Log Load

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fossil

fossil

Accidental Moderator
Hearth Supporter
Sep 30, 2007
10,566
Bend, OR
With the decline in the building industry and closure of many mills, the availability of log loads in our area of the country is dissapointing. I finally found a guy advertising on CL. He's a logger with a contract for "fuel reduction" in a large, high-end development west of town. This is fresh-cut live Ponderosa Pine. My cousin and I bought two loads @ $1000/load, delivered yesterday. Tough to tell with any accuracy, but we figure we'll each get maybe 12 cords out of it, so that makes it about $80+/cord. Neither of us needs to burn any of this wood until at least the '10-'11 season, so we'll take our time processing it (got to at our ages!). We'll start bucking this year as weather permits, and go after it in earnest in the spring & summer '09. Meantime, it's like money in the bank earning interest. Rick
 

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Thats alot of wood there!
 
You may as well grab it now Rick ya never know what the will happen when the rest of the world realizes our money is worthless. It wasn't too long ago when loggers actually competed to sell loads around here...with the opening of a co-energy plant not far from here loggers find it cheaper to bring the logs there for pulp cause they save a ton of money in labor not employing woodcutters. Sure they get less for the logs but at the end of the day they have less headaches dealing with customers.
 
Yeah, savage, my cousin and I consider ourselves fortunate to have caught this rare deal. The guy who sold us the wood was straight-up and honest about it all, so far as I could tell. He said he priced it as low as he could afford to for folks just like us who wanted to process it and burn it...otherwise he would have just put all of it through the maws of some humongous mulcher he's got out at the site (just as he did all the limbs, brush & small stuff) and carted it off to sell to whoever it is who buys that stuff from him. Same wood, different truck. Anyway, we've got some work ahead of us...but we've got time. Rick
 
Nice load Rick! I payed $600 for a load of sticks off a tri-axle this past spring. Thats a big truck in your pic. From what I got out of mine I think your cord estimate is close. It is a bunch of work but have fun! And by the way, I have the same issue with the building industry out this way with finding fire grade wood.
 
This may be a dumb question but I have always been under the assumption that Pine was a softwood and not recommended for wood heat -at least in a wood burning stove. Seems like I have seen a lot of posts referring to different types of pine being used for firewood. Is it ok to use in any wood stove or just the OWB units? Isn't the sap/ pitch a problem ?
 
Seasoning is the only thing that matters. There are many of us who quite successfully heat our homes with nothing but softwoods, because hardwoods simply aren't available where we live. The "BTU/split" content is lower, because the softwoods are less dense, so we tend to burn a lot of it, relatively speaking, and achieving the elusive "overnight burn" can be a real challenge. Properly seasoned softwood is a preferable fuel for a wood stove than unseasoned hardwood. It's all about moisture content. Rick

EDIT: Here ya go, read this carefully.

https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/articles/creosote_from_wood_burning_causes_and_solutions
 
Looks like you have your work cut out for ya. $80 per cord is a great deal, thats what I just payed today for 2 cords of Oak rounds from a guy cleaning up his woods. He still has lots left, but I just don't have the room for it! :down:
 
Better deal than mine, by a ways, Todd...I could only wish mine was oak. Rick
 
fossil said:
Better deal than mine, by a ways, Todd...I could only wish mine was oak. Rick
Click to expand...

Just finished scanning thru the local papers and this is the 3rd week in a row that there is diddly squat for firewood to buy. Smile Rick, really smile, at least now you are getting way ahead of the game. :)
 
Oh, I'm smilin'...count on it. I know the local market here for wood, and I think we got a decent deal. Between the volcanic basalt substrate and the overwhelming preponderance of pine & other softwoods, those of us who live here are just stuck between a rock and a softwood. But we'll manage somehow. Generations before us who had nothing else to fall back on seemed to survive. :-) <--- see, I'm smilin'! Rick
 
sonnyinbc said:
fossil said:
Better deal than mine, by a ways, Todd...I could only wish mine was oak. Rick
Click to expand...

Just finished scanning thru the local papers and this is the 3rd week in a row that there is diddly squat for firewood to buy. Smile Rick, really smile, at least now you are getting way ahead of the game. :)
Click to expand...


Oh there is fire wood around here to buy in the nut belt of the rusty town of Pittsburgh Pa. But good god man, you think the gas prices are high! You would think these people think trees stopped growing here ten years ago!
 
Nice job Rick, dont forget you get to deduct the cost of a gym membership that you dont need to pay for because of all the great excercise the cutting, splitting and stacking will give you for free!!! So it actually cost you less than you thought. Excellent.
 
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