Right – after years of buying small net bags (due to lack of usable space for a bulk delivery) our circumstances have changed and I have made a nice little sunny, well aire spot for a bulk delivery so…

Who can you recommend for bulk deliveries in the North Yorkshire region of good well seasoned split logs?

visit the lads at a local timber mill and ask them.

Well seasoned split logs???? They’re rare as Rocking Horse Poo at present in Devon.
I took a delivery from my local logman last week. He said it’s the first time in 10 years he’s run out of ‘dry’ wood, even though he’s increased his logs 30% year on year for the last few. In rural areas such as ours, where oil is the only less expensive than bottled gas option, everyone’s going over to wood. He’s started to turn new customers away as he can’t cope.
Judging by reports locally/nationally, sales of wood burners have gone up 50% this autumn and winter. There was a recent BBC news article about a company in Norfolk way (??) actually kiln drying logs, and they can’t keep up either! but that must be an expensive way to buy logs….. not environmentally friendly either.
Ok, I know we’re a long way apart, but I suspect most rural areas are similar, this time of year and particularly this year, you might have to compromise with your demands. My logs this time were only split recently so wern’t as dry as normal, but with a few lumps of coal or similar, they will catch up well.
I’m paying £55 per pickup load, which for my area is the norm.
Try local ads, parish magazines etc. for local farmers etc. doing logs as a sideline, and ask around too. Best get them from personal recommendations. Logs from saw mills might be treated which means they will contain several quite unpleasant chemicals, not what your flue liner will like!
If you’ve now got a log store, try and buy a good load early summer and let them dry then you know they’ll be good ( perhaps not what you want to hear now!)

best of luck
Q

After our gas bill dropped through the door the other day it’s finally finalised it for us to get a burner. I can get free logs so seems a bit silly not to.

Buy yourself a second hand chainsaw, and investigate the possibilities of local fallen timber, especially after high winds. Seriously, have a drive around the local farm areas, most farmers are happy to get rid of them.

A friend recently came across two huge sycamores down in a neighbouring field (he’s a small holder), rang the farmer, and the farmer told him twenty quid would swing it. He now has in excess of 10 tonnes of wood, which he reckons will last him the next 10 years.

I believe it was in the magna carta stating that you can take fallen trees for your own use, up to a couple of years ago, and new labour done away with it.

D A Atkinson?? in Easingwold is spot on…- hes on the Stillington road, just past the Golf Course.

Will deliver by the trailer load..

Also, I live on the coast, and in the last few months I have noticed a huge rise in the amount of people scouring the beach for wood, which I can only assume is for thier stoves, due to the high utility prices.

Ask around for your local tree surgeon – you will have to store / season most of it yourself, but probably cheap and local – you may well get ome ‘interesting’ wood that does smell lovely when burned!

I have my own forrest, just spent the whole day chopping down a few trees!!

Our LLM (Local Log Man) is also turning away new customers; he’ll need at least a year’s notice to increase his capacity.

I cut most of our own logs, just getting an extra tonne in at Xmas. It’s time-consuming but rewarding. Saying that I have access to a farm, a tractor, all the tools and protective togs.

Being totally self-sufficient without your own land and appropriate haulage vehicles is an undertaking and takes at least a year to get there.

A year or two ago there was lots of fallen wood about, but not any more. I’ve seen stuff whilst out and about and returned with my kit a day later to find a pile of sawdust. Basically everyone’s doing it.

Whats been revealed by everyone turning to wood as a fuel of late, is that wood hasn’t been a viable fuel for roughly 400 years. It was the original fuel crisis and the shortage of wood was the driving force behind the large scale exploitation of fossil fuel.

plant some trees

Whats been revealed by everyone turning to wood as a fuel of late, is that wood hasn’t been a viable fuel for roughly 400 years.

not for all of us, but those of us who have a bit of ground and the means, tools and application to gather, store, and use the stuff it works very well.

As for the carbon-balance; every evening spent with my logburner going and my oil boiler off is certainly reducing the release of fossil carbon. My saw has used less that a gallon of petrol this winter, less than a litre of chain oil (also used on the bike) and the red used by the tractor is very low as we’re going outward with feed and returning with fuel. No road transport etc.

Move to the coast/ estuary. Sorry, MF! 🙂

Well thanks for all your help (not 😉

I live in a small end terraced cottage, I have access to exactly one tree and the farm which we overlook has a very unfriendly farmer in charge so no chance of trees from him. I certainly don’t have the sort of space needed to beg entire fallen trees in order to spend my days chopping and storing them (I was imagining just a winter’s worth pile up against a new shed in my OP). I have thought about the possibility of scavenging but have decided that, as I am too busy to have a life as it is, spending hours every week doing so wouldn’t be viable (especially with twins due in June).

Ahh well, Google it is…

Local sawmill for me.

Strange thing is, I’ve been getting wood from them for the last 2 years. It was free until Christmas. They’d bundle up the offcuts into 1.5 ton loads. Loadall them onto your trailer and off you’d go. They produced way more than they could use themselves. The sawmill owner even has an openair pool that heated with wood fired boiler. They even had to get an industrial chipper to take away 6 artic loads of waste.

Come Christmas, a guy wanted to use it for a semi commericial business. Sawmill then charges £10 a load. Now there is a queue around the block and an 8 week waiting list for a single bundle.

mastiles – just go a ton of chopped logs delivered yesterday from the log man just south of skipton.
Not dry though I’m afraid.

Do you have a web link/phone numebr then pls glen – I should be able to start storing by April so should be okay by winter…

Find property developers – when chopping down trees they have to pay to get shut of them, they’ll often happily slip a tree into your boot, so to speak.

And just how much property developing is going on at the moment?

try here http://www.mjgiddings.co.uk great service and decent enough wood from FSC sites, seasoned but not dry, but it is winter right?

mf – if you can, make space for 2 piles of wood in your yard one ‘dry’, one ‘drying’ because, in my experience seasoned wood has rarely been dry enough to burn, needing another year or so in the fresh air to be really viable burners….

at the moment we buy in bags of kiln dried stuff – so dry the smaller logs can be lit with a firelighter, no kindling required…. but thats only cos we’ve been planing to get our yard re-done – now under way – and there was no way I was taking a dely of 2 tonnes of logs to stack for drying, only to have to shift them again….

EDIT – just searched for ‘cut logs’ plenty of options for delivery of bulk bags……

Not sure of the contact details as they are just down the road from us. The yard is by the Steeton roundabout between Skipton and Keighley, signposted for logs.