Firewood season

Modat22 · October 12, 2006, 03:21:32 PM

I'm in trouble this year, I've been messing with my mill so much that I've procrastinated chopping wood. Now I have to run around trying to find down dry logs. I may have to buy my first cord this year which I never had to do before. :'(

Murf · October 12, 2006, 03:44:24 PM

Modat, I did about the same thing, I think I need to call our friend and FF member, TeaW and buy some from him this year.

Oh well, at least the money will go to a member. :

SwampDonkey · October 12, 2006, 08:17:43 PM

That 9 cords is for 8 month's heating, although in October and May I only burn every other day or 3rd day. Gets too hot. Haven't had a fire since tuesday, I was away for a couple days and I had forgotten to close the kitchen window. But, it's been mild and humid with rain myst today. It's been warmer here than predicted, but there was frost up river tuesday and wednesday morning. It's no heat wave here, but it's been great working weather.

theonlybull · October 12, 2006, 09:51:45 PM

ours was all in, in early sept. cut last winter, junked, and split in the sping, left to dry for the summer. i put 3.5 cord, dad puts 7, shop uses 4, plus camps, barns, etc... just shy of 20 cord a year.
should be starting on next winters wood in the next couple weeks. been fairly dry, so we've been hauling logs without chains on. make life much smoother
as for cold. 20 isn't too bad, 0 is a tad chilly on the tractor plowin' snow (no cab)
but i like it between 15-20 for bein' in the woods, when ya gotta work to keep warm, a guy can put up alot of wood 8) :D

SwampDonkey · October 12, 2006, 10:04:44 PM

There's been 3 guys near my work site with two horses cutting softwood 4 foot and logs. They been there for a week and haven't even cut 10 cords yet. :

solodan · October 13, 2006, 12:09:29 AM

I'm right there with SwampDonkey, I have to heat for 8 months, but october is hit and miss. I could go several days without a fire in october but eventually the house gets too cold. In May I usually have to have a fire everyday, but only at night, the other 6 months it's 24/7. Even in the summer months most nights are in the low 40's, sometimes even the 20's or 30's, but the recovery from the days heat keeps from having to have a fire mid summer. I only go through about 6 or 7 cords though cause it doesn't get real cold, but still way different then what most people think California is like.

SwampDonkey · October 13, 2006, 04:43:26 AM

Yeah, I'll only burn about 7.5 cords here, still enough. ;D Last year I had 8 cord down and had over half a cord left.

solodan · October 13, 2006, 11:37:02 AM

I never have any left over :-\ If I finished that upstairs bathroom I started 4 years ago, and got the insulation in the walls and the ceiling I might use less. ;D Maybe I should make a new front door to the house as well. A small animal could walk under the gap below the existing door. :-[ I may get some of this stuff done this year, cause my wife is finally moving her catering business out of our house to a 1700 sf building on the highway. Almost every thing is finished in the building except heat. well she is putting in a new wood stove that will be here in a month. So I guess that means I don't have enough firewood again this year. ;D

SwampDonkey · October 14, 2006, 10:41:58 AM

She probably will have enough wood at the shop, but I'm worried about anyone having to winter it at the house. :D

Bibbyman · November 12, 2006, 08:18:45 PM

Looks like we're going to have a good bit of trafic in firewood that year. We've already sold more firewood this fall than we normally do in a winter and have some paid orders for more.

We're also doing a brisk business in PU loads of slabs. We charge $10/PU load - customer loads himself. We had two customers this afternoon. We're going to have to get back to sawing so we can make more slabs. We've not had to burn slabs in over a month.

I don't know if it's necessarily good as often dealing with a customer getting $10 load of slabs knocks us out of an hour of sawing.

Coon · November 12, 2006, 11:11:06 PM

Bibby, Don't worry too much about losing that hour of sawing. You're probably still getting ahead on man hours you need around the place. It would still take up some of someones time to be around watching the fire when you burn the whole pile. If it's any bit of a benifit to someone it's worth doing, as long as you are getting paid for it. If you find that your slabs are disappearing faster than you can cut them then maybe you are just selling them a little too cheap. Try upping that price to $15/ load and see if it slows everyone down. If not then your time is a little better off at $15/hr then the previous $10/ hour you were getting. One thing to also remember is that $10/ hour or whatever you are getting for that load of slabs is 100% profit cuz you just ain't got any overhead if the customer is bucking them up and loading them themselves. ??? ???

Brad.

Weekend_Sawyer · November 14, 2006, 01:44:16 PM

I have 3 cords cut and stacked. We have burned a little less than a half sofar this year.
last year we burned 10 cords but it was mostly slab wood. I burned all the slabs from sawing our cabin addition and my brothers mega barn. Red Oak, White Oak, Gum, White Pine and Yellow Poplar.

Jon

Modat22 · November 15, 2006, 09:34:49 AM

The log arch has helped me catch up on firewood this year. Instead of cutting splitting on site then loading, driving home, then unloading. I just lift the log in the arch, drive home cut and split right next to my firewood stack.

Much faster and easier on my back 8)

Bibbyman · February 05, 2007, 10:06:02 PM

Before....

After... Picture taken this morning .. Feb 5, 07

The "Before" pile was much larger and we had another pile of green farwud to the right. It's all gone now. We haven't kept track but I'd suspect we've sold and used probably 30 cords of firewood. We can't keep slabs in stock. We've not done too much sawing in the past couple of weeks so we're not making them fast enough. They are getting the edgeings now.

I've got about a cord of dry wood on the porch. I hope they don't find out.

Weekend_Sawyer · February 07, 2007, 07:58:10 AM

We just finished our 3rd cord. It was pretty mild until a couple of weeks ago. When I have the wood stove only going we don't burn too much, but when I fire up the fireplace and woodstove we start going through some wood. It does help that I have glass doors infront of the fireplace so I can slow it down some.

I keep a pan of water on the woodstove, helps add a little humidity to the room and I dip some out to make hot coco, mmmm good!

Jon

Bibbyman · February 07, 2007, 08:32:54 AM

Yesterday mid-morning I brought our box up to clean up what's left of the pile for our own use (I keep three on the front porch) and before I got out of the Terex, a little red Ford Ranger pulled up beside it. "Got any farwud?". He'd got a couple of loads before. "Knock youself out." I told him. He got one more load out of the snow and ice.

I got the Blockbuster going and cut about another cord yesterday. Son helped. Frist thing he did was break a lever off the HD valve. When I came back with one of the WM so he could keep going I noted a leak of Dextron at about $5.0 a minute. We shut down and found a gage burried in the sawdust/snow/ice had broke off. I found a plug and replaced it. Never looked at it anyway. I had another 2.5 gallon jug of Dextron and put that in. Brought it up to the low mark. Going to get another $25 jug of Dextron this morning plus $20 in gas.

Had a slab customer in the afternoon pick up the few slabs we had scattered here and there.

isawlogs · February 07, 2007, 08:37:17 AM

Hey Bib ... what the temp there this morning , here its-15C or 5F or there abouts , and snowing , thats the white grease covering the ground waiting for you to go out and find out how slippery it can become .....

Larry · February 07, 2007, 08:52:42 AM

I've had two firewood piles most all winter. One is walnut and the other mostly oak and honey locust. People drive around the walnut pile to load from the oak pile. The oak pile got down to nothing bout a month ago...thank goodness for this little cold spell as now the walnut pile has started to disappear.

Bibbyman · February 07, 2007, 10:31:53 AM

Walnut makes great firewood! 8) It kind of spits at you though - kind of like hickory.

SwampDonkey · February 07, 2007, 10:43:34 AM

I burned some basswood nubbins in the old stove in the shop and it sparked so bad it blew sparks through the seems of the stove. Didn't like to burn it unattended with that big pile of shavings 5 feet away. ;D :D

beenthere · February 07, 2007, 11:03:54 AM

That stove would be a concern if there are open seams and shavings nearby.......to me as well. :

Wonderin why sparks would be blown out, as the draft normally would be pullin air in through these openings. Maybe the damper in the stack was closed down, and unburned gases were causing the expansion. Sounds like a problem, other than the basswood, but know you have it under control der.

Got a firehose handy.... ???

Weekend_Sawyer · February 07, 2007, 11:09:47 AM

When you have sparks blowing out the seams of your stove, It's time for a new stove!

Murf · February 07, 2007, 12:26:16 PM

Or at least time to practice your weldin' skills some....... :D

SwampDonkey · February 07, 2007, 01:40:06 PM

:D :D :D :D Well it's seen it's day for sure.

Don't make fun of the old stove now boys. ;D ;) :D

You just gotta have faith. 8)

Anyway, the shop got cleaned up last week. Good for next winter's wood projects. ;D