Price of logs

drsquirrel

dunstonh said:

I just paid £175 for 1.3 cub/m of loose seasoned hardwood.  Local kiln dried is about £210 for the similar amount or £250 if bagged.  I don't buy soft wood as it is false economy.

Price is up on last year, as to be expected.

Have you actually looked up the difference in energy capacity of the different species?

Some hardwood is soft (balsa is the prime example but more of a flipant example, so lets say poplar) and some softwood is hard (spruce). Selling via hardwood/softwood is not very helpful really, but its a good way to throw the lowly stuff into a "hardwood" bag.

Whilst the price is sometimes double the price, the energy density is not.

dunstonh

Have you actually looked up the difference in energy capacity of the different species?

yes

Selling via hardwood/softwood is not very helpful really, but its a good way to throw the lowly stuff into a "hardwood" bag.

I agree.   You need to know what the woods are.   However, for the purpose of a text response on this thread, I kept it short.

Effician

The good thing about sourcing & processing your own wood is that you soon get to know what species are worth the effort.

Never bought bags or crates of logs or any logs actually , but if i found myself in that position in the future i'd be much the wiser with regards to moisture content & species of wood.

markin

As soon as they take it out the kiln it won't be 10% anymore, unless the shrink wrap every peace, so saying under 16% is silly really.

Effician

markin said:

As soon as they take it out the kiln it won't be 10% anymore, unless the shrink wrap every peace, so saying under 16% is silly really.

I wouldn't buy kiln dried as it's only part of a process & as you say once it leaves the kiln other factors come into play, we have several log stores at different stages but our driest air dried logs ( ash & cherry at the moment) come in at between 10-12% but then again i don't suppose many folks have 1m3 in the house for any length of time.

Qyburn

markin said:

As soon as they take it out the kiln it won't be 10% anymore, unless the shrink wrap every peace, so saying under 16% is silly really.

Nobody is actually selling KD as 10%, they only pronise 20% which is no better than air dried. The product is no better, only the supplier benefits by charging more and by receiving the RHI payments.

thrope

Qyburn said:

Just out of interest where are you getting K/D wood that is guaranteed to be 10% M/C? Almost every supplier that I've seen only promises 20%

This is local firewood suppliers. They sell as kiln dried <20%, but reading from a cheap moisture meter off amazon (with two modes for different woods, I always try both and take the higher, but they are usually withing 4-5%) the moisture content is usually in the 8-13% range. Could be a problem with the device, but I have the same from two different suppliers and a bag plastic wrapped of supermarket logs. I just put 10% as an approximate (ie to 1 significant figure it's the closest to what I measure when I buy, so it's what I would use for a back of envelope density calculation).