Firewood from sawmill waste

[Squaredy]

On 14/09/2025 at 11:34, AHPP said:

 

The stuff in the photo would chip in about three minutes. The problem is what is the bloke and chipper going to do for the rest of the day.

Twenty minutes to fill a lorry if the supply is there. 

 

Someone local with a tractor trailed Heiziohack rather than a lorry based monster MIGHT want it but it’s still not much. Won’t cost much to ask (do check whether anyone’s biomass setup is taxvictim funded and show them the door if it is) but I suspect you’re going to be doing it yourself.

 

What are you doing with it at the moment?

I’ve never used a chipper personally, but I suspect the hundred or so lengths in each bundle might take a other longer than three minutes, and you would need about thirty bundles to fill a walking for lorry.

 

What I do with it at present is sell it as bundles, but there is not quite enough demand so I keep dropping the price.  If someone has a couple I only charge £15 per ton.  If it comes to it I will just have a bonfire.

[AHPP]

I was talking about a (big) biomass chipper. Crane fed.

 

 

[trigger_andy]

On 14/09/2025 at 09:48, Squaredy said:

Nice analogy!  And realistically are they going to pay someone to feed the chipper all day?  And to fill a lorry it would take a day I would say.  This picture gives a better idea of what the bundles are like.  Even though it is about a ton of timber per bundle there is not much chunky stuff.

I mill for a local firewood supplier now and again. They keep the choice logs back for me to mill and what suits gets processed into 9" logs and dried (Im not joking) in 3-4 days on a £1 million drying floor. 

Whats oversized 40" etc gets chipped. They hire in an £800,000 chipper than needs to work 6 days a week to make a profit. Day 7 is service day. Its over £800 an hour to chip. How that works out I have no idea. 

[Squaredy]

2 hours ago, AHPP said:

I was talking about a (big) biomass chipper. Crane fed.

 

 

Nice machine.  Not relevant for the scale of my operation though.