A couple positive points IMHO:
- Looks like a lot of the splits are de-barked, so you are paying mostly for wood, not junk.
- The ends on the closeups look well cracked, so I think it's hardly in the green category
- They'll be real easy to stack back at home bundled like that
- If it's the same wood as last year's listing, it's kiln-dried and seasoned
A good buddy oversees a sheltered workshop for retarded and mentally disabled folks. They make pallets and kiln-dried firewood, paying the more highly functional folks to make the pallets and run the kilns, and the less functional ones to do the bagging of the firewood. I got curious about his operation with all the talk here, so I called him the other night. The gist of our conversation:
They have three insulated reefer trailers which they converted to kilns, usually all running full-time. My friend told me his agency pays $180/cord for green splits delivered in pallet-sized metal cages that they provide for the wood suppliers. The cages are loaded into the trailers, and gas heaters are used to bring the temps up. There is no attempt to keep the humidity up to prevent damage like is done in commercial lumber kilns. High powered fans are run over the wood for about 7-10 days, with periodic venting to purge the accumulated water vapor. When they hit the target MC (8%), the temp is raised to 160ºF to kill the buggies inside to meet with NY State standards. Samples are split, and when internal temps hit 160º, they take them out and truck them over to the packaging facility.
He swears they come out at about 8% (I remain skeptical), but when they are warehoused in the cold and then brought out into warmer and more humid conditions, they sometimes get moldy due to condensation that is formed on the wood surfaces. At that point, the wood is no longer suitable for retail. They used to use plastic bags for packaging, but now they use those nylon net bags. They produced something like 25,000 bags/year for the local box stores. The demand is so great that they could easily triple the business by adding more trailers, but then they'd start to run out of retarded and crazy people to package them - it's a not-for-profit agency. But there is enough of a problem with the mold that they stopped selling to retailers and all of their product now goes to the state campgrounds. They get $4.50/bag from the state, which in turn sells them at a small profit to campers in the summer. At $180/cord for wood and the cost of gas, trucking and oversight, there is little real money in it, but it keeps the folks feeling useful (piece work is not boring for most of them) and gives them a little pocket money to supplement their state funding. Even with the labor basically free, the whole operation barely covers the expenses.
As far as the volume printed on the bag, I can't say about the eBay wood, but my friend says that their bags have to meet package labeling standards, so is supposed to be the volume of the wood itself, not the portion of a stacked cord of wood. They figured this out by dry weights and some experimentation, and he says they are real generous with the count. They made little bins that the folks pack as tightly as they can, and then the contents of each one is bagged. A stacked cord of wood is estimated to only contain on the average about 80-90 cu.ft. of actual wood, the rest is the spaces between the splits. If what my friend says is true for the eBay wood, then you may be getting about 20-25% more stacked wood than the bags say you are getting.
Regardless of whether the wood is officially "kiln-dried" in moisture content, it is definitely dry enough to burn clean in a stove or a fireplace, probably comparable to wood seasoned under cover for about a year, maybe drier. I'm going to visit his operation in the near future and I'll grab a couple bags while I'm there, just to check out the product. I'm sure that when I sink a couple nails into them about an inch deep and check them out with a multimeter, I'll find that they are not as dry on the inside. What I think is going on is that the inside moisture diffuses to the outer faces after they are bagged and the conditions are ripe for a little mold. I just got about a cord of 3 year-old wood with the used stove I bought this year. It was covered on top, but with the extremely wet summer we had here, it had a lot more mold on it than those eBay bags have. Not much real rot, just surface stuff, and the wood in general is black and well cracked. It makes my hands smell a little if I handle a lot of it, but it burns long and hot.
So.... if the stuff is not poplar or some other lame "hardwood" (I think I see some cherry and yellow birch from bark remaining on some), I think it may be an outstanding value, and is worth at least checking out. If you're a first year burner, it's certainly a lot better than steam-distilling green oak in your $2000 EPA stove. I wish it was closer, because I'd buy four or five myself if it looked good.
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