It’s all about heating in the IHN household today, on, ironically, the first sunny day in weeks. Just put an order in to (hopefully) see us through winter, two tonne bags of hardwood at £95 a bag. Didn’t really ring round, just used the supplier the previous owners said they used.

Anyway, does that seem ballpark for what others pay?

Locally I’m 120 quid for a bag of hard and a bag of soft, went through a spell of buying for a couple of years, but I’m back to liberating my own now.

Seeing as this is STW… what was it’s moisture content?

I have a van and a saw, so nothing.
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I did have to buy some a couple of years ago for various reasons, three bulk bags was £135, cheapest I could find. Air dried, mostly sycamore

We pay £120/ load which is probably about two tonne bags, where are you based?

Two tonne bags won’t get you through winter unless it’s occasional top up. We’ll get through 4-6m3 a winter, used in two fires (one stove one open) as a secondary heat source but quite a big house. A mix of bought and foraged, got about 2m3 of alder to go at this time round for starters

Two tonne bags won’t get you through winter

This. Basically the reason I’m back getting my own, going through 3 of those bag of each loads, 360 quid. Couple of days cutting chopping covers that.

In my last place in Kent a local place did 2M cubed mixed bag of Hardwood for £90 or £110 for pure Oak or Ash.

It all depends whether it’s for background use (ie you’ve central heating but wasted your money on a fire/stove) or you need logs to heat the house.

IME unless it’s fully/kiln dried you just can’t get enough heat out of the logs and/or you need to put one on every 5 mins as the fire is ‘roaring’.

We spend more, on kiln dried, and get through about 4-5m3 pa in a stove – no C/H.

what was it’s moisture content?

Er, ‘seasoned’

Two tonne bags won’t get you through winter unless it’s occasional top up.

Yeah, I guess we’ll see. Single stove, it’ll be lit pretty much evenings and weekends only.

where are you based?

Near Stockport/Macclesfield (Disley to be precise)

Those that liberate their own, where do you liberate it from?

About £90-£120 for 1m^3 of Kiln dried hardwood – depends on the time of year. Bristol.

(ie you’ve central heating but wasted your money on a fire/stove)

Or you have central heating, but live in old, cold, stone house, on the top of a hill.

Those that liberate their own, where do you liberate it from?

That’s what I was wondering.

I was lucky enough to have had a neighbouring block of flats with about five 70+ ft cedars that needed removing. The tree surgeon gave us the remnants of one them that kept us going for a while. Otherwise, we have just scrounged here and there, and so avoided paying.

Logs are like sex – free often costs you more than just buying it in.

You start with a bow saw and and small axe > chainsaw + Full PPE + training > Pickup + chainsaw + log splitter + full PPE + taking over the garden to rotate/season the logs.

Don’t ask me how I know this.

@IHN – I seem to recall you’re on top of the hill above Lyme?? No idea why I think that but I can point you in the direction of some very cheap firewood nearby if you have a chainsaw / willing to split and season yourself? PM me if any interest.

Before I started buying by the wagon load (uncut timber)… £60 for hardwood dumpy, reasonably generous if neither that reliably dry and cut a bit random. Still as long as you bought enough ahead of time and didn’t mind that your stack didn’t look perfect neither of those presented an issue.

qwerty
Free Member
Seeing as this is STW… what was it’s moisture content?

Seeing as this is STW… its

IME unless it’s fully/kiln dried you just can’t get enough heat out of the logs and/or you need to put one on every 5 mins as the fire is ‘roaring’.

I’ll beg to differ mate, In my opinion kiln dried is a waste of energy and money, as soon as it’s stored, itll begin to absorb moisture.

My wee charnwood kicks out a rare heat, and I have it far from roaring.

I seem to recall you’re on top of the hill above Lyme??

I might be, you stalking weirdo… 😉

I’ll beg to differ mate, In my opinion kiln dried is a waste of energy and money, as soon as it’s stored, itll begin to absorb moisture.

@Nobeerinthefridge

We store outside, but have at least 3 fired loads stored inside, beside the fire. as the fire is used, the wood beside it dries out again. As delivered Kiln dried is usually around 15-20% on the surface. When stored outside over winter it’s usually over 30% on the surface when brought inside. Used from inside, beside the fire, it’s around 15%.

With seasoned wood, the quality we get is very variable. We’ve had 25%-60% moisture as delivered.

With Kiln dried. we need to clean the glass on the fire (it’s about 24″x12″) maybe once every 20-30 times the fire is started. It burns very clean. With seasoned wood, that value was reduced by about a 3rd. It definitely burned dirtier.

With seasoned wood, the quality we get is very variable. We’ve had 25%-60% moisture as delivered.

You appear to be missing out the obvious middle option….

Season the wood a bit yourself, outside.

Exactly. Even when I went through my wee buying spell, I’d plan ahead and season myself. I prefer that using moisture meters, YMMV.

And that’s before we even consider the energy used in kiln drying, only for the user to have to season again.

For £30 (difference Kiln > Seasoned) I’d rather not lose another chuck of garden space to store another couple of cubic metres of wood. I’m also not convinced that it’d get to the 20% value that people quote. I’ve never seen seasoned below 25%. We don’t use enough for it to be a financial problem.

On the seasoning/storing front, what’s better, a dry and slightly draughty stable, or outside under a covered walkway, that gets a really steady breeze through but will get a bit damp if it’s rainy and windy as it’s open on one side?

Not saying you’re wrong daffy! Just my 2 bob.

IHN I reckon exposed to wind, rain isn’t really an issue, as long as it’s dry when you wanna burn it. I take mine into a wee alcove next to my fire.

How much do you pay for logs?

The public loos at Boscastle last week wouldn’t let me in without paying 20p….

Airflow is your friend – and don’t bother with a cover on them. If you have a covered spot for a few days worth, just use that a couple of days before burning.

Edit – and Fiskars x25 for splitting
Don’t piss about with wedges or cheap fibreglass handled mauls.

Fiskars x25

And an X10 for sorting out the small bits.

I don’t kiln dry any of my wood. I stack on pallets with a tarp roof and leave outside for a good few months. When there’s a nice long warm & dry spell I leave as long as I dare and then bring in the outer layers it all into the wood shed before it gets wet again. By the time I bring it in it will be well below 20% but it starts accumlating moisture pretty quickly and generally settles into the mid 20s over the wetter months.

To combat that I keep as much as I can indoors by the fire at any time so that its back down by the time I want to burn it.

Bought logs will likely cost a bit more this winter. The woodsure scheme, the government scheme to ensure wood is dry, costs the supplier quite a lot to register. Plus the price of road side processor grade wood is only going one way.

Make friends with your local tree surgeons. Make the effort to ring round. You’ll soon enough find one or several that work in your area and are only too keen to dump logs for free instead of paying to get rid and/or driving further. I’ve never paid other than a bit of beer money and heat the house entirely with wood and supply my mum too. I’ve processed 30 cube over the last 18 months all hand split. I did treat myself to another new chainsaw left month though. I worked out the last one cost me under £1.50 /cube in capital cost, including chains.

In seven years we haven’t spent a penny and burn a lot with two stoves. Not at the same time but different areas of the house mean we’re burning pretty much all day in the winter, I hate to think what it would have cost if we’d paid for it all.

With kiln dried the logs are almost a waste product for the supplier, they make their money on rhi payments. It’s ridiculous. If you’ve lots of space to store inside, or very limited space to store and season outside, or you can’t find a decent supplier of air dried (or supplier of decent air dried?) kiln dried may make sense.

Seeing as this is STW

I only use handcrafted, artisanal firewood.

Yeah, bin dun aplenty I know, but I like it 😊

Yeah, bin dun aplenty I know, but I like it

It’s a beautiful piece of work that rips the piss out of almost every kickstarter video around these days but still you get them

I’m disappointed this is not a question about AWS or Kibana.

I normally buy seasoned by the bulk bag, it is variable, the stuff I got two years ago literally wouldn’t burn until it had another year stacked and the seller was a proper fraudster…started getting nasty so I just left a suitable review a year later at the start of autumn. (Avoiding specifics which meant he couldn’t argue back)

Tempted to go kiln dried this year, in my mind, even if it absorbs a bit of moisture whilst stored, it’ll never be worse than good seasoned timber in the same log store.

As top up heat in a 5kw stove with the rest of the house a bit colder than most would be happy with, I get through 2-3 bulk bags, but if I tried that with damp wood I’d probably get through double as you have to leave the vents open and heat roaring up the chimney rather than a nice hot lazy flame.

I’ve just cut and shut my logstore so it fits in a more sheltered spot, just waiting for the first coat of paint to go off 🙂

Wood costs money?!

Please don’t buy kiln dried wood you might be aiding the creation of greenhouse gases / release of long cycle captured CO2.

10sq m of birch for £500. That’ll be a year’s worth with a bit left over if it’s another cold one.

I cut, dry and store a bit from our own land too but don’t have enough of it or the time and inclination to generate enough for our needs.

I would not buy kiln dried but only burn properly dry wood with is a perfectly set of variables.

Nowt for as much I want, sadly don’t have a log burner/stove

For my 2p on this.
Just keep an eye out for downed branches after high winds, January and February is a good time. I live near big old Beech trees and they throw branches after wind all the time. Take a wheelbarrow and a bow saw or hand saw up the woods and process them into transportable bits. If your area is anything like mine, no-one will give a shit so long as the path the branches were laying across (every time..) are now clear. I always make sure to leave some for the mushrooms too.
As far as drying it out, just split and stack with good air flow. What I do is bring , say, two bags for life full inside and leave them by the airing cupboard when the nights start to get a bit of a chill. That usually lasts me about 2-3 nights worth, i prefer a nice background glow to constantly raging inferno. I then bring another bag full in to start drying, to gently bake as my nice dry logs are smouldering nicely away.
And as for dirty fire glass, this is down to insufficient air flow and excess moisture / resin in the logs, in my experience.
Oh, and removing any soot/ residue from the glass is easy. Mr.Sheen and a nylon dish sponge, gleaming every time.

I used to buy logs. Used a number of suppliers. Got fed up of getting a good percentage of the logs covered in black mould, soft wood mixed in with the hardwood, lugging loose logs into my house from the street, burning through really fast…
I buy heat logs now. Hate doing it. They come wrapped in plastic. But it is so much easier and the logs give off loads more heat. Pay a fortune, about £300 a tonne. It’s either that or kiln dried for me though. I live in a really damp place and it’s difficult to dry anything here naturally.