furnace wood. and stovewood

graves logging · October 28, 2012, 07:25:45 PM

I was just wondering how much more should u charge for stovewood. It takes longer and it takes more wood. We r getting 180 a cord for furnace wood. I have been selling my stove wood for 190 that is just not enough. Any input would be great

beenthere · October 28, 2012, 08:06:35 PM

graves
Just raise your price to where you feel you are getting what your time is worth.

What would be enough for you?

doctorb · October 28, 2012, 08:45:25 PM

Thoreau said, "Every man looks upon his woodpile with affection." If you wood is high quality, clean, and requires significantly more time on your part to deliver a superior product, most consumers notice that and are willing to pay more. You have to be fair to them as well as yourself. A ten dollar per cord difference doesn't seem like much. I would emphasize to your customers the difference in time and quality of these two different products and charge accordingly.

thecfarm · October 28, 2012, 09:50:28 PM

What is the diffeance with furnace wood and stovewood? With me my stove wood was good, dried hardwood. Now my furnace wood,OWB,is mostly dead wood,be it soft or hard wood.

chevytaHOE5674 · October 28, 2012, 10:05:20 PM

I'm guessing "stove wood" is what we call "kitchen wood" around here. Its cut short and split small for a kitchen cook stove or for a sauna stove. Cut short for the small firebox and split small to burn fast and get a hot fire going in a hurry.

thecfarm · October 28, 2012, 11:10:23 PM

That makes sense. I use to split wood for the cook stove and than have bigger longer wood for the wood stove in the cellar. In fact that is why we cut a wood splitter. There was 4 of us splitting wood for my grand mothers cook stove. My wife and I put one in our house. i started to split up the wood for the cook stove,small and short. After about a ½ hour of doing that,I went into the house and said we are buying a splitter. ;D We did put up alot of limb wood too.

SwampDonkey · October 29, 2012, 07:01:52 AM

Yes there is a lot more work involved for the kitchen stove. It seems when I was young my father was cutting wood all the time for us and grandmother. We both had large wood sheds and dad filled both for winter. Besides that, our furnace wood was about 8 cords. We had a lot of hardwood ground and I don't remember ever making big holes in the canopy, could go anywhere and look up and see canopy. Dad only cut the worst trees for stovewood. It was most all rock maple, some beech and yellow birch. We never had much beech on the farm. He always said these ones we leave will make good logs some day.

Al_Smith · November 03, 2012, 06:00:17 AM

Back when I sold the stuff I had one customer who only bought a face cord at a time .She had one of those free standing fire places that looked like an inverted funnel and would only take about a 12" piece .

I had cut everything at 16" and stacked a face at a time .I just ran the saw right dead center through the stack and left 8" pieces and didn't charge her any extra .What maybe took 5 -10 minutes at best ,big deal .

SwampDonkey · November 03, 2012, 07:28:00 PM

Well, if you'd have cut it 24" like we did, you'd be closer to the 12" when you sliced up the pile. I can't really picture your method working too well, but hey. Short round wood likes to roll and tumble a bit with a chain taken to it. :D

beenthere · November 03, 2012, 07:38:17 PM

I'm with SD here Al.
That cutting to shorter wood just wouldn't work well as described. Just sayin...

Must have done something to hold it all down while cutting.

NWP · November 03, 2012, 08:02:05 PM

I usually charge $25 extra per cord for stuff shorter than 16". If they think its too much, too bad find it somewhere else. It takes time to change the stop on the processor and cut it. You're making 1/3 more cuts for the same amount of wood.

Al_Smith · November 03, 2012, 08:27:38 PM

First of all who said it was little round wood anyway ? :D

Most stuff around here is cut 16-18 inchs .Stop and think about it ,3 16's are 48" .A 4 by 8 stack of 16"s is a face .Three face make a cord .Now how simple is that ?--and yes it is that simple to cut a stack into but first you have to know how to stack it . ;)

Now you don't take an 084 with a 4 foot bar and try to get it all in one fell swoop .Medium size saw and cut down about a foot and walk through in layers .Back then I did it with a Mac PM 610 .

beenthere · November 03, 2012, 11:50:34 PM

Make a video. ;D
Show us. ;)

SwampDonkey · November 04, 2012, 02:01:27 AM

I suspect it was reasonably small for the little old ladies to handle. They don't usually like 50 lb rounds for the kitchen stove or for fireside chats at the fireplace in the parlor. ;D

16" is standard fair for kitchen stoves and fireplaces, not furnaces. Except I know one guy that figures 16" won't burn out his furnace as quick. The flames of the fire still head to the same hole whether it's 16 or 20. It follows the draft. He also figures a cord of sugar maple is 6800 lbs. Not that I've ever seen. With some people you just say "yup" and move on. :D

WH_Conley · November 04, 2012, 02:14:15 AM

Yup. ;D

Al_Smith · November 04, 2012, 05:00:50 AM

:D Oh that whole deal was 30 years ago and she was the only person who requested short wood .Although from what I gather the folks in England burn short wood .

Magnus says in the frozen tundra they like 24" stuff .So it just varies in different places .

My dads first cousin once had a wood furnace that looked like a culvert pipe appropiately called a "long wood " That thing could take a 5 foot piece .How'd you like to split that stuff ? Kind of like Abe Lincoln ,the rail splitter .

thecfarm · November 04, 2012, 09:29:50 AM

There is a 3 foot one in the old farm house. Great big old thing. My Father use to throw alot of odd shaped wood into that thing.

clww · November 04, 2012, 09:54:40 AM

That's some big sticks to be lugging around and putting in the burner. The old top-loading round stove I have in the basement at the cabin will take 31" pieces. I've discovered than I can get more 22" pieces to fit, though.

Al_Smith · November 04, 2012, 10:15:53 AM

I built a stove modeled around a Vermont Downdrafter that I increased the size .It would take a 30" piece .I soon found out that wasn't such a grand plan .

First of all those long pieces weighed a ton and secondly it put out so much heat you about had to open the windows and sit around in your undies .Bigger is not always better .

clww · November 04, 2012, 10:20:20 AM

Have not had too much heat at the cabin, yet. Still no insulation, gaps around the doors and windows, installing interior walls, and open soffits.

SwampDonkey · November 04, 2012, 11:07:57 AM

Yeah, when it's mild and with a well insulated house it gets a little warm for sure. Way back when though, they did well to have newspaper in the outer walls that were double boarded. That was overlooked in your design maybe. ;D Back then a lot of heat went up through the ceiling and out the walls, around the windows and doors. :D Usually the old timer that built the original house had more comfort, but it went down hill when the next generation took over and let the maintenance slide. ;)

Al_Smith · November 04, 2012, 11:20:38 AM

Ha I grew up in an old walk in attic framed farm house that didn't have a stick of insulation in it .Solid as a rock,not drafty at all .The old man would often burn over 12 tons of coal year though but that was when coal was 12 bucks a ton .

Now about the time all the kids grew up he had insulation blown in and natural gas because he wasn't going to shovel coal by George .

SwampDonkey · November 04, 2012, 11:28:37 AM

Memory fades with age. :D I know it was cold here, but 35 below is a lot colder than 10 to. And we never left no fires here to burn over night unattended. One of the rules of the house. ;D And yup dad was a third generation to the place who had to fix what his uncle's let run down. I've got the photo proof. ;) Back in the 70's the whole 850 acres and the buildings were less value than a new house is today. When dad sold the farm it was worth 40 times what the assessment shows in the 70's. That's because of improvements dad invested in, not just inflation.

thecfarm · November 04, 2012, 08:47:39 PM

That 3 foot furnace was round too. There was only one way to get a 3 foot stick in it,right in the middle. seem like he use to have it cut up in any old lengths. I think he said he would start it in the mornings. not even newspapers in the walls. But did have the old horsehair plaster down stairs. Upstairs was nothing but the outside boards to look at. That's where 4 kids slept.

SwampDonkey · November 05, 2012, 04:45:34 AM

This place was horse hair plastered to. When we first came here from a little house down the road that my uncle owned, we just had the kitchen stove and a gravity furnace in the center of the house. Well you could sit on that big 4 foot square grate and still be cold. :D

Al_Smith · November 05, 2012, 05:43:13 AM

Now that old horse mane plaster is pretty tough stuff .The house my mother still has was built in 1919 and a majorty of that plaster is the original .It looks like it was finished with a shop broom though ,rough as a cob .It's about like trying to paint a rock .It too is worth about 30-40 times what they paid for it but so are the taxes .

That thing had a big old gravity furnace converted to stocker feed coal ,"iron fireman " .It looked large enough to heat a school house .You could not stand over a register very long because it would burn the hide off of you .My sisters would dry their hair over the blast furnace air discharge .I do believe you could probabley bake a cake over them .

They changed to gas sometime when I was in the navy .My dad said the cast iron heat exchanger must have weighed 7-800 pounds and had a crack in it .It's a miracle we didn't all die from carbon monoxide poisoning .

SwampDonkey · November 05, 2012, 06:06:13 AM

Didn't have to worry because of one of the fine features of a drafty house you had new air coming in. :D ;)

thecfarm · November 05, 2012, 06:22:47 AM

Gravity furnace? One with no blower?
Blower would not of worked anyways. No electricity here until '86.

SwampDonkey · November 05, 2012, 06:36:59 AM

Power here after the war in the 40's. But there wasn't the load we have these days. The local village had the earliest power around these parts, had a dam.

woodswalker · February 19, 2013, 01:03:16 AM

Quote from: Al_Smith on November 04, 2012, 05:00:50 AM
My dads first cousin once had a wood furnace that looked like a culvert pipe appropiately called a "long wood " That thing could take a 5 foot piece .How'd you like to split that stuff ? Kind of like Abe Lincoln ,the rail splitter .

I have one of these :

I bought it at a lions charity sale. They were getting ready to close it down when I came in. They had a picture of it on the wall. I offered them $40.00 dollars for it

, If they load it in my truck ;D. About 6 of the lions met at the place to load it 8) :

I of course helped them load it.

I plan on putting in my pole , well its in my pole barn just not hooked up yet ;)

r.man · February 19, 2013, 07:11:37 AM

I grew up in a house with a 5 ft firebox, heat exchanger above that and only 1 large heat grate although it did pull the cold air from both ends of the house. My father liked a bit of variety in the size and length of his wood so he had more control over the heat. In normal weather he put one row of wood in but if it was particularly cold he shoved all the coals back and put two rows in. On cold mornings I would take my clothes out, there would be ice on the inside of the single pane bedroom windows, throw them on the grate for a bit to warm them up and get dressed in the living room. My father would be gone to work most mornings but the furnace would be putting out lots of heat by then.