Chip Drop?

[hambdrew]

New member here, so sorry if this has already been discussed (or is not allowed)...

I live within the city limits of a pretty big city (250k+).  I have several means of obtaining my own firewood, and personally have no issues.  However, a few of my friends do not have the same access to materials and tools. 

I was recently approached by a friend who asked about Chip Drop.  I had never heard of it, so I did some research on their website.  Apparently you can have truck load of mulch or basically whole tree rounds dropped off at your house for no charge...???

You can select to just receive logs, however my question(s) is has any one used this service before, is the wood worthwhile (not rotten, good burning wood vs something like cottonwood), is the amount of wood delivered just ridiculous?

Thanks again for any insight

[btulloh]

Tree service chips and trees. May work for you/them, approach with caution. Various species, chips will vary, other potential problems. Do your research carefully. Maybe it can't hurt (too much) to try. 

[Southside]

Well just keep in mind you get what you pay for.  Many times there is a reason homeowners pay substantial money to a tree service to have a tree removed, and it's not because it's a perfect white oak.  Yes there are some good logs that come from urban wood, and then there are some real doozies.  

[YellowHammer]

Yeah, we have that here, tree service guys, typically within the city limits of a town which prohibits big open burns so they have to pay $35 per ton landfill fee.  So instead of bringing the chips and other stuff to the landfill, they bring it to you, the free landfill.

There's nothing wrong with the chips and stuff but the logs won't be decent logs unless you can work with them on that. For firewood they'd be fine.  Here they generally bring dump truck or dump trailer load quantities.

[Brad_bb]

The problem with chips is they shred green wood.  So it's not dry to burn.  If it sits in a pile on the ground, it will tend to hold moisture, won't it?

I've never heard of this service.  I do know that Tree services are usually looking to get rid of their wood.  Most I know won't take the time to deliver wood for free though.  Most around me grind all their wood into chips to then sell in bulk for mulch.  

In the next town 45 minutes away, I know a firewood guy who works with all his local tree services and they deliver wood to him.  He can accept a lot of wood from them to make it worth while to them.  He has a nice operation that splits a lot of wood and sells to commercial wholesale accounts.  I know this because he sets good saw logs aside to sell to me.

[coalsmok]

I have been wondering/thinking on the whole wood chip thing.
  If a person could dry the chips I wonder how they would burn? Was thinking something like a green cured hay system where air is forced up through the pile until enough moisture is removed to prevent mold. Seems like the chips would allow you to fill the stove firebox to the limit and have a maximum amount of burnable material. This may prove to dense without some larger chunks to breakup the chips.
Just a random driving down the road thought. Probably never chase it out.

[thecfarm]

I would like that service to fed my OWB.  Than the chips to spread around and make some compost on a big scale. But probably after the 40 loads I would have to tell them to stop.  

[Southside]

There are OWB's on the market that allow you to burn green chips, they have a different air feed system into the firebox which keeps the fire going.  One little tid bit that I wonder about this service is the issue of hot chips or embers.  I get quite a lot of chips delivered here and we compost them for the farm side of things.  This fall I got a load in that had sat in the truck overnight, had a lot of green leaves on the tree, and was packed in stem to stern.  Ever seen what happens when you bale green hay?  Yup, same thing happened with that pile of chips.  About 10:00 PM I was sitting there wondering what fool was burning brush given how dry it had been when I noticed the chip pile resembled one of those volcanoes you see in photos, no fire, but a nice, orange, glow and a roll of smoke coming off of her.  Spent the next hour breaking up the pile and put an irrigation sprinkler on it for the night after she was no longer glowing.  Had it gone up it was not going anywhere past that load as the rest of the pile is quite wet from composting, but if that was in a back yard in town....

[Ljohnsaw]

We have the chip drop guys out here, too.  There are a ton of ads on CL from people looking to get rid of some chips.  They called the chip drop guys for a load.  But they really didn't know how much 14 yards of chips is! :D  What I've seen is a LOT of twigs and leaves (50%) and then some nice chips.

[Ron Wenrich]

When you burn green chips, some of the btus go to drying out the wood.  You end up using more chips than with dry chips.  To dry chips, you'll probably have to spread them out or put them in a tumbler that adds heat.

If you are getting any logs or rounds, be prepared for some big stuff and metal.  The round wood will be things that won't fit in the chipper.