conifer for logs?

[Scouse Lee]

To throw my pennies worth in, I have been starting my woodburner in the morning with conifer & poplar for years then after an hour I mix it up with hardwoods, works great for me. As for selling, I store all my ash, oak & beech seperately from sycamore, birch, thorn etc. as I get a better price for a load of ash etc. on it's own than for a mixed hardwood load, I also store the likes of conifer & poplar seperate & sell a load a bit cheaper. It is really easy to store the species seperately as they come into the yard & are piled up ready for splitting seperately, I have certain areas for certain woods. If a customer thinks a load of hardwood is too pricet, (£75 for a hilux pickup full), then I'll offer them a mixture or a load of softwood cheaper & always get a sale. Makes no odds to me logs are just a sideline & I love spending a day up the yard with the missus splitting, (can't get near the splitter actually when her indoors is with me, she loves using it).

[Saw-sick Steve]

So if you do a few jobs in a day, lets say fell 1 syc and one pine and then prune a maple on the way home, you get back and start hand-balling logs around into different "species" piles????

That way madness lies.

If you do a rough time and motion study of the log business you'll see it is no where near as profitable as the tree work itself. Any extra labour is seriously eating into your profits.

Don't get me wrong if it works for you go for it, but I bet you could charge just the same for a well seasoned mixed load.

Horses 4 courses an all that, I'm in a slightly different position to you. Firewood takes up an increasing amount of my time now, thats just down partly to choice and circumstances, so I'm going to look for any way possible to maximise profit, and I KNOW I can charge more for hardwood - ergo, it makes sound commercial sense for me to seperate hard / soft wood.

If logs are just a side line to you then obviously your priorities will be different, but - I really can't see how anyone can make heavy weather over seperation. You have to handle them to process them, how hard is it to seperate wood while your processing?

[s.varty]

Horses 4 courses an all that, I'm in a slightly different position to you. Firewood takes up an increasing amount of my time now, thats just down partly to choice and circumstances, so I'm going to look for any way possible to maximise profit, and I KNOW I can charge more for hardwood - ergo, it makes sound commercial sense for me to seperate hard / soft wood.

If logs are just a side line to you then obviously your priorities will be different, but - I really can't see how anyone can make heavy weather over seperation. You have to handle them to process them, how hard is it to seperate wood while your processing?

 

I have put tons of conifer/softwood on the bonfire over the years. Never again , it is being mixed in with the hardwood from now on. As the going says "you live and learn"