Wood supply

Wow I would love to see the motor hat burns the chunks from the logs on the trailer in that first photo… lol Just picturing a freight train with a gasificer. …

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I love that thing it makes quick work of those branches I’m going to have to find time for a build. nice

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Ha, l like ths skylift! I just use tractors front loader :slight_smile:

But alder dryes superfast and like you sayd, burns nice. Allso its good for the rebak (soft).

Need to do some chunking miself too…

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I was just looking at local firewood prices, 300.00+ for a bushcord, up to 420.00 if bought by the face cord! That’s cut split and delivered hardwood.

This is why I’ll never get a stick of free wood anywhere in my area. There are almost 90 ads on Kijiji selling in the local small city of 20,000 people alone.

Natural gas must be cheaper than wood right now…

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That seems pricey! We sell first class beech firewood at about 60$ a m3, or roughly 27 cubic feet. Oak is about 50$.
Right now, electric heating is the cheapest here. Wood is second or third.

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Yep pricy is right, it’s been near 300/bush cord for several years and everyone with a few acres now has a firewood processor! Looks like it’s going even higher this year.

Here Electricity is probably most expensive, wood is likely behind Oil and maybe Propane too as far as costs go.

A cord here is 128 CF or about 3.6 M^3

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In the late 80s and 90s clearing and trying to pay for my farm I was selling hardwood in tree lengths ( not good enough for saw logs ) for $27 a cord delivered to the mill 15 miles up the road… A cord was considered 5800 pounds green weight .

Now days that $27 would put my old wood burners way down the road :grinning:

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It’s funny, here in Ontario there is likely over a Trillion trees for 12-13 million people, but even so; I can see it’s probably going to be easier and cheaper to just collect skids and other scrap wood which seem to be endless in supply as well as free!

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Wish some of you guys were closer. we could load you up around here. wood, wood, and more wood. It gets burned in big bon fires just to get it out of the way. If you want to buy it already cut up, I think you can go to the pallet shop and get all the 5"x9"x12/18" (?not sure of exact size) chunks you can put on a truck for $20.00. Or over at the sawmill you can hand load all the slabs you want on a truck for $5.00. Or just pick it up off the side of the road, in a clear cut, or 15 other places.

come to think of it, there’s even a burn pile in town at the back of the grocery store parking lot where they burn wood pallets, packing materials, produce crates, tree limbs, etc so they don’t have to pay the land fill.

cabinet shops all over, spin offs of Wellborn Cabinet company, and Wellborn themselves-----you can get edgings off of the roughsawn lumber. Those are my favorite for the cook stove and also for rocket stoves. We go there with a big trailer and they will load as many big bundles as you want with the fork lift. Then we ratchet strap them every 18 inches and cut the whole bundle with a long-bar chainsaw, bind and stack.

It’s too bad that DOW guys have such a hard time getting wood. :relaxed:

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Up here there are a few small sawmills. They sell small 4’ bundles of slab wood for $40. It’s mostly Aspen and Pine. Due to being right next to Lake Superior and a whole bunch of other lakes, there are a lot of camping sites. There are also restrictions from bringing wood across county lines due to some Gypsy moth.

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There’s very little demand for firewood here now days. Most people installed heater pumps.
I heat with 100% wood, drive with 95% and I have a few regular firewood customers. Still 90% goes to waste. I get $90 a cord (1 cord = 3.6 m3 ???) delivered in 12-14’ lengths, but it’s almost not worth the trouble.
I’m actually seriously thinking of opening a DOW delivery business when/if I get my Mazda running on wood.
Before I got the Rabbit going I couldn’t dream of it even being possible to get a system reliable enough. Now that I know it is possible, and with our gasoline prices, I could easily turn every cord into thousands of $$. DOW would make my business competitive.
The other half of my brain says: “Dream on!”
Well, I will. And I will try to make it happen.

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The problem up here is wood is valuable due to the high cost of heating fuels. We’ve got high electricity, high fuel oil, wood can out compete these two even at 300.00/cord. We also have a Oct-April heating season putting demand on heating fuels.

I do have the option of a 75.00 firewood permit which allows me 7 bush cords off of Crown land. I’ll eventually explore this option too.

Then there’s the straw - one option that is cheap and falling off trees.

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Hello Billy .

You are right about the Alabama wood. We are loaded !

I had to take down a few pines that were dying . The pictures below show only part of one tree. The top and limbs were left in the woods and would probably weigh about a ton.

IMG_0201IMG_0202

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I see the leaky tire holds air well! :smile:
Its a responsible thing to cut down dyeing/desiesed trees. Ppeople here hasitated that times back, now blight wipes out our chestnuts and bark bugs destroy our spruces.

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Yes. Yes. Human intervention IS THE RESPONSIBLE action.
Even in highly restricted; and now social/negative situations, the way to express this is to become the certified area Arborist.
And if the neigh-Sayer has a religious backgrown do your studying and most all "good-books"do endorse human vegetative management.
tree-farmer Steve unruh

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Hello all, wanted to pass something by every one. I am thinking about using an old corn crib to dry chunks. It’s about 12’x3’x6’h covered with hardware cloth, and strips of wood. It has a door at the top of the wall. I’m in the process of building a conveyor to put the chunks through the top door. My question is will they dry? Any thoughts?

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The one thing I have learned about drying wood keep the rain off it and get tons of air flow. If the breeze can blow through the wood it will dry.

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I am sure they will! Plus, once you use some from the bottom, you can refill at the top, and since you come to the top ones they shuld be dry enough.

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Hi Al!
I use simular drying cribs for my fuel. The chunks dry eventually but a lot slower than I first thought they would. If I fill with green wood there are always chunks in the middle that end up a bit mushy and have mold on them. The moisture seems having a hard time escaping from the center even with a good breeze. This is why I started predrying them some, spread out on the trailer.

I’ve thought about making a crib dressed with plastic transparant roof tin. That would allow the sun to heat the chunks and create a good chimney effect. Open top and bottom of course.

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Wow I am surprise that the would gets punky when in a corn crib. I guess you just don’t get enough air to the center. Does anyone know anything about storing potatoes-- may be a whole different thing. But when I have worked around potatoes they put them in a “root cellar” but they put a triangle shaped wood slated tube down the center on the floor for air so the spuds don’t rot, I think. TomC