Price for seasoned firewood.

[ga jones]

120 to 175 here. It'll remain there as long as coal stays at 165 a ton .coal is still big here.

[beenthere]

Curious, how is the coal marketed there?  As stoker coal, where an auger is used to move it to the fire pot?

Or in some other form?

I recall the 50's when I had to fill the stoker hopper with coal. Recall I liked the oily smell of the coal in the coal bin.

[SwampDonkey]

Creasote build-up, flu caught on fire. Flames and wind equals flame thrower. I didn't think that would be hard to reason out. ;D And the OWB it seems wasn't lost. I thought they had everything heated with the OWB, but maybe they had a separate stove in the shop. But I see the OWB is still working. It's a wonder it didn't burn up though, right beside the shop. And the smoke was not unusual for them. That thing smokes a lot, I have posted their smoke clouds on here before.

I think someone's math is a little shotty here though on there green wood consumption. There is no heat in water, so consider the green volume in hard maple or oak compared to 12-16 % MC of wood. Around 15 % of the volume is water when green, so 5-8% difference in volume due to water, plus the heat required to get the extra water out. Plus there is a lot more weight from water in green wood since wood will hold water in voids of the wood that don't change it's volume. And that water has to be gotten rid of with heat to. The neighbors burn 3 or 4 times as much wood as I do to heat their house. Used to be they had the greenhouse on the OWB to, but 32 cords compared to 8 or 9 I burn between my house and shop is quite a huge difference. You ain't convincing this old boy to burn no green wood. We'll see how much green wood you start chuck'n in the stove when it's -20 below or colder to keep from freezing to death. :D 10-20 F ain't nothing. A damper closed on green wood is a recipie for a fire.

[KyLogger]

Shoddy math! Ha! Ok, well you may have got me there. Math never was my strong suit :D......And I do not measure the amount of wood I burn on a yearly basis, I have got a lot better things to do than count sticks of wood. The burning of green wood around here is very common. Some of the old timers will burn nothing but. One of the logging "legends" around here who is in his late 70's now will burn absolutely nothing but green hickory! For a place where electric did not become widely available until the 1960's and not common until the late 60's early 70's and wood was used for a cooking and heat source, and still is in probably over a third of the residences in the county, we have almost no house fires due to wood stove related accidents. I mean sure you have the occasional idiot who has the couch too close to the stove but I am talking "tending" or creosote type fires.

You all use what works for you and us backward @$& "Hillbillys" will use what werks fer usuns! ;)

Tom

[SwampDonkey]

Realize that keeping that flu hot enough in extreme cold versus what we call mild weather in KY standards can be a challenge. A lot of fires up here occur from a dampened down stove of less than ideal wood in mild spells. And the flu fires in houses most often occur up in unheated space of an attic. Your a lot younger than I am. I've lived in uninsulated houses ( people never insulated places until the 70's or what was there was no thicker than a wool blanket), had kitchen wood burning cook stoves, lugged water and used out house facilities. KY life style was no more or less than right up here young fellow. And there a few that practice your wood burning methods, but that only works for awhile up here. Besides that, I doubt your statistics very muchly. ;D

[Piston]

We have heated with wood my whole life, and I would burn nothing but green wood! Hardwood granted, but green none the less. I have work hand who keeps firewood cut and split on the landing (I pull out cull logs, paperwood size stuff, and cutoffs) for him to work up. Load it up once a week and take it home, burn, repeat. It burns hotter, and it will creosote up a bit more than seasoned wood, but we will burn half as much wood compared to seasoned. Just my observations...

Tom

According to the laws of thermodynamics, that is physically impossible.  I'm not doubting that your wood lasts longer, as it takes a long time to burn the moisture out of the wood, but it's not "opinion" or observation that proves you can not get more BTU's out of green wood than seasoned. 

Perhaps you just mean that you burn a lot less wood, but at the same time get a lot less heat out of it as well?  I'm not doubting what your saying, I think it just came out wrong the way you stated it. 

It almost sounds like you mean that heating with wet wood will give you more heat and last longer than heating with dry wood.   :D  I'm sure it's just a misunderstanding that's all.

[Sawyerfortyish]

The firewood business stinks here in NJ. Nobody is callin.Everyone has wood everywhere after superstorm sandy. seen adds for 150delivered and stacked. I have not advertised wood for sale in 20 yrs now i am. When someone calls and i dont pickup i have only a few minuets to respond or they get someone else its that fast. Log length wood is being offered to me by trailer loads for 350 a load if i say bring it in Ill get burried it aint selling. I hauled 10 tri axle loads in myself im tryin to pay for yet. At least now its cold so everyones wood pile is disappearing. startin to get some calls now. back in november when i should have had at least 50 cords ordered i did 6 for the whole month.I havent changed my price for wood im at 180 and have been for 3 yrs now and i dont stack period. Ive lost some business because of that but now ive got some time to do the things i enjoy and never have time. went blackpowder huntin and going to do some ice fishin

[Alexanderthelate]

I'm going to add to what Kylogger said, we burn a combination of green and dry, most old timers would sooner have green then dry around here. The green wood makes the fire last longer so we burn less wood and don't get roasted out. We normally get most of our wood cut in the spring and go for a load or two every so many months in the winter so we have plenty of green on hand.

I've never seen seasoned firewood for sale. A cord of firewood goes for $150 delivered. Pickup truck loads go for around $75-100 delivered. You can also buy a cord of wood for $90 from a local roadbuilding company which they brow up in their yard for you, uncut. My father bought a few cord from them last fall, I couldn't believe the size of the wood, most of it was saw log material  :-\

[beenthere]

Alex
Where are you located?

Help if you fill out your bio.

[enigmaT120]

enigmaT120,I know things are different where you are. Here in Maine you could not give softwood away to burn. Even hemlock nobody wants to burn. That will coal down a little and can control it better than white pine.

I don't know how to compare, but I got the idea that Douglas Fir is a pretty hard soft wood, whilst our alder and bigleaf maple are fairly soft hardwoods.  I burn all three, but I have a lot more fir than I do the other two.  Sometimes I'll have a Pacific Madrona tree fall down, and I'll cut it up and burn it.  Never enough to have an opinion on how it burns.

I'm getting a bunch of wild cherry trees volunteering in some areas, and I'm encouraging them.  If I can't find a market for the logs eventually, I know I like cherry wood for firewood.  And the blooms are pretty in the spring.

[Southside]

Enigma,

We moved to Virginia from Lake County, OR and years ago lived in Maine.  Things are different in all three areas.  We would burn some poplar in Maine as a fire starter - it just burned too hot and fast, never would have dared burn fir, pine, or hemlock.  Out west, everybody burns the Doug Fir, my father-in-law was visiting here from OR this fall and asked me why I was dragging pine tops back into the skidder trails and not making them into fire wood - he could not believe that it was not burned over this way, he asked me what the difference is and I honestly do not have an answer other than "because".

[Firewoodjoe]

I burn green and I think u get more out of it rather than dry having flames blowing out the stack faster than the water and pump can circulate to transfer the heat my opinion. And I'm getting $180 a cord and it's not enough. I've been putting income taxes together and wow! I'm not making anything! I don't even want to do it next year!

[ga jones]

Well anthracite coal is sized like this. stove nut pea rice for house coal. stoker uses rice. Hand fired could be any of the others. There's mines all over the i81 corridor from Harrisburg to Scranton.

[John Mc]

I've heard and read that depending on the species of wood burned, you can lose up to 40% of the BTUs by burning green wood as opposed to properly seasoned wood. (I wish I could find those references now.) It takes a lot of heat to warm up all that water.  It takes a huge amount of heat to vaporize that water (Google "latent heat of vaporization").  That's heat that could otherwise be heating your home.

Part of the preference for green wood in some areas could have something to do with the type of stove you are burning it in and the home you are heating.  I could see that in an old steel or iron stove without a lot of firebrick inside, a slower-burning green-wood fire might give you more even heat over a longer period of time - especially if you are burning some of the species that would otherwise tend to burn hot and fast. Burning seasoned wood in one of those, and burning it efficiently (i.e. not smothering the fire with the damper) might drive you out of the room when it's burning hot. A house that was not as well insulated might also be a factor here.

In this case, getting the max efficiency out of the wood may not be the goal -- more even heat and comfort (especially in a house that may not be as well sealed and insulated) may be what they are after.

I'm just guessing here... I've got a tight house heated primarily by a 60,000 BTU Hearthstone woodstove (the soapstone really helps even out the heat)

[SwampDonkey]

A dampened fire burning green wood is a dance with the fire devil. Anyone local here that has done it has had many flu fires or just burned the place down. Even a lot of the local certified chimney sweeps will tell ya whose been burning green and whose place was almost lost, and sometimes whose flu they had to replace. I've seen a lot of people get wood late and green and burn an old house down they just moved into.

I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything because people have to make up their minds. I don't care what others do.  ;D

[Alcranb]

I get $225 for 128 cu. ft. which is how one can legally advertise firewood for sale in Mass. All my sales are word of mouth but if you really want to get depressed go on CL and see what some folks are willing to give wood away.

[SwampDonkey]

Probably have the clean the yard to get it though. ;D

[SliverPicker]

Heating your house (with ANY fuel) is a function units of heat per unit of time.  SO if burning your green wood puts out enough heat in a short enough time span to keep your house at whatever temp you desire your house to be then green wood burning will work for you.  In some other situation green wood might not do the trick.  Its pure physics not green is superior to "seasoned" or vice versa.

[Alexanderthelate]

We can cook our selves alive some days with dry wood. Particularly in winter when there is a fair bit of snow on the ground. (insulation). Green wood keeps the place comfortable and spares the wood along.

[John Mc]

I do agree that "A dampened fire burning green wood is a dance with the fire devil. (What a great way of phrasing it.)

I also know that burning appropriately dry wood is far more efficient than burning green.

Those are two reasons why I burn dry wood.

My earlier post was not meant to advocate for burning green wood. I was just hypothesizing about why some folks might prefer to burn it, and the different circumstance which might make it SEEM more desirable.

A good friend who really knows his stuff about wood combustion splits all the firewood for his wood stove down to the point that most folks would consider to be kindling. His reasoning (and he has the science to back this up) is that smaller pieces burn more efficiently, so more of the BTUs get used to heat your house. He's had some influence on me, and I now split a lot smaller than I used to. However, I do understand that maximum efficiency is not always someone's number one goal - having my stove fire last through the night and be ready to roll first thing in the morning is one reason that last load of the evening gets loaded with bigger chunks, rather than stuffed full of smaller ones.  Greener wood might accomplish the same thing, but I don't want to risk the creosote build up.

[SwampDonkey]

My previous post was not a response post John.

But anyway, I only load my forced air furnace once every 6-7 hours on normal winter days. It will consist most of the time of two small pieces of hardwood like your kindling and a couple slabs on top. In severe cold it can be 2 hrs less. I do not need fire and fan running all the time to be toasty warm. I know some people with better insulated houses up here that burn even half what I do because they don't need fire all the time. No fire at night at all. Plus they don't have two story with all the extra windows I have. Newspaper will light my wood like cedar. If green I would need cedar kindling. I've got some cedar for kindling but have not even used it up in 20 years and there is only a wheel barrow full down there. I clean pipes once a month and all there is a powdery soot, not glassy creosote. Clean the flu in the fall and mid winter, get some creosote in the unheated attic section, which would be far worse with green wood. I get a 3 gallon pale full from the clean out and maybe half another for 10 months of fires Sept-May. Down in the shop 1-1/2 cord does me all winter, small space. And no where near a gallon of stuff cleaned from the flu and pipes. It's an ancient stove, so lots of air...and heat. The shop never freezes I'll tell ya that. :D Tonight it is mild, I put wood in at 7 pm and won't put no more in until 6 tomorrow. Pretty darn good for two slabs of wood. ;D

[John Mc]

I guess we're really drifting off the OP's original intent for this thread anyway...

[CRThomas]

   Im just wondering what other guys in the northeast are getting for a cord of seasoned wood. Ive heard in NH-VT its over 275-300 in spots, just wanting to get a better idea.

In Southern IL I get $250.00 for a rank of firewood bundled and I only sell Ash. When the big freeze went thru a rank of firewood green went from $45.00 a rank to a $100.00 a rank. They about drove me nuts calling wanting firewood but I tell them I don't sell bulk firewood. Now the price is back to $60.00 a rank. I sell in a town of about 35.000 people keep me as busy as I want to be.

[CRThomas]

Creasote build-up, flu caught on fire. Flames and wind equals flame thrower. I didn't think that would be hard to reason out. ;D And the OWB it seems wasn't lost. I thought they had everything heated with the OWB, but maybe they had a separate stove in the shop. But I see the OWB is still working. It's a wonder it didn't burn up though, right beside the shop. And the smoke was not unusual for them. That thing smokes a lot, I have posted their smoke clouds on here before.

I think someone's math is a little shotty here though on there green wood consumption. There is no heat in water, so consider the green volume in hard maple or oak compared to 12-16 % MC of wood. Around 15 % of the volume is water when green, so 5-8% difference in volume due to water, plus the heat required to get the extra water out. Plus there is a lot more weight from water in green wood since wood will hold water in voids of the wood that don't change it's volume. And that water has to be gotten rid of with heat to. The neighbors burn 3 or 4 times as much wood as I do to heat their house. Used to be they had the greenhouse on the OWB to, but 32 cords compared to 8 or 9 I burn between my house and shop is quite a huge difference. You ain't convincing this old boy to burn no green wood. We'll see how much green wood you start chuck'n in the stove when it's -20 below or colder to keep from freezing to death. :D 10-20 F ain't nothing. A damper closed on green wood is a recipie for a fire.

In my area they urn tire batterys any thing they can get thru the door. They don't buy firewood they barrow it at night.

[SwampDonkey]

How many car batteries and old tires do people out there have in the back yard to burn? :D