Estimating m3 of wood in a crown

[Ty Korrigan]

This oak is coming down Monday.

I've got the trunk sized up.

90cm dbh and 6m+to the first large pruning wounds. 4m3

The stem has a slight kink halfway up, an ideal place to crosscut as moving that lump so we can build the Peterson around it would be a struggle.

Estimating the wood volume of the crown is just that, an estimation.

I've stared at it from all angles before leaf burst and think around 5m3+ if we don't chip any thing much over 10cm.

Any opinions?

 

Also, just for curiosity, how much might this stem fetch in the UK?

I may yet get to mill it in situ, either for the client or for me as part of a buy back deal.

My client thinks it is worth a fortune and only yesterday was convinced he could sell it for parquet flooring for €2k 

My other question is again out of curiousity, how much does unsplit oak destined for firewood fetch in the UK?

 

 

  Cheers.  

      Stuart

 

 

 

 

[Steven P]

Am surprised no one has answered this yet. I guess your question is related to the value of the wood when it is taken down? I am no expert but if so, the crown - for firewood? Going on forum answers, pretty much break even with your costs after you transport it 'home', time and materials to process it, dry it and sell it on if you are not set up to do so, never going to make a dent in the costs to remove the tree itself (despite what a tree owner might think how valuable fire wood appears as an end product). Most commercial firewood is produced en-mass rather than the careful extraction of a single tree from a single garden to make it profitable. The crown is mostly smaller pieces so the efficiency of machinery will be lost a bit. If you don't have the machinery to do it yourself then you'd have to hire it, hand split it all or take it to someone who will charge to split it. Then store and dry it - your cash tied up in the firewood for a year (so incurs an interest charge). Yup, break even for a one off. Gumtree it and might make a small profit as unprocessed.

 

So lets discount the crown as a valuable product.

 

Trunk is a possibility. Milling on site if you can, you know how long that will take and I think you are lucky if it is 6m, most posts I see here ask for 3m lengths. Be tempting to charge the owner time and expenses and leave them the wood? Otherwise use local contacts to produce something from it at their workshops - for a cost which might be cheaper than your time. Firewood - see above.

 

Parquet flooring for £2k, not sure here, £2k raw product, retail profit is 1/3, wholesaler 1/6 and manufacturer 50% (I reckon manufacture would double the cost, selling £2k for £4k at least - lets understimate)...... yeah online calculator time... retail price for £2k of wood about retail to £7k of flooring @ £50/m gives 145sq m of finished wood. Lets work the other way, piece of flooring might be (using google and adding something for sawdust and tongue and groove) 0.000387 cu M, 10,500 pieces in that tree, 130sq m - if the tree is nice and square, it isn't so lets take away 1/4? waste - corners, bark and stuff. 100sqm, a bit off his £2k estimate. Still good luck with that.

 

Just guesses, but one thing often crops up here is that the home owner always thinks their tree is worth far far more than it actually is.

[Ty Korrigan]

Thanks for replying.

 I originally offered the client a discount off the felling for the crown wood which I think is no more than 5m3 but was looking for opinions on that, and another more generous one for the stem which was easy to calculate.  I planned to cut the stem into two 3m sections and mill it for my future house extension.

Annoyingly, despite me proving the volume using math and showing him the current price of oak on a forestry website, he still believes there is far more wood that I say there is and wants eyewatering sums for it, seeing only the retail price of firewood and the value of forest grown oaks destined for Notre Dame in Paris.

So I've dropped the idea and wish I had never offered in the first place as it has really muddied the waters.

The client seems to now think I badly want the wood and is hoping to off set the removal cost.

I don't 'badly' want it, I simply knew the client had no use for firewood, no savoir faire or time for dealing with this amount of wood and wanted to make a mutually beneficial deal.

Instead, I have been treated with suspicion, almost to the level of "obtaining pecuniary advantage by deception" 

I've good money on this job though and it is still going ahead despite the clients recent weirdness towards me.

I think this is brought on by stressing over the massive price increase in building costs and an expensive tree removal is an unwelcome addition.

I've taken the precaution of photographing the broken concrete palisade surrounding the garden in case he claims we broke it and tries to sting us with 'betterment'

So, instead of a convivial buy back deal, I have just I given him a cheeky price for moving the 90cm x 50cm rounds of cross cut stem plus crown from his neighbours future building plot around to his building plot using my wee Solis and truck.

I used www.timberpolis.co.uk to calculate the weight of the millable stem and was surprised, 6m x 90cm = 4m3 thus 3250kg fresh sawn, divided by 12 = 270kg per round.

Wrestling those rounds onto any splitter isn't something I can see my client doing and even better, he runs a pellet stove at home!

       Stuart

 

 

 

 

 

[Moose McAlpine]

Charge him to fell it, let him keep the whole lot.

 

He'll quickly learn the hard way.

 

Everyone thinks they're sitting on a fortune whether it be a tree in the garden or an old wreck in the garage. They're usually wrong.

[Hodge]

Sounds like a difficult customer......I could not be bothered with such after all its tree removal. You say you have muddied the waters and I'd agree, I think you have said to much, sowed the seed and now he's sus. Good luck with it....

[Mick Dempsey]

Exactly, made a rod for your own back there Stu.

 

Ps. I estimate you could make 2134 aforementioned rods for your own back out of that crown. 

Edited May 7, 2022 by Mick Dempsey

[Steven P]

The other thing I picked up here is that you don't offer to buy the wood from the customer! If they think they can sell it they start looking at what they would pay for wood, forgetting all profit margins made along the way.

 

You might be upsetting the customer whatever you do now, cut the trunk into two 3m sections and leave it they will be upset since they can't shift them, do the same and take them away and you are profiteering from it, cut the stem to 'firewood' sections and you have left them something they can handle but ruined a valuable trunk, but you can't take them away to mill yourself.... tricky one

 

Have a conversation on the morning to confirm what they want to do with the wood is about all you can do, if they want to 'sell' it to you, then you know the price you'd pay and let them know otherwise you'll leave it for them.

[Ty Korrigan]

I've a signed quote for the takedown starting Monday, stem down Tuesday afternoon.

I'll tell him to put the wood on Le Bon Coin (Gumtree)

See what genre of neer-do-wells he has to deal with crawling over his neighbours property, tyre kicking the rounds and asking if he will deliver or "nice wood, not sure about the colour"

    

 

 

[Mick Dempsey]

I never offer anything. 

If they think it’s worth money I’ll put it on the floor for them and sned it up ready for collection.

 

Or I have a bloke who comes and gets stuff, he never gives me anything, just turns up on the allotted day at the allotted hour, loads it and leaves.

 

To be fair most clients ‘get’ it at the quoting stage when you explain that individual trees aren’t worth anything.

 

I’ve said before, the idea of planking up a trunk on site whilst the client watches ‘his’ tree converted into a saleable product after he’s already paid to take it down….

 

Get it off site, out of sight, out of mind.

[Dan Maynard]

Round here a lot of people keep the wood, or a neighbour has it. For me it's usually after the price for the tree is on the table, I don't mind either way as I've always got plenty of wood so happy for it to go wherever.

 

I've had people keep it and let it rot for years too, seems pointless but I guess they just couldn't bear to let all that valuable poplar be taken away.....