Current market for firewood?

Friends just had a cord delivered for $430 from one of the larger suppliers. Seasoned in log form then cut and split to order (i.e. not seasoned), tons of fungi fruiting and white rotted beech.
 
Serf Life said:
Friends just had a cord delivered for $430 from one of the larger suppliers. Seasoned in log form then cut and split to order (i.e. not seasoned), tons of fungi fruiting and white rotted beech.
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Did that wood have to travel over ferry?

I’m splitting lots of oak today. Doing a circular stack, I’ll have to take a happy snappy when it’s done…
 
Bush cord 4'x4'x8' split dried going for $400 to $500 Can. around here peak season late fall. Some years back it was $350
 
Stumpsprouts said:
Did that wood have to travel over ferry?

I’m splitting lots of oak today. Doing a circular stack, I’ll have to take a happy snappy when it’s done…
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Nope, even a paved driveway. I just can’t get over them charging an extra $100/cord for letting a log rot a season before processing. Two big firewood companies serve the area and have steady demand charging that.
 
For that kind of money, I'd be inclined to install some direct vented propane heaters. You can get a decent little one for $200, and installing it isn't complicated; basically just gotta put a whole in the wall in the correct location. Get a bigger more efficient one and put it as far from the woodstove as possible and then another one the next year on the opposite side of the house. I know it's hard to eat the upfront costs, but the savings long term would almost certainly add up. I know we're not all wired the same, but I have a very strong aversion to being taken advantage of. Leave the stove in there just in case everything goes to shit maybe, but in that scenario, you probably aren't getting that wood delivered anymore, or cut for you.... urban areas are tough.
 
That looks like a hollow center Woodhausen, where in the filled-center version a vertical post doesn't shrink much axially but the pile shrinks as it dries. You put a wet/start mark and tell that the wood is dried by it shrinking enough in pile height.

hollow center for the airflow win. maybe can put drying shrinkage reference posts?
 
People aren't buying wood here in the city to heat with, it is for the novelty of having a fire. Nobody getting taken advantage of when you add up the cost of handling wood 4 or 5 times and storing it for seasoning and delivering it. Hard to make money doing firewood unless you own a huge operation.
 
Njdelaney said:
People aren't buying wood here in the city to heat with, it is for the novelty of having a fire. Nobody getting taken advantage of when you add up the cost of handling wood 4 or 5 times and storing it for seasoning and delivering it. Hard to make money doing firewood unless you own a huge operation.
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Gotcha. Around here, it's a lot of folks only source of heat, and you can get a full cord of split, seasoned oak delivered for $300 all year. We also have a fairly mild climate, so only rich people with big, old houses go through that fast. I've seen full cords of walnut go for $150 if you go get it.
 
Matias said:
For that kind of money, I'd be inclined to install some direct vented propane heaters. You can get a decent little one for $200, and installing it isn't complicated; basically just gotta put a whole in the wall in the correct location. Get a bigger more efficient one and put it as far from the woodstove as possible and then another one the next year on the opposite side of the house. I know it's hard to eat the upfront costs, but the savings long term would almost certainly add up. I know we're not all wired the same, but I have a very strong aversion to being taken advantage of. Leave the stove in there just in case everything goes to shit maybe, but in that scenario, you probably aren't getting that wood delivered anymore, or cut for you.... urban areas are tough.
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In our line of business shouldn’t it be easy for us to acquire wood? And propane is derived from all manner of industrial machinery whereas wood can be derived with simpler tools.
Bart_ said:
That looks like a hollow center Woodhausen, where in the filled-center version a vertical post doesn't shrink much axially but the pile shrinks as it dries. You put a wet/start mark and tell that the wood is dried by it shrinking enough in pile height.

hollow center for the airflow win. maybe can put drying shrinkage reference posts?
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I did read a bit about these and sounds like they are mostly for aesthetics rather than actually drying better, especially if the center is filled- which just makes sense to me. I did it this way mostly for bragging rights- it’s at the base of my driveway and I’m trying to impress my neighbors and strangers on the internet. Kind of a nice meditation too. And it’s nice to not have to set up any structure for it to lean against. A shed would be much easier and functional but I didn’t have the time to build one. I think I’ll do this again next year too.

I’ll let you know how this dries… And I should take a height measurement to see if that changes much over the course of a year. I covered it with an old trampoline which is the perfect size.
 

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Stumpsprouts said:
In our line of business shouldn’t it be easy for us to acquire wood? And propane is derived from all manner of industrial machinery whereas wood can be derived with simpler tools.
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I am invested in gas heating mainly because the law prohibited me from installing a wood stove in my house due to air quality regulations, but I definitely get firewood for free, and have enough that I still give it away to friends. You and I live in such places that it makes sense for us to maintain the ability to burn wood for heat, but I was talking about some hopefully far-flung reality in which the machinery from which we get propane suffers some level of collapse. In that scenario, what will happen to dense, urban populations? They're not surrounded by trees for the most part, and in all but the mildest climates, they'd run out of stuff to burn for heat really quickly. If a systemic collapse hits critical mass in winter, there won't be hoardes of people running to the hills to come take over; they're gonna freeze to death and/or starve before they reach us, though I am banking on people quickly realizing that cooperation will yield a far better result for most far sooner than shooting each other and stealing what little there is that's worth stealing. People in rural areas will have wood to burn, and rendering it keeps you warm too. Probably not worth making a primary consideration yet, so I suggest propane for it's current level of convenience, but as I said, I advocate maintaining the ability to use wood if you can. Convenience Kills, at least most of the time. It is the biggest ailment of the modern world: the addiction to convenience. Nice stacking BTW.
 
If that trampoline is sacrificial you have an opportunity to go solar if you can get your hands on something clear. Greenhouse effect if you let sunlight into the closed center. If you put a small vent the heated air could positively ventilate the pile. On the other hand a cross breeze blowing heated air through the stack might be more effective.

I've always found oak takes more than a year regular outdoor stacked. 2nd year oak is magic in the stove.

Here's a quote from an article :
"s stated earlier, wood is dimensionally stable above the fiber saturation point but below that point, wood shrinks or swells due to loss or gain of bound water from the cell walls. This movement is greatest in the direction of the annual growth rings (tangential), about one-half as much across the rings (radially), and much less along the grain (longitudinally). The total amount of shrinkage that occurs in one of these three directions from the green to ovendry condition is typically expressed as a percentage of the green dimension. This shrinkage varies considerably from species to species, but as a rough rule-of-thumb, wood undergoes about 8% tangential shrinkage, 4% radial shrinkage, and 0.1% longitudinal shrinkage from the green to ovendry condition. Heavier (denser) woods generally shrink more than lighter woods"

Maybe you can figure out how much your pile should shrink. Also oops it's holzhausen


from : https://woodbin.com/ref/wood-shrinkage/
 
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