Economoics of Importing Wood from Eastern Block countries

[greendeltalimited]

Will have a chat with him when I get a minute, working 70 hour weeks at present.

 

PM me with your e mail addy please, I will then respond and you can e mail me some costings providing the MC stacks up. If its not dry after this summer then it never will be, last winter what was your average moisture content?.

 

Thanks

 

A

Sorry,

 

heavy week - email address is [email protected]

 

MC is avge 22%.

 

D

[Alycidon]

Sorry,

 

heavy week - email address is [email protected]

 

MC is avge 22%.

 

D

 

For me thats wet. For optimum use in a stove MC needs to be below 16%. My air dried went out last winter following a very wet summer at 15%, moving to about 19% later in the winter. I did buy 40 cube in last winter and that was 22%-25%, customers were not happy. So far this autumn I am going out at between 5% and 12%, mostly about 7%.

 

22% will give acceptable results and is below the 25% level set by Hetas as a maximum MC level. However I am educating my customers over the importance of dry (sub 16%) timber in getting optimum calorific value from their logs. I do charge a premium price and customers quite rightly expect top notch product.

 

A

[ballibeg]

Calling 22% wet a bit harsh. I struggle to get my hardwood to that with two years drying here in the west of Scotland.

 

The drier the wood the better the stove has to be. 16% wasted fuel on a leaky Chinese import stove. When asked about stoves I try and encourage folk to buy a quality stove first and foremost. Biggest way to save log bills during the stoves life.

 

My WoodWarm runs beautifully on my two year dried wood. Yes it would run equally beautifully on 16% but it's not necessary.

 

Not hard to argue the need for dry wood but let's not start calling 22% wet.

 

Dave

[greendeltalimited]

In order to reduce our carbon footprint, all our wood is air dried in the Mediterranean. 12% is the lowest moisture content that we have recorded. 22% is our average.

 

Of course very dry wood will give great heat and calorific value – that’s fantastic for a variety of fires and reasons. But if I take my house, which is wood centrally fired, by way of example, an exceptionally dry wood, whilst warming, is not ideal as I have to feed the monster constantly. On exceptionally cold nights (-20 and below) placing sufficient dry wood in the furnace to build a constant temperature around the house, lead to parts of the furnace melting as the fire burned too intensely, and 10 – 15 kgs disappears in half an evening..... On the other hand, we are new to the Uk market, and if 22% is not good enough for the high end UK customer this season, we will adjust the product for next year and strive to hit the mark.

[woodrascal]

In large areas of the Uk you've got to take into account that due to the climate, low moisture content wood will absorb moisture from the air. 12% MC firewood stored outside (even under cover) will soon get up to 20% MC, or above, in Autumn and Winter conditions.

[muldonach]

In order to reduce our carbon footprint, all our wood is air dried in the Mediterranean. 12% is the lowest moisture content that we have recorded. 22% is our average.

 

Of course very dry wood will give great heat and calorific value – that’s fantastic for a variety of fires and reasons. But if I take my house, which is wood centrally fired, by way of example, an exceptionally dry wood, whilst warming, is not ideal as I have to feed the monster constantly. On exceptionally cold nights (-20 and below) placing sufficient dry wood in the furnace to build a constant temperature around the house, lead to parts of the furnace melting as the fire burned too intensely, and 10 – 15 kgs disappears in half an evening..... On the other hand, we are new to the Uk market, and if 22% is not good enough for the high end UK customer this season, we will adjust the product for next year and strive to hit the mark.

 

22% MC is perfectly acceptable firewood. You are getting down to 12% in a mediterranean climate quite how one is supposed to air dry timber to sub10% in the Uk is not immediately obvious. Which is not to say it cannot be done but I for one would be interested to hear how it is done and how long it takes.

 

At sub 10% MC we ar talking about structural timber or furniture making I would have thought

 

Cheers

mac

[Alycidon]

For most firewood sellers 22% is perfectly acceptable and as I said a stove (any stove, not just crap ones) will perform acceptably well burning it.

 

But just have a look here:

 

http://www.forestry.gov.uk/pdf/eng-woodfuel-woodasfuelguide.pdf/$file/eng-woodfuel-woodasfuelguide.pdf

 

Look at the graph on the second page, the heat output difference between 22% and 16% is significant as you would expect, thats the point I am driving home to my customers. Yes they are paying me more money than anyone else but they are getting more heat for that money.

 

We had a very wet summer here last year hence my logs were far wetter than normal so I can sympathise with areas of very heavy rain such as Western Scotland, in those conditions you can only do what you can do.

 

I looked at some kiln dried Ash tonight from Latvia, between 7% and 10%, lovely stuff.

 

A

[Alycidon]

In order to reduce our carbon footprint, all our wood is air dried in the Mediterranean. 12% is the lowest moisture content that we have recorded. 22% is our average.

 

Of course very dry wood will give great heat and calorific value – that’s fantastic for a variety of fires and reasons. But if I take my house, which is wood centrally fired, by way of example, an exceptionally dry wood, whilst warming, is not ideal as I have to feed the monster constantly. On exceptionally cold nights (-20 and below) placing sufficient dry wood in the furnace to build a constant temperature around the house, lead to parts of the furnace melting as the fire burned too intensely, and 10 – 15 kgs disappears in half an evening..... On the other hand, we are new to the Uk market, and if 22% is not good enough for the high end UK customer this season, we will adjust the product for next year and strive to hit the mark.

 

 

There is a market for 25% MC but it becomes price driven as your product is no better than 20 others in the market. I am probably alone here selling my upmarket logs but last winter on 3 customers did not re order and one of those moved away.

 

Drive home your USPs, the work you have done to ensure disease free, short lead times, etc etc.

 

A

[greendeltalimited]

Thanks, Alycidon, all advice gratefully received - one of the reasons I joined Arbtalk was to hear from the experts, and to tailor the product to the demand. Cheers for all the comments above.

Duncan

[gensetsteve]

I would think your logs will be fine since 75% of the logs sold in the uk this winter will be goping at over 36% moisture. Having been cut from green timber last week. Even on this forum alot of people are rushing round trying to buy cord cant believe after all the bs in recent years they are hacking it up to sell this winter.