuts. I loved the larch 3″x3″ post offcuts, stacked them up either side of the stove cooking, resin oozing out them, sticky like toffee. Then if and when the stove pipe started to block up, open up the bottom of it till it was roaring and the resin in the pipe would start to burn off making the pipe glow red hot, you could hear it going all the way up and then the carbonised residue would come tinkling back down, job done.

Wood is obsolete technology, get bags of hot max logs.

Cheaper, easier to burn, chicks our way more heat and less ash too.