Soz, tried to search but didn't manage to find anything less than 7 years old.
Got 6 wheely bins of logs, allegedly a builders bag, delivered for £90 in manc.
Very dry, mainly hardwood, ridiculously small bits.
Anyway before I get another I thought I'd check what people are paying ( for hard to define , widely differing amounts of wood :-))
Stupidly stacked in two piles....
https://flic.kr/p/2na5feL
One ton bag of seasoned ash would be c£100 in the south downs. But that is an expensive way to buy it. The local log supplier said that was the most popular delivery though.
Paid £195 for a full load in September, well seasoned Ash. I'd say what you have is around a cubic metre? Reckon I got around 2.5x that in my load. That was from a proper managed plantation.
Paid £85 for a half load from a different source a few months back when down to the last row. That was definitely poorer quality and probably won't use them again. Volume delivered not much more than you have there I'd estimate.
Hoping my neighbour will confirm a now source soon which is likely to be cheap, but will require splitting.
It's pretty much the worst time.pf year to be buying from both a cost and quality pov.
If I buy I buy mid summer and by the 6ton tipper load . They tell me the load equates to 2m cube but it certainly looks lots more than that when stacked by comparison to the above if that is indeed 1m
It varies between 250 and 350 quid from my usual supplier
Mostly though I pick up wood folk want rid of by the trailer load.
Free but I don’t have a stove
£45 a tonne in Shropshire, but logs appear to grow in trees around here 😂
If I had a chainsaw I could loads for free given how many trees have fallen in the 6 months
If I had a chainsaw I could loads for free given how many trees have fallen in the 6 months
Got alot of friends with land needing cleared ? You can't just help your self even if windfall
that looks like three rows, almost a pallet high. about what i get for £100 local, seasoned.
i split that much yesterday from a windfall cherry, another three times that left to chop, running out of space for it! so far only cost me a favour to the mate with the chainsaw, a couple of hours clearing all the brush for the 'owner'
might have to find space to build a woodshed extension
You can’t just help your self even if windfall
There’s loads of fallen stuff at the side of roads, on paths etc. People have been posting on local Facebook groups, come and help yourself!
The local authorities are struggling to get stuff cleared
While yes the local authority are struggling.
Joe bloggs wading in with his chainsaw doesn't help the situation.
I get a euro bag full for £70. Seasoned
Transit tipper full is £200.
I'd say that's about right. Logs are not the cheapest form of heating, but always buy by volume, not weight.
You can certainly save by acquiring waste wood from tree surgeons, then split and season it yourself.
Softwood like pine is a cheaper option and will give the same amount of heat, just burns quicker.
In mid-wales that lot would be around £70, delivered. I have some for sale if anyone's interested 😉
Been a couple of years since I last bought any, 2019 IIRC. Paid £135 for three bulk bags of mostly sycamore.
I have a van and a saw and it's all free if I have a bit of time on my hands. Loads of storm damage still needing cleared round here. (Borders)
I work in forestry and logs are the cheapest form of heating.
Smug.
It really depends on whether you want heat out of your stove, or just want it to look pretty while you turn the central heating down a bit...
For us the logs need to be kiln dried as we don't have any other form of heating, except the AGA at the other end of the house (barn).
Doesn't matter how 'seasoned' they are, we tried many in the past and we did cut down some of our own trees and 'season' for circa 5 years, but still didn't get the heat off them that kiln dried ones give - and was constantly lobbing on logs. Our stove will take up to an 18" log, so it's a big one.
We get through 4-6m3 per year, so that would be +30m3 needed sat around 'seasoning'...
But back to the OP, it's gone up a lot in the past year or two - we use these guys as they're near to us and have always supplied very dry wood. The large netted Ash is now £386 and was less than £300 this time last year.
Thanks all. Sounds like the right ballpark, but tricky to know exactly as the measuring methods are all different. ( bit like weighing a bike 😅)
This is only the second time in 8 years I've bought logs. For most of that time we've been burning a couple of enormous trees from the garden 😪
£120 for a cubic meter/tonne bag of kiln dried hardwood logs.
Certainly not the cheapest, but as intheborders says, it's been better than any well seasoned logs we've ever had before, so worth the extra.
Got 6 wheely bins of logs, allegedly a builders bag, delivered for £90 in manc.
Very dry, mainly hardwood, ridiculously small bits.
Is about what we've paid for the last two loads we've had
Most of those “1 tonne bags” are 0.7m3
A piled up double cab pick up load gets near 1.0m3
Used to be a firewood merchant.
We were doing 1.2m3 for £105 delivered locally a few yrs ago. Diesel prices should have an impact as will the cost of raw material. A lot of fallen material from last winters storms won’t be ready to burn yet so prices are still likely to be high as material will have been cut before last yr, bought last yr and processed and stored (you hope!).
Not sure what impact the recent moisture content regs have had?
There are 3 versions of firewood seller
1. Buy of the internet imported kiln dried stuff delivered on a pallet.
2. Decent local or regional firms selling locally or on internet who are reputable and selling well stored and seasoned logs with transparent pricing and good customer service
3. Local ad in the paper/ shop firewood guys. Often bought or pilfered last minute, inconsistent and shady pricing, difficult to understand value, inconsistent quality and delivered in a variety of trucks, bags, wheels bins etc. If you get a good one of these guys great, if not plan ahead and season the wood yourself as long as it’s cheap!
Whilst some woods are better than others, I get access to free willow from the Gray Nichols cricket bat factory in my village. It is less dense than hardwood, so I need more for the same heat but it’s free!! I also just picked up some free cherry/oak logs from a man in the village which needed chopping.
Living in one of the most wooded/less populated parts of the South East helps.
Guy two doors along manages a sawmill, that looks like about £20 worth.
Intheboarders I'm not denying your experience but it's not usually the case. It does depend on humidity, temperature, wood, log size, wind and so on, and maybe your boarders location can't get below 25% MC, but most of the UK can get down below 20% and burn very well. My stoves have been at silly temps on stuff I've seasoned.
There's also nothing wrong with 30m³ of wood in the garden.... You sound like my wife suggesting it's not right!
I find living in a city it's easier to get wood than my brother in the countryside, less competition and the tree surgeons don't have yards large enough to process wood themselves. Befriend a tree surgeon or two and you'll get all the wood you want. I've been heating my own house entirely with wood and supplying mum, processing about 12-13m³ a year on average for 7 years now. Next 2 winter's worth are already part seasoned, I'm working on the following winter now.
There's quite a big difference between getting logs delivered that are fully prepped and then getting "free" wood that you have to chop and then split. Sure it's free, but presumably there's a few hours of effort and sweat to process it
Oh yes, for the arb waste I get probably 4 hours per cube to CSS.
Please don't buy kiln dried firewood, kiln drying probably negates the environmental benefits of burning wood. I can get wet wood dry in one summer sensibly stacked in the very rainy Fort William area. I have three sheds managed as 5 batches of wood, total storage for just over a years burning. I restock each batch as the space becomes available, and its always ready to burn even if it goes in damp. For really wet wood after splitting I throw into loose stacks for a week or two before stacking.
Norwegian wood is a good read btw.
I sell tote (ton/tonne, actually ~250kg of wood) bags for £50 to people locally (Dumfries & Galloway). A ~400kg bag is £60.
Current stuff is >3yrs seasoned, MC of 19% or 20%, and mostly oak at this stage in the pile. Broadly my firewood is a mixture of sycamore, birch and beech, with some oak, ash etc.
Builders bags aren't a cubic metre, more like half to 3/4.
Our 12 foot trailer measures up as 2.2 cubic m as a level load and will fill 5 and a bit builders bags with logs.
Prices vary massively on locality, if I towed one of our loads an hour south to Cardiff it would be 3x as much.
Prices will be going up as fuel to run the kit is going up and biomass aren't picky buyers with a big appetite so processors have to compete and pay a good price for tidy stuff. Add to this new Woodsure guff if you live in England.
And kiln dried is wasted money and fuel. Wind is best for drying, just keep a lid on it.
Prices do vary from local sellers as it's expensive to transport.
My brother gets good results from drying logs in a polytunnel, over the summer.
Solar kilns can dry wood to very very very low MC and in a matter of just months.
The kiln dried stuff we have had has been very good indeed. All dried in a very large kiln fired by biomass so not using gas or diesel (just in case anyone wondered what was used) The place we have used use the same process to reduce water content of the wood chip used in commercial heating plants. Apparently he has done his sums as it seemed to be doing very well.
I’m quite sure we haven’t all got the spare time and space to be processing three years supply of wood.
@TheDTs Burning wood to dry wood, to burn to dry wood. If your man is savvy, he's making money on the RHI for the kiln and the firewood is a by product, so very much quids in. It's all rather greenwashing.
Wood managed to dry before kilns.
Absolutely! The firewood is almost waste, the RHI payments are quite generous I understand.
I don't have a problem with kiln dried, but don't ignore air dried/seasoned. There are many bad suppliers, and many good suppliers though.
I can’t believe that people are allowed or think to use energy to dry wood. Just proves the human race will end up making itself extinct
I can’t believe that people are allowed or think to use energy to dry wood. Just proves the human race will end up making itself extinct
I can't believe folk drive hundreds of miles every week to watch their kid kick a ball.
I can’t believe that people are allowed or think to use energy to dry wood. Just proves the human race will end up making itself extinct
I can’t believe folk drive hundreds of miles every week to watch their kid kick a ball.
If you leave wet wood to its own devices in the right place in the garden then it will end up dry.
If you leave a kid for a while in the garden then he's not miraculously going to appear hundreds of miles away ready to play football.
That's the key difference, there is an excellent alternative to kiln dried wood.
Slightly off-topic, but given the energy price hikes, does anyone think it will be cheaper to switch off the central heating entirely and heat their house using the log burner next winter?
For example, we usually have the central heating on throughout the house but in reality it only heats parts of the house (kitchen/diner, utility, hall and towel rails in two bathrooms). In a winter we can use a couple of bags (£240 for us) but even if we doubled the use of the stove that's £480 (Oct – March). My monthly energy bill is likely to be around £500 a month when the autumn price cap is fixed based on current usage so if I can save £100 a month on heating then surely I will be up.
Slightly off-topic, but given the energy price hikes, does anyone think it will be cheaper to switch off the central heating entirely and heat their house using the log burner next winter
not if your buying wood at these prices to burn no . - and given that the only way to guarantee what your getting seems to be kiln dried i sort of agree with intotheborders if your gardens too small to store the relevent amount of wood 2 years in advance..... wood suppliers by and large are inconsistent.
As an oil user - its always been cheaper if you can process and condition the wood.
Its the home gym.
Befriend a tree surgeon or two and you’ll get all the wood you want.
I'm obviously friends with the wrong tree surgeons. not a hope any of the ones I know would give away wood for free, its a significant income stream.
As I said Jambo, I find it easier in London then my brother in the countryside. Many don't have space for the wood, and they just want the nearest, convenient, free place to tip the wood.
Processing arb waste is time consuming, it's done by hand rather then processor, and a professional tree surgeon can earn far more per hour doing tree work than splitting rings or delivering firewood. Some will do a bit to fill in on bad weather days but there are plenty round here that just want the wood gone.
Thread resurrection
Looking at getting some wood now and christ it's doubled since last year! Around here in wales its £175 for 1m2. Used to be £80 for 1.25
Also Is there really any point ot kiln dried when the law states that it needs to be under 20%? guy who installed my log burner said the wood will soak up moisture when you store it outside
I never buy kiln dried but I buy 'seasoned', which is (allegedely) 20% moisture or less. It's then stored outside but under cover (the ends get a bit wet) for another 6-8 months, maybe more depending on the time of year I buy it. It's brought inside ahead of need and sits in the inglenook around the logburner for probably three weeks which, I reckon, is basically the equivalent of kiln-drying.
But, yeah, it's not that cheap. Proce around here is generally about £100 for a dumpy bag delivered, but I did find a guy with a coppice he's clearing locally that's doing £70 for a dumpy bag delivered, but it's pretty obvious from the weight of the logs that there's some moisture in there (which is fine, as I won't get to it until next winter now)
A couple of mates do logs around here and have installed wood fired kilns. They simply haven't got the storage capacity to store the amount of firewood they will process and sell in a season and the kiln is fuelled by offcuts of wood. No one wants the knotty bits or wonky bits anyway so the end product they sell is perceived "better" (looks neater, more consistent stacking etc) and the kiln runs for "free" (significant capital outlay mind you).
End result is the same - less than 20% moisture and it is fine to burn. You either pay a premium for someone to store it for a year or two or you pay a premium for someone to dry it for you in a kiln. Or buy more than 2m3 and you can season it yourself.
But back to the OP, it’s gone up a lot in the past year or two – we use these guys as they’re near to us and have always supplied very dry wood. The large netted Ash is now £386 and was less than £300 this time last year.
The above is £550 now..., needless to say we've bought from elsewhere, but...
Got a big bag of kiln dried assorted hardwoods, mostly big stuff (up to 18") at Christmas for £164 delivered (local), rang for another bag - he'd got nothing ready, needs a couple or 3 weeks. Price now, £209...
We're near Peebles, Borders and paying £75 for a builders bag of air dried hardwood. £65 for dried softwood which we've had before but try to avoid. This is pretty good value Vs most of the country I believe.
