Quality of logs for woodburner

[ianrb]

Has the quality of logs gone down over the past couple of years?

Over the past 2 years we've been using seasoned wood from our garden, and prior to that we'de used logs from local suppliers. All good.

We have now almost used up the logs from our garden so have been looking at local suppliers. Previously the have offered seasoned or kiln dried oak. Now it's all seasoned or kiln dried hard wood, which is desribed as a mix of oak, beech and silver birch. And you just know it's going to be a small percentage of oak!

Is this what people are generally finding for logs, or are local suppliers just a bunch of crooks?

[gotoPzero]

Just put an order in today, £150 delivered. Seems steep, but having sold logs myself for many years I know its actually a fairly low margin business if you do it right (many don't) so I am not too fussed so long as its what it says it is.

I will have to see whats in the bag, but I will be having a look before its unloaded!!

[Fallingup]

.

[number2]

Choose your wood: https://www.logsforsale.co.uk/product/2m3-crate/

I ordered an extra large crate of ash last year, and I've got enough left for maybe two more winters if they're as mild as they have been .

Edit: they say it's the equivalent of 3.5 builders bags... I used builders bags to shift it from the crate to the log store... there's a lot more than 3.5 builders bags in a large crate.

Edited by number2 on Tuesday 15th October 11:56

[CorradoTDI]

The quality does make a massive difference and kiln dried should be the best but then the prices seem to be extortionate - more than double the cost!

I was lucky last year to buy a few bags from a private seller who had been stockpiling but was selling his house - mixed hardwood seasoned for at least 2 years and stored in a dry barn... I got a bag at a time and kept it dry and it was incredible in terms of heat output and how it lasted!

I went from using 4-5 logs in an evening to one or 2 and some of the really heavy stuff (which I assume was oak) would just slowly burn all night.

What I've learned is it needs to be well seasoned but also be physically dry so I try and bring in a load / box each week and stack next to the woodburner so it dries it out as much as possible before moving to the wood basket ready to be used.

[LooneyTunes]

ianrb said:

Previously the have offered seasoned or kiln dried oak. Now it's all seasoned or kiln dried hard wood, which is desribed as a mix of oak, beech and silver birch. And you just know it's going to be a small percentage of oak!

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with burning beech or birch. A mix of those two with oak would be quite nice to burn together.

[Cow Corner]

LooneyTunes said:

ianrb said:

Previously the have offered seasoned or kiln dried oak. Now it's all seasoned or kiln dried hard wood, which is desribed as a mix of oak, beech and silver birch. And you just know it's going to be a small percentage of oak!

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with burning beech or birch. A mix of those two with oak would be quite nice to burn together.

Yes, oak can be quite tricky to burn on its own, so a mixture is often best. Silver Birch is lovely wood to burn.

While hardwoods do vary, they generally all burn acceptably - the key always is moisture content. Luckily we are self sufficient in wood now (thanks to ash dieback), but when I’ve bought wood in the past, suppliers will so often try and sell wood that’s well above 20% moisture content. Unluckily for them, as a building surveyor, I have a moisture meter and am not afraid to use it

Edited by Cow Corner on Tuesday 15th October 13:20

[vaud]

CorradoTDI said:

The quality does make a massive difference and kiln dried should be the best but then the prices seem to be extortionate - more than double the cost!

Fuel/power is expensive to run a kiln.

[MonkeyBusiness]

I went off in my campervan for a few days and bought some bags of wood from Aldi for my firepit.
They were excellent hardwood and burnt very well.

Appriciate you are talking 'big loads' but I thought they were great.

[guitarcarfanatic]

I gave up on buying wood processed as A) it often wasn't very dry and B) I fundamentally do not agree with kiln drying logs to then be burned.

Buying cordwood, taking arborist drops and collecting free wood means my stores are overflowing and I dry/season on about a 2 year cycle. Plus, using a chainsaw and axe is fun (and great for the health).

[TownIdiot]

I find that if you use the good stuff to get it burning well you can use cheaper stuff to keep it ticking over

[McGee_22]

guitarcarfanatic said:

I gave up on buying wood processed as A) it often wasn't very dry and B) I fundamentally do not agree with kiln drying logs to then be burned.

Buying cordwood, taking arborist drops and collecting free wood means my stores are overflowing and I dry/season on about a 2 year cycle. Plus, using a chainsaw and axe is fun (and great for the health).

We moved in to a house with an open fire nine years ago and it had about 1m3 of dry wood in a small wood store. Since then I have taken arborists wood and some of my own local neighbours trees to build up about five full winters supply, all in nice new wood sheds which I made myself and have been the only cost.

[Swervin_Mervin]

If you're buying kiln-dried and then not storing it in your house, and especially if you're storing it outdoors, then you need your head testing!

As for hardwood - I'd have thought that oak would be fairly hard to come by for burning and I'd certainly expect to have to pay a premium for it. We get by happily with other hardwoods.

[Snow and Rocks]

Softwood is perfectly good too - I burn mostly spruce, scots pine and larch with the odd bit of birch and oak without issue.

If you find the softwood burning too quickly then just don't split it so finely. A big knotty lump of spruce or pine will happily burn away all evening in a hot stove.

[bmwmike]

Swervin_Mervin said:

If you're buying kiln-dried and then not storing it in your house, and especially if you're storing it outdoors, then you need your head testing!

Why? If they are stored somewhere dry, like a log store, with good airflow, they're fine. I've always bought kiln dried oak and stored it this way, no issues.

[Swervin_Mervin]

bmwmike said:

Swervin_Mervin said:

If you're buying kiln-dried and then not storing it in your house, and especially if you're storing it outdoors, then you need your head testing!

Why? If they are stored somewhere dry, like a log store, with good airflow, they're fine. I've always bought kiln dried oak and stored it this way, no issues.

Because kiln-drying will typically take the moisture content under 10%. If you then store it outside or somewhere like your garage, it will naturally re-absorb moisture until it sits somewhere between 10-20%.

If you buy properly seasoned wood, not kiln-dried, then it should be around 10-20% moisture content. Even if it's a bit higher, if you store in a log store it will come down to that crucial 10-20% anyway. Wood that's under 20% will burn nicely.

So if buying kiln-dried and not storing it internally you might as well be throwing £5 notes in the log burner. And that's before you get into the ethics of using a stload of energy to dry something that a) doesn't need to be that dry in the first place and b) is going to be reversed to some degree by the method of storage

tl;dr - it's a massive waste of cash and energy

[LooneyTunes]

Cow Corner said:

Yes, oak can be quite tricky to burn on its own, so a mixture is often best. Silver Birch is lovely wood to burn.

Agree completely, I really like silver birch too. In fact most of what we used last year was birch. Even when I don’t have as much, I tend to keep some to one side to aid lighting.

[romft123]

Most of our wood is ash, which we season outside as logs/main trunk for 2 years then cut/split into 10 to 14 inches in length which is then stored in a huge shed. Moisture tested before its sold. Averages 12-14%.

[Cow Corner]

Swervin_Mervin said:

bmwmike said:

Swervin_Mervin said:

If you're buying kiln-dried and then not storing it in your house, and especially if you're storing it outdoors, then you need your head testing!

Why? If they are stored somewhere dry, like a log store, with good airflow, they're fine. I've always bought kiln dried oak and stored it this way, no issues.

Because kiln-drying will typically take the moisture content under 10%. If you then store it outside or somewhere like your garage, it will naturally re-absorb moisture until it sits somewhere between 10-20%.

If you buy properly seasoned wood, not kiln-dried, then it should be around 10-20% moisture content. Even if it's a bit higher, if you store in a log store it will come down to that crucial 10-20% anyway. Wood that's under 20% will burn nicely.

So if buying kiln-dried and not storing it internally you might as well be throwing £5 notes in the log burner. And that's before you get into the ethics of using a stload of energy to dry something that a) doesn't need to be that dry in the first place and b) is going to be reversed to some degree by the method of storage

tl;dr - it's a massive waste of cash and energy

I agree that kiln drying is questionable from an environmental point of view, albeit many companies use waste wood to power their kilns.

However, I think you’re missing the point, in that suppliers use kiln drying to dry wood quickly, so they don’t have to have huge storage space to season it and have to sit on the ‘stock’ for 1-2 years before they can sell it.

Those buying wood are unlikely to care how the wood got dried, just that it’s dry and available when they need it.

In my experience, when buying from bulk suppliers, the difference in cost between ‘seasoned’ and ‘kiln dried’ is modest.

[mattybrown]

This is one of the stacks I am building from an ash that was removed and logged early summer. Used a couple of split logs in the wood burner last week and all very good the moisture gauge was well below 20 percent. They have just been kept in the dry.