Are logs worth doing anymore ?

[Alycidon]

150 tons of cord, so 200 - 225 cubic meters of logs. If you are selling at 100 a cube + VAT at 5% then thats 20k-25k. At £60 a cube then income 12k - 14k. Cost of cord 8k (ish !), bar oil. chains, diesel, repairs etc, say 1k. Time processing?, at 1 cube an hour then 200 hours at £20 = 4k + NIC etc, say 5.5k, less if using a faster set up. delivery costs?, allow 1.50 per mile each way. ( I am starting to charge for delivery depending on volume/distance).

 

So I think you should be making something if you are charging £100 a cube but if you are charging £60 a cube then unless you are getting your cord for nothing then you are loosing money.

 

Food for thought. Might be a better idea in future to talk to your local blokes selling it at £60 a cube and buy some from them then resell a lesser volume at a decent mark up to loyal customers.

 

A

[gensetsteve]

150 tons of cord, so 200 - 225 cubic meters of logs. If you are selling at 100 a cube + VAT at 5% then thats 20k-25k. At £60 a cube then income 12k - 14k. Cost of cord 8k (ish !), bar oil. chains, diesel, repairs etc, say 1k. Time processing?, at 1 cube an hour then 200 hours at £20 = 4k + NIC etc, say 5.5k, less if using a faster set up. delivery costs?, allow 1.50 per mile each way. ( I am starting to charge for delivery depending on volume/distance).

 

So I think you should be making something if you are charging £100 a cube but if you are charging £60 a cube then unless you are getting your cord for nothing then you are loosing money.

 

Food for thought. Might be a better idea in future to talk to your local blokes selling it at £60 a cube and buy some from them then resell a lesser volume at a decent mark up to loyal customers.

 

A

 

I tend to think that with delivery our 1.5 cu metre load takes 3 hrs. Factoring in clean up time and machine repairs and large cord that needs ringing. We travel upto ten miles and the average has to be 7 miles.

 

If you approach another merchant in your area you will find they prefer to sell to end user rather than you. I have tried and almost done a deal on 3 occasions but either the load was short or wet and full of trash.

 

Last year we charged £95 for 1 cu metre and £130 for 1.5

[face cord]

Cheapest local sellers are

 

Tree surgeon selling mixed hardwood for £60 a 1m3.

 

Another place is doing 1m3 soft & 1m3 hard for £115 including delivery.

 

So im not sure what profit margin they are making...

 

There are also some brand new wood selling ventures that have just appeared locally in the last few yrs who buy in artic loads & are selling it alot more expensive than the above.

 

 

Energy Cost Comparison | Nottingham Energy Partnership

 

According to theese figures wood is the cheapest form of heating, if you don't live on mains gas, apart from getting heat pumps put in.

 

Bet my old rayburn isn't anywhere near 85% efficient though

[ThrustSSC]

Very true, but I think the result is that most people with stoves/fire places only use them occasionally for the cosy ambience, rather than for seriously heating their homes. At £80 for 1/2 a cubic metre, wood is a lot more expensive than gas and even coal.

 

The snag with this maths is it's comparing apples with oranges. Their gas/oil heats the entire house using the central heating. Their wood heats just the room they're using that evening, with some spread to other rooms by circulation and convection. That localised heat in the living room is where a key part of the advantage of wood lies.

 

Then the romantic bit warms the bedroom, but that's another story... ;-)

[Alycidon]

face cord,.

 

Tree surgeon is getting his wood for nothing and basically getting rid of it for beer money. Chances are his logs are uneven in size and length as they will have gone through a splitter/chainsaw rather than a processor. They will also most likely be green. Talk to him/her in the spring, ask if he would be interested in selling you the cord perhaps in return for you suppling him a cube or two of processed logs.

 

Thrust SSC.

I have several customers who use the stove or the Esse Ironheart wood burning cooker as the primary heat source. A small 5kw stove can heat a 2 bed bungalow with no issues as long as its kept going. The 9.5kw Ironheart warms big farmhouses well.

 

I use the Nottingham Energy partnership site quite a lot when potential stove customers ask about cost comparisons. There are a couple of other issues though that people need to be aware of; A, The CO2 emissions, lots of women are very bothered about their CO2 footprints and wood fuel is far and away the best in this area. B, The NEP chart shows heat pumps as being the most cost efficient at present and they may well be, but, no one will warrant a pump for anything more than a couple of years, and the cost of a replacement pump I have recently been advised by a potential stove customer was in excess of 8k + fitting.

 

Wood logs Vs Mains Gas, cost is the same per kw, CO2 emissions far less and we are not reliant on the Russians not turning off the supply. Currently less than 50% of our gas comes from the North Sea, the rest comes mainly from Russia.

 

A

Edited September 27, 2012 by Alycidon

[Woodworks]

Cheapest local sellers are

 

Tree surgeon selling mixed hardwood for £60 a 1m3.

 

Another place is doing 1m3 soft & 1m3 hard for £115 including delivery.

 

So im not sure what profit margin they are making...

 

There are also some brand new wood selling ventures that have just appeared locally in the last few yrs who buy in artic loads & are selling it alot more expensive than the above.

 

 

Energy Cost Comparison | Nottingham Energy Partnership

 

According to theese figures wood is the cheapest form of heating, if you don't live on mains gas, apart from getting heat pumps put in.

 

Bet my old rayburn isn't anywhere near 85% efficient though

Yep we have a ground source heap pump and we would be financially better off selling all our logs and running the heat pump but we love having a fire, so much better to watch than a TV on a cold winters night. I think the 85% efficiency figure looks pretty optimistic. This is probably based on a perfect stove with perfect logs (obviously ours are ) running flat out the whole time but life is not quite like that.

[ThrustSSC]

I have several customers who use the stove or the Esse Ironheart wood burning cooker as the primary heat source. A small 5kw stove can heat a 2 bed bungalow with no issues as long as its kept going. The 9.5kw Ironheart warms big farmhouses well.

 

I use the Nottingham Energy partnership site quite a lot when potential stove customers ask about cost comparisons. There are a couple of other issues though that people need to be aware of; A, The CO2 emissions, lots of women are very bothered about their CO2 footprints and wood fuel is far and away the best in this area. B, The NEP chart shows heat pumps as being the most cost efficient at present and they may well be, but, no one will warrant a pump for anything more than a couple of years, and the cost of a replacement pump I have recently been advised by a potential stove customer was in excess of 8k + fitting.

 

Wood logs Vs Mains Gas, cost is the same per kw, CO2 emissions far less and we are not reliant on the Russians not turning off the supply. Currently less than 50% of our gas comes from the North Sea, the rest comes mainly from Russia.

 

A

 

Alycidon, Im sure you're right on some people using the stove as a primary heat source, but my point was that the normal situation we see is customers who use it as a localised source. Even paying top-end prices (e.g. Certainly Wood) for their fuel, it is more economical than gas/oil.

 

As we move into the world of customers buying locally and smartly (i.e. from those of us on here who sell a reasonably-priced, well-seasoned product), the economics shift towards the world you describe, where wood competes head-to-head with fossil fuels on price.

 

The CO2 thing will become ever more important to our customers as and when the world emerged from this deep recession (I note that everyone seems to be avoiding the "depression" word) and global CO2 emissions rise sharply again.

 

Agreed on the usefulness of the NEP site. As for heat pumps, I believe they're an utter con - to get any decent heat from them you have to either have underfloor heating (that runs at a lower termperature), or you need to turn up the output so high the 'energy multiplier' drops to 2x or even less. At which point you're heating your house with electricity - the worst of all worlds.

[Albedo]

quote Alycidon

 

'Tree surgeon is getting his wood for nothing and basically getting rid of it for beer money. Chances are his logs are uneven in size and length as they will have gone through a splitter/chainsaw rather than a processor. They will also most likely be green.'

 

Bit of a bold statement to make in a sub forum on a tree surgeon website.

 

Last I looked this site was called Arbtalk as in arborist / arboriculture…..

 

Not….’Disgruntledfirewoodmerchanttalk’

 

 

Your woes might I humbly suggest may be better fixed by looking inwards rather than outwards.

 

By this I mean looking at getting yourself some industry standards especially with regard to volumes sold, along with the quality elements which you have listed.

[Woodworks]

Posted by Thrust SSC "Agreed on the usefulness of the NEP site. As for heat pumps, I believe they're an utter con - to get any decent heat from them you have to either have underfloor heating (that runs at a lower termperature), or you need to turn up the output so high the 'energy multiplier' drops to 2x or even less. At which point you're heating your house with electricity - the worst of all worlds."

 

There is nothing wrong with heat pumps per-se. But some are installed in unsuitable properties resulting in them getting a bad name, unfairly IMHO. Ours works very well and is cheap to run in a well insulated house with underfloor heating.

 

Back on track.

We sell a small amount of firewood each year for over £100 m3 but we get the wood for free. We will never make a fortune at it but I like the work so will continue for the time being.

Edited September 27, 2012 by Woodworks

[difflock]

I would also add that a %age of ground source heat pumps are badly installed in respect of depth and amount of buried pipe, from what I have seen photos of.

I do also however know of a very successful installation by an NIE engineer who dotted all i's and crossed all t's and installed in a new build with underfloor heating.

He however backs it up with a big wood stove, just so as to kinda stay focussed:lol: