Firewood

[Ian]

Two words: HEAT PUMP.

I cut wood for a 24" Franklin with my dad starting about age 5 until I left for college. Helped him install a propane burner in the shell of that stove about a decade ago and for 200 gallons a year he has all the heat he can use. We had a parlor stove for about a decade here and supplemented with electric heat in the peripheral rooms but when babies came we had a mini-split system installed, backed up by a 10 KW diesel generator.

 

[Rick]

The hitch was when the wood was wet you were buying water, not wood.

Yep, exactly the same thing when you buy gravel or sand that way. Pricey water indeed.

 

[Rick]

Two words: HEAT PUMP.

I cut wood for a 24" Franklin with my dad starting about age 5 until I left for college. Helped him install a propane burner in the shell of that stove about a decade ago and for 200 gallons a year he has all the heat he can use. We had a parlor stove for about a decade here and supplemented with electric heat in the peripheral rooms but when babies came we had a mini-split system installed, backed up by a 10 KW diesel generator.

Except the heat pump is from very inefficient to non-op at temps below low 40's. My heat pump (HVAC new a few months ago) auto switches from heat pump to two 220v heat strips when it senses it isn't producing enough heat. Quite pricey to run indeed. I put in propane heat for when the temp is low and a 22kw standby generator.

 

[JonB]

I've been burning wood (that I've cut/split/haul) since '98 and I helped a friend cut/split/haul several years before that. I do have a Nat. Gas furnace, so I guess I ain't heating 100% with wood, probably best guess is 80%. I enjoy the making of firewood, but as the years have pasted, I have gotten a little smarter and now I seek out the easy cutting and turn down the difficult stuff. I can see the day where I quit the cut/split/haul...and maybe quit the burning as well, in fact every other day I think about selling my 3/4 ton truck.

 

[Petrol & Powder]

I've used a lot of different systems. Wood stoves, Propane stoves, propane furnaces (downright decadent and the least amount of work ), Kerosene stoves (the big vented ones with the outdoor tank), electric baseboard ($$$$), Heat pumps, portable kerosene heaters, portable propane heaters, oil fired boilers, .....

I'll never live somewhere where heat is needed and I'm totally dependent electricity supplied by a power company.

 

[Petrol & Powder]

Except the heat pump is from very inefficient to non-op at temps below low 40's. My heat pump (HVAC new a few months ago) auto switches from heat pump to two 220v heat strips when it senses it isn't producing enough heat. Quite pricey to run indeed. I put in propane heat for when the temp is low and a 22kw standby generator.

A dual fuel system that uses a heat pump and a gas fired furnace with the crossover temp set around 40 degrees is a good compromise.
It's interesting that the farther south you go, the more heat pumps you see and the farther north you go, the more oil & gas systems you will see. Heat pumps are great in a climate where it seldom gets below 30, not so much in places where you're lucky to see 30 !

 

[JWFilips]

Brett, That splitter used to scare the "bee geezus" out of me! My FIL would place the bottom of the log perpendicular to the spinning point,
then use the side of his leg against the log to make it engage the spinning corkscrew!!!!
He always wanted another person next to the tractors dash board hand on throttle just in case

 

[Bret4207]

Two words: HEAT PUMP.

I cut wood for a 24" Franklin with my dad starting about age 5 until I left for college. Helped him install a propane burner in the shell of that stove about a decade ago and for 200 gallons a year he has all the heat he can use. We had a parlor stove for about a decade here and supplemented with electric heat in the peripheral rooms but when babies came we had a mini-split system installed, backed up by a 10 KW diesel generator.

I don't think a heat pump is practical everywhere. A few have been tried near me and none has been successful over the long term. If you could get deep enough, yeah, but then you're almost into geo-thermal. They tell me our local zinc mine is shirt sleeve warm at 700 feet when it's -40F above ground, and if the ventialtion wasn't on it'd be even warmer.

 

[Bret4207]

Brett, That splitter used to scare the "bee geezus" out of me! My FIL would place the bottom of the log perpendicular to the spinning point,
then use the side of his leg against the log to make it engage the spinning corkscrew!!!!
He always wanted another person next to the tractors dash board hand on throttle just in case

They were a wonder when they first appeared. I've seen a few rounds do the "flippity-flop" thing when the ground wasn't up to keeping the round from moving the earth. They work pretty darn good on straighter grained stuff.

 

[Ian]

Very true that a heat pump has its limitations in liquid-to-air exchange. Mine will shut down at minus 4⁰F because it can no longer defrost itself correctly and the efficiency is below 20%. However....geothermal can solve that depending on location. We see single digit temperatures about two days a decade so it's no problem for us. We did see a week in the teens a few years ago (which causes widespread plumbing crisis in these parts) and the heat pump performed admirably even though it was working hard to keep up.

Wife and I have talked about a Blazeking catalytic heater but since keeping cool is by far a bigger challenge than keeping warm we decided to spend those thousands on a year-'round system.

 

[Bret4207]

Kinda the opposite for us. We seen temps over 102F or so a couple times a decade. A few nights of -30 is pretty much expected every winter with dozens of -20 nights. I've seen an honest -40F here and -48 or-52F down in the mountains, Chris's thermometer and mine differed 4 degees in 1/2 a mile. It's kind of indicative of what you can expect temp-wise if your local DIY store only sells thermometers that go to -20F or if they sell the ones that stop down around -60!

On this subject, it warmed about 30 degrees between Saturday morning and Sunday morning here. After exhaustive research, I've determined that 30 degrees (4F-34F) equals about 1 layer of decent wool clothing!

Speaking of wood cutting though, I don't know who this "Wasn't Me" guy is, but judging by the way I'm sharpening rocked chainsaws lately, he's a real magnet for minerals! I have an old Foley Chain Grinder motor out to the electrical shop now getting a 3 way switch set up. Took me forever to get a good buy on the right motor and I wasn't going to risk letting the magic smoke out of the motor with my "by guess and by gosh" wiring knowledge. I have the other parts I need sitting in a virtual cart waiting for payday. It'll be nice having grinder that works on all 3 axis (axis-iz, ax-eze?) instead of just 2 and that's adjustable enough to account for stone wear. Won't get used a lot, but between rocks, old fence, old fence staples and plain old dirt it should cut my costs for new files.

 

[Brad]

I burn ancient firewood in the form of natural gas.

Never need to chop, split, or stack it. Keeps guys like fiver in powder and primers too.

 

[fiver]

it used to, well it still does I guess, since I used some of that money to buy a lot of them back then.

 

[Rally]

I burn ancient firewood in the form of natural gas.

Never need to chop, split, or stack it. Keeps guys like fiver in powder and primers too.

You must burn a bunch of it then, to keep Lamar in powder and bullets, at todays prices!

JonB,
Are there any loggers down there by you selling firewood? If so, what are they charging per chord? There must be some venier buyers.

 

[Petrol & Powder]

I have long used diesel vehicles.
When people ask me if I use Bio-Diesel, I respond; "Yes, it's 4 million year old Bio-Diesel but it's Bio-Diesel"

 

[RicinYakima]

Like sea salt! All salt is sea salt (just been dried for 30,000,000 years.)

 

[JonB]

SNIP>>>
JonB,
Are there any loggers down there by you selling firewood? If so, what are they charging per chord? There must be some venier buyers.

I live close enough to the Twin Cities, that people who sell cut/split/aged firewood, are able to get about $300 per cord...but mostly they sell 1/3 cord (AKA:face cord, AKA: fireplace cord) at a time, to people with fancy houses with fireplaces, those "fireplace" cords go for about $150. I do know of one firewood seller, they are a Tree Service in Hutchinson, they charge $200 per cord...mixed wood.

A far as loggers/sawmilling operations down here, I live in Farmland country...looks like Iowa, LOL. So there are very few. With that said, there is one in Mankato that advertises once in a while on FB Marketplace (I can't find their ad or info right now), they sell bundles of slabs, softwood for around $50 and Hardwood for around $100.

I was able to find one slabwood seller, currently on FB Marketplace, they are in Big Lake.

Slabwood bundles. Dry and ready to burn!! $65
-Listed 5 days ago in Big Lake, MN
6 poplar slabwood bundles. 8' long, around 4' diameter. Approximately 1/2-2/3 of a cord each. Dry and ready to burn. I have a skid loader to set on your trailer. $65 each. Pick up in big lake.








Then there was this ad I just seen:
Camp firewood $1
-Listed a day ago in Lester Prairie, MN
Camp firewood – mostly willow and cotton wood. Cut but some will need splitting. Bring us some craft beer or anything from Schell’s or Grain Belt’s Nordeast and you can take as much as you want.

 

[fiver]

either of those would be perfect.

 

[Joshua]

I know a guy who “cleans up” for his neighbor. The neighbor has a bandsaw mill that he makes lumber on. The three main species Douglas fir, western cedar, and alder. The alder is getting used more and more in furniture building. Well, most people turn up there nose at alder around here. But, not the guy I know, he takes it all and has made a stand for cutting it all up with a chainsaw. He stacks it about three foot high and then cuts all the way to the ground.

I know another guy, a retired friend of my Dad’s, who heats mostly with wind fall branches from Doug fir. He has a very small house, and lives by himself. Really it’s more of a cabin, it’s gotta be less than 400 square feet. He reinsulated it about fifteen years ago, when he bought the property. It has the tiniest little stove. He just goes scavenging in the neighborhood after they have wind storms with a bow saw and a hatchet. I don’t think that he even burns a full chord.

He does own a chainsaw, an electric chainsaw, that he cuts the branchup with when he gets home. He loves that thing, he likes to say that the best thing about it is that you don’t need to mix two stroke oil with the electricity.

I’ve burned a lot cardboard and pallets when I was younger. I’d hit the recycle dumpster after work and pull out cardboard. The shipping guy told me to park closer to his roll up door, he just started throwing it in the back of my truck if it wasn’t raining.

Josh

 

[RicinYakima]

When I was growing up on the farm in southern Ohio, it was mostly farm country, before it went back to forest. We only used wood to start the fire in the pot-belly and then burned coal. By the time I was five and older brother was eight, we would take gunny sacks down to the railroad tracks and the siding and pick up coal that fell off the coal cars going to the electric plants. If we couldn't get that, we would cut up old tires.

Dad would go to farm sales and buy a room full of walnut and oak furniture for $.50. Then we would haul it home and break it up for kindling. First we had to take all the brass fixtures off to sell for scrap and fancy porcelain knobs to an antique dealer.