Firewood prices, what are you paying? logs & woodburner content

Quick poll of STWers on price of logs. It’s somewhat important for us – the whole house is heated entirely by wood (plus some coal for ease of overnight burns), and we’re buying quite a lot of them there logs.

Just got in around 2.5m3 (1.5ton ish) for £190. That’s seasoned hardwood, mostly ash.

Are we getting a decent deal there or have we been bent over?

a cube(ish) for 50 quid here after asking on here turns out one of the fellas lives in the village and works with a charity that sells firewood.

We buy 5 tonnes (ish) from forestry commission every year. £105. Is usually unseasoned spruce (fine in a stove) in 3m lengths up to 75cm diameter logs so a fair amount of work and time needed to make it stove ready – transport, cutting, splitting and seasoning (which is part of the fun IMO) all need to be considered. By the time you’ve done all this work and laid it for a year to season, you’re very attached to it and almost scared to burn it!

Sounds alright to me, most people charging about £90-100 for a m3. Have you measured it (builders dumpy bag is a about .75m3 I think)?
Forget weight – it means nothing.

I just go down the local tip/recycling centre and grab wood out of the big containers. Free wood. The lads who work there don’t mind as long as I don’t fall in.

Paid £70 about 1m3 for hardwood the other week delivered but he’s put the prices up to £80 now.

Use to get it for free just had to cut fallen trees but no longer have access to it need to befriend some more farmers.

mostly ash

Sounds good to me if it is mostly Ash.

I charge £100 a load (Hilux pickup load) delivered, for seasoned Ash (two years, stored in the dry) we have completely sold out this year already too!

Ash is a great firewood btw.

My last load was £210 for 1.5 tons ish, barn-seasoned beech. He apologised that the price would rise to £230 next time.

We buy 5 tonnes (ish) from forestry commission every year. £105

Similar here. I paid £90 for this trailer of wood from a local tree surgeon
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I’ve still got the larger trunks to process but this is about 2/3 of it now – which i’ve just put under cover and is about 8m3
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wow… that’s a pile of wood for that money !!!

Why are people buying by weight? It’s supposed to be sold by volume as weight isn’t an indicating of how much your getting.

Impressive Sharkbait.

I charge £100 a load (Hilux pickup load)

Ski, what’s this in m3? I used to find it very frustrating when ringing for prices to be told it was for a ‘pickup load’ – what the hell does that mean?

Have you measured it (builders dumpy bag is a about .75m3 I think)?

It stacked up into a 2m3 stack. We had beech as well as ash so its all good firewood.

Thanks all, seems we’re doing ok with our current chap then.

Slightly envious of the unseasoned spruce price, but we have no means to transport and no time to process it for this year. Plus storage space isn’t big enough to have next years wood seasoning while we’re burning this years wood 🙁

Think I paid 80 quid for my last load of mixed unseasoned hardwood.. stacked in the store it’s probably a little over 2m³. Has been drying out nicely over the summer and it’s burning up a treat!

Boiler has been on the blink since Fri so it’s a lifesaver!

Jeff

Drac, we’re not buying by weight, we buy by the “trailer load”. Our guy reckons on that being about two pickup loads.

Sharkbait, that’s a whole lot of burning for £90.

Ski, what’s this in m3?

Sorry sharkbait, got no idea, we keep tipping it on until the leaf springs go flat 😯 😉

(guessing 2m3) Most of our customers, a load will last them a year.

Can you deliver to Berks ? 🙂

Paying €60 per steher (1 m3 ) seasoned, delivered here in Black Forest.

Holtz Hausen central McMoonter…

selling cut up un painted pallets ( seconds from the pallet manufacturer..)in builders bags for 80 quid and a builders bag of year old dry stored logs for 100.. fresh cut logs are 80 a builders bag

£75 for a cubic metre or so of nice seasoned, dry, long-burning non-spitty hardwood, and cheaper if you buy twice as much (but we haven’t got the storage sorted out for that much yet). The guy that delivers it has a lovely rugged lwb landy pickup and looks like Ben Fogle so mrs is burning it like its going out of fashion!

Speak to your local authority or country park. I get a fourteen foot trailer laden with as much as I can tow for £20. Usually in 4 foot lengths that I have to cut and split.

Holz Hausen building with joshvegas.

I don’t tend to buy wood, got a few places nearby that no one bothers about me taking the windfall every year, and a long forgotten wood on brown belt land that I’m thinning out too. An old fella I know told me you should get 3 heats from wood, cutting, chopping and stacking, and then burning. 😀

Got a load of sycamore a couple of years back, once seasoned it was really good firewood.

Pay!! 😯
I resent chainsaw fuel! Keep an eye open for power line clearance.

I pay £160 for a truck load (about 1.5 tonnes) all seasoned and in 8 inch lengths

If you are buying for immediate burning you would be much better knowing what the moisture content of your wood is rather than the precise volume or mass of it per £.

It’s not just a minor technical detail for the geeks, it has a massive effect on the value for money of your heating fuel.

For example, if you paid, £100 for 1 tonne of 50% moisture wood (freshly cut) at 2,200 kWh per tonne net energy output, then 1kWh would cost you 4.5p/kWh

If you paid £100 a tonne for 20% (air dried) moisture wood at 4,000 kWh per tonne then 1kWh would cost you 2.5p. 45% less.

But you wouldnt know which one you had bought. And it’s hard to really notice that good wood requires less of it to keep the house warm. But it does. And Ive seen both sold as “seasoned firewood”, or “3yr old fire wood” or “barn stored firewood”.

I’m just in from my local and had a chat with a good mate who is sells firewood. He’s miffed that a guy who promised him 270 tons of oak, felled 30 months ago, isnt honouring an agreement to sell it to him for £55 a ton roadisde. Because that is good wood that he can sell this season for around £100-150 a ton. He could buy wet wood for £40 a ton, but he cant sell it to his customers for 2 or 3 years at least.

If you are buying for immediate burning you would be much better knowing what the moisture content of your wood is rather than the precise volume or mass of it per £.

Which is why firewood has to be sold in size not weight, it’s illegal to sell it as weight.

£95 got me 2m³ of seasoned mixed stuff the other week.

Which is why firewood has to be sold in size not weight,

Drac – If you’re right, I shall properly eat humble pie. But I think that very unlikely. Even if it were a nice pie.

There is no restriction on the unit of sale of firewood. If you can cite a statute, now would be a good opportunity.

BTW – sale by weight makes far more sense than sale by volume. Sale by volume, unless the wood is stacked perfectly can vary in it’s “wood” content by the size and shape of the log (let aalone the stacking).

Sale by mass, WITH A MOISTURE CONTENT certified for the average log would give afar more accurate indication of the amount of energy being bought.

Wood is free from some woodland that came with my parents house. 🙂

Think £85 per cubic metre is about the going rate round here though for seasoned hardwood.

23 tonnes, 20-25% moisture 8′ lengths @£38/tonne delivered. spruce, I think.

Builders bag stacked very full of nicely dry wood for £50 delivered here. Discounts for multiple bags. Good as gold is my wood man.

WEJ, seeing as wood takes a very very very long time to dry as cord (I.e unsplit and in long lengths), I can’t see how that wood can be 20% mc unless your measuring it on the outside.

WEJ, seeing as wood takes a very very very long time to dry as cord (I.e unsplit and in long lengths), I can’t see how that wood can be 20% mc unless your measuring it on the outside.

Felled last year, I think. Stored in an open site and a dry summer. Middle of timber was up to 25%, some of the ends were as low as 10-12%, according to my moisture meter. Will double check though. Wasn’t too bothered as I won’t need to burn it until late spring anyway.

Pricey where I am: c£300 for 4m3 seasoned mixed soft and hardwood. I was looking at the price of woodlands last night….

Last I got was about 1.5-2m3 (on the weight limit of the van) and it cost me about £100 in fuel to get it home from my parents. Nice dry hardwood though.

Over here in Tassie they sell it by the meter stacked, but they don’t specify how tall or wide the stack is… 🙄

bought 3m3 of 3 year old ash/oak for £180.00. Should keep me going until march/april next year.

WEJ – Id calibrate your moisture meter if I were you.

Natural air dried wood in the UK really isnt able to get below 20% usually due to general levels of air moisture/humidity.

My moisture meter has not been calibrated so I cant guarantee figures but it does tend to produce expected results. 3 yr split and covered outdoor logs are 18-20% throughout. logs split 6m ago and felled 12m ago are now 20% at the outside (0-15mm) and around 30-34% in the core having been 35-45% when first corded. It will take another 12m for these to get down to 20% throughout.

Great info chaps, been buying by the ‘load’ here, which is about a heaped tipper of seasoned mixed wood just about to reorder so will use the info on this thread to make a better buying decision – guesstimate there was about 2m3 for £140 – got us through last winter’s snows and is just running out now as we only use it when we needed.

Nothing. Friend over the road is a wood surgeon 😀

Does anyone have any experience or thoughts on the wood briquettes that you can buy?

I’ve seen some on fleabay for £100 per 500kg. They suggest very low moisture levels approx 4%)

Seems like a reasonable deal?