Firewood

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If you have been waiting to purchase more firewood, I would not hesitate any longer. I have called about 10 companies before I found one that wasn't sold out already. I started calling the last two weeks of September. I finally found a person that still had some, so I bought a cord. Just helped the guy finish unloading it. Not sure if all of it is seasoned enough, but I'll just burn my 3 other cords of well seasoned wood first.

So, if you are waiting, you might not want to wait that long.

-- (cannot-say@this.time), October 06, 1999

Answers

Firewood is very plentiful where I live. There are signs up on the roads and ads in the paper for firewood for sale. It is selling for $80 a cord, delivered and stacked. I guess that is a good price because my dh bought several cords instead of cutting ours this year. Fireplace with insert is all we use for heat in our house and we will burn about 2 cords per winter. There is only one home in our area that does not have wood heat so smoke coming from the chimmney won't be a problem here. I hope.

-- Carol (glear@usa.net), October 06, 1999.

No cold snap yet here in central NC, so not too many firewood ads. There's only one in the paper today, $80/cord here too. I've put in a call to an individual I trust, a retired guy who hauls off cut-up trees for less than the tree-cutters charge to chip, hope he has some seasoned stuff to sell. BTW, y'all HAVE had your fireplace checked and swept if necessary? You've no idea how many chimney fires I hear on my scanner in the cold season.

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), October 07, 1999.

I started calling around for wood the mid to end of Sept. Most places are charging $170 or more for a cord. And while some ads said free delivery, when I told them where I was there was usually hesitation about whether they would deliver that far or that far and still free. I made a call to one add that was selling for $75 a cord, but sold (I guess) as logs, to see if he might sell anything that was already split. It happened he did, but that the price would be $150.00/ cord. Turned out the split stuff-- aged 2 years plus, was on his step-son's farm about 2 or 3 miles away. Oak.

If you've read any of my previous posts having to do with wood, I'm a newbie to it.

My sister and I went and met the guy to help load it, and he also stayed to help unload and partially stack it. A really nice guy. But I have some misgivings whether we did the right thing or not. The wood was not exactly what I was expecting... You know the nice round limbs sectioned, the bigger trunk and branch pieces split... Evidently, this stuff was oak leftover parts after having been through a sawmill. So picture some board-like pieces, some thicker with the curved part of the trunk but bark mostly off. (Not treated lumber or boards, but the remnant of trees that went through the mill.) We had a hurried, quiet discussion when we first saw the wood. It was different than we both thought it was going to be, yet we both figured it would still work. Of course, it will burn. But given that the size of the pieces seem smaller than the traditional chunks we've seen, my concern is that it'll burn at a faster rate... We tried to pick out as many of the bigger pieces we could find. (The wood was just piled, not stacked...)

The other misgiving is about the measurement. We planned to get 2 cords. The truck box was 8 feet wide, 11 feet deep and there was a line marking 4 feet high, though the sides did go higher. Two cords would be 8 ft by 8ft by 4 feet, and he said he wanted to make sure that we got at least that plus a little. So an eyeball average on the way it piled into the truck (lower in the front, heaped more in the middle and tapering in the back) he figured that would work out to about 2 cords.

We started stacking it, back wall and a side wall off each corner, and then he suggested just sort of dumping the rest-- piled in the middle. It probably is close to 2 cords. And maybe it even is a little extra. But I don't think one can tell for sure unless it's stacked-- doesn't piled wood kind of take up more space and give the appearance of more 'volume' compared with stacked?

Sigh. Again, we're glad we have some wood. But wish I didn't have the misgivings with it. Like feeling we were run through the mill, too...

-- winter wondering (winterwondering@yahoo.com), October 07, 1999.


Hi, all,

I'm a very experienced user, cutter, and ex vendor of firewood. I HIGHLY recommend letting the wood season for at least a year, if it's sold to you as "seasoned". Two years if it's green. I know this sounds extreme, but you'll get more heat per cord, because you're not using as much heat to evaporate the moisture out of the wood, and also the wetter wood makes the fire burn less efficiently.

Furthermore, you will not need to clean your chimney as often if you burn very dry wood (also avoid wood with pitch, like Ponderosa Pine). You'll also have less risk of having a chimney fire if you burn high quality wood. I've had one chimney fire, back in 1976, and it was TERRIFYING. Sounded like a jet plane taking off in the living room. The heater was red hot all over, and the flue was white hot. Believe it or not, you could see the damper INSIDE THE FLUE! Then one of the flue sections split apart, with the result that the rest of the flue pulled out of the chimney, with a resultant 6" "blowtorch" shooting from the end of the flue about two feet into the chimney opening. A little team work between me and my ex, plus lots of hot pads and towels catching on fire, and we got it back together.

The other moral here is to make sure to stagger the joints in your flue, and put at least three sheet metal screws into each joint to hold the sections together. Again, talk to your wood heating store aboiut this if you don't fully understand.

I'm not trying to scare anybody away from using wood heat; I still am using it, and doubt I'll ever stop. It's the greatest. Try backing up to your heat pump vent when you come in from the cold; it's not the same! Just be very safety conscious.

Remember, when the powers that be tell you how awful you are to heat with wood, because it smokes--it's a renewable resource. In fact, it's solar heat, in a way. It is STORED solar heat. Like an organic battery. And anyone who tells you that electric heat is "clean" hasn't thought about what has been burned to generate all that electricity.

Stay warm folks. This means YOU, Winter Wondering!

Al

-- Al K. Lloyd (all@ready.now), October 07, 1999.


Thanks Al, that was very helpful. How's that shower holding up?

-- Mumsie (Shezdremn@aol.com), October 13, 1999.


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