So our seasoned wood is pretty much run out.
I’ve been checking the latest batch that I’ve spent the last couple of weeks making out of trees (that were chopped up many months ago albeit into still rather large pieces), and I’m still not convinced it’s ready for burning. Most of it doesn’t sound hollow when knocked and there’s no cracks in the wood. I’m assuming that’s the usual things to look for.

So I assumed I could just nip out and buy some bags of smokeless fuel to keep us going for a while.

Local shop sells it for about £4 for a 10kg bag.

How long will that last me then? One night? A week? All year?

a week or so for a 20kg on it’s own.

get the yellow pages out you havnt even reached the cold yet- youll be burning till march if your determined not to use the heating so a bulk buy would make sense

the local shop is almost always the most expensive place to get it …..

last time I used my local supplier – admittedly 3 years ago now he was 2.50 for per 10kg bag collected (but I was bulk buying)

ta. That’s why I was asking really. I looked online but some places charge a fortune. If I’m going to buy a lot I need to know how much to buy and obviously I’ll need them to deliver it. I’ll get a couple of 10kg bags on the way home tonight and see how they do for us.

8 quid for 25kg round here. I can make a bag last 2/3 weeks when mixing with wood. Week tops if burnt on its own and that’s only a 4.5 kw stove.

Samuri – not sure whether they’ll deliver, but this lot may well have seasoned wood still available: linky

I’ve used them for the last couple of winters, and the woods well seasoned (maybe a bit too much softwood this time).

Might be worth seeing what you can get to tide you over until March.

How long will that last me then? One night? A week? All year

do you have gas central heating?

Yeah, I have heating 😉 The plan with the wood stove was to save a fortune in gas bills by not having it on. Sadly this has been scuppered this year by hugely underestimating how much wood was needed to make a middle aged woman think it’s warm.

So I’m now looking for the next best option. We may need to turn the heating back on.

£6 for 20kg of charcoal was fair enough.
My suspicions have been confirmed though. Came home to find the wife had (for the first time ever), filled the garage wood bin with wood from the store and had stocked the stove.

We went out for a run tonight and then lit it when we got back. It went out real quick. I’ve managed to get it going again with some firelighters and kindling but compared to its normal light and burn brightly process it doesn’t look great.

Lots of newspaper on top and leave the door open a crack until you get an inferno. Once it’s hot the logs will burn.

I find heating a middle aged woman takes 4 cubic metres a year. Which is a lot. One years seasoning isn’t enough. You need two. I’m busy sawing 2016-2017s supply now…

You could dry some of the unseasoned wood by the fire when using coal. Pallets are always ready to burn. Personally I became a volunteer for a woodland trust 😉

And the best way to keep yourself from switching the central heating on is to have LPG central heating. The thought of the cost is making me sweat.

I’m still not convinced it’s ready for burning.

You need a digital moisture meter – Aldi or Lidl were doing them a while ago for not too much.

Best put the central heating on, I’d say.

As for wet logs, moisture meter, ebay, £5. Empirically, if the logs don’t take straight away, they’re too wet.

Sadly this has been scuppered this year by hugely underestimating how much wood was needed to make a middle aged woman think it’s warm.

This is a lot like ‘correct number of bikes’ being n+1.

Take the wet stuff back out to the pile, get a load of coal in, at least you can guarantee it’ll burn properly as soon as its delivered.

And the best way to keep yourself from switching the central heating on is to have LPG central heating. The thought of the cost is making me sweat.

Tell me about it. £500 a month last winter..! Now it’s controlled with the zealot of a Spanish Inquisitor and rarely on (helps this winter’s much warmer). And I bought 4m3 of wood for the whole winter, just to make sure….

We pay £7.40 for a 20 kg bag of Pureheat from this supplier: http://www.direct-coal.co.uk/fuels.html

Used as a bed for burning logs, we get through a bag every 7-10 days. Burned alone I expect we could halve that time.

Our logstore is in a windy passage so wood seasons fast. We are approaching the end of a silver birch I cut up a year ago (burning very nicely) and will soon be moving onto some half-seasoned logs I got from a tree bloke about 4 months ago, so I’m stacking them alongside the stove just to finish them off. The lounge smells fantastic and the radial cracks have appeared in the cut ends within a couple of days of roasting at wife mark 10.

PS: I weighed a small piece of the silver birch on lab scales when freshly cut and again this weekend and it has lost a staggering 48% of its weight. Amazing.

I’ve had this problem, moved into new house in October with a wood burner but no dry wood left.

Thankfully wy wife’s uncle has a warm where a number of trees went down over the last few years and he gave us 1/2 ton of wood, the trouble is that only a third of it was dry enough.

I have a system where i use the dry wood to get the fire going and have 8-10 logs of the moister wood drying next to the stove. I also have a box by the boiler in the kitchen (hot water, not wife) where it is warm.

So a rotation really, go outside and get some wood from store, that box goes beside the boiler, the box i brought in previously by the boiler then goes to be put around the stove to finish drying out and then becomes the next nights dry food (hope that makes sense!)

It is difficult still sometime lighting, but found that with plenty of paper and dry kindling and the method above of having the stove door slightly cracked until it “flares” up works.

Not ideal, but resent paying for dry wood or solid fuels when i have free wood outside.

If you have mains gas central heating it beats me why you would want to buy solid fuel (fossil or logs). The only way a wood burner is cheaper than mains gas is if you get your wood for free.

I’m on LPG so I could burn unicorn droppings and still save money.

@ Donald, for me the wood is free and we live in the sticks so the central heating runs on oil which is getting expensive.

You and me both.

I was talking to samuri.

oil here too

i mostly burn scrap.

i havea van and get calls to move stuff to the tip often – If its wooden i take it home and burn it.

Been burning mostly rustymac of this parish’ kitchen this year & my door frames/doors

Going to dismantle and dispose of an old shed for a coleague in the spring – thatll be the start of next years stock.

The only way a wood burner is cheaper than mains gas is if you get your wood for free

and assuming the thing is already fitted.

@ Donald, for me the wood is free and we live in the sticks so the central heating runs on oil which is getting expensive.

If you leave the wood until its proper dry, you’ll get much better value from the “oil you don’t use” next year, rather than torching the wood now, not getting that much out of it, and turning on the CH anyway.

OTOH you might have an infinite pile of free wood, in which case crack on.

All perfectly good sense but ignoring the feminine factor – which says that the central heating MUST be supplemented by a stove, increasing the temperature in the lounge to around 30 C, which can also be supplemented by a faux-fur throw if she’s feeling really chilly.

This is the one time storage heating works in the penny pinchers favour.

Feeling cold, tough shit, should have thought of that yesterday!

unless your mrs just keeps it on full belt all the time – and opens windows to regulate……

my mates desperate to get rid of his storage heaters for this.

another mate uses an electric halogen heater instead of his gas CH as he thinks its cheaper to run

TINAS, that sounds suspiciously like grounds-for-divorce talk to me…

All perfectly good sense but ignoring the feminine factor – which says that the central heating MUST be supplemented by a stove, increasing the temperature in the lounge to around 30 C, which can also be supplemented by a faux-fur throw if she’s feeling really chilly.

^This

Get some storage heater bricks and stack them around the back and sides of the stove for a slow release heater