Fahrenheit

Yeah the Posch stuff looks nice too..............going to hire a guy with a Binderberger to start with and then buy a processor further down the line. £130 a cube.........i tell the.........guy near us delivers it by the load of £130......his trailer is 8' x 5' x 1'......filled level is just a little over a cube......therefore £130 a cube.

They're very nice.....saw them 6 or 7 years ago at the Hearth and Home trade show........fancy one myself. Out of the boiler stoves you've narrowed down to i'd go for the Charnwood......i personally wouldn't touch a Hunter.........the Aarrow are okay. How about Dunsley? They're a solid stove and made in Huddersfield.

The thing is that the kiln dried companies are only quoting 20% moisture.....you can get that drying them naturally.....so whats the pros of them being kiln dried? Obviously from a supplier point of view it means you have less wood hanging around and smaller premises as you'd just have several kilns at different stages of drying. But what's the benefit to the customer if it's still 20% moisture when someone selling properly seasoned firewood will be 20% or less?

I must say that the Hakki Pilke seem a nice machine....i'd come to the conclusion that Hakki Pilke was the way to go....was looking at Riko but they look pretty naff. To be honest if i just break even from it it would be worth doing as it will strengthen our retail and installation side of things and i'll spend less time dealing with customers with shitted up stoves due to wet wood.

Are you mainly supplying to folk with open fires or wood burners?

Yeah well not sure whether i said it in this thread or another but the guy i've been passing all my customers to for wood over the years charges £130 a cube and they're begging him to delver but he won't.......Just the other day i had a customer telling me that they'd been buying wood off this guy for years and he's just turned around and said he won't deliver anymore as he's got too much on! I have customers begging me every day for dry firewood. Another guy is selling it wet at £110 a cube. If you guys are flogging it at £80 a cube, processed and seasoned.......could i buy it from you processed but green? Say 20 - 30 ton at a time. Delivered obviously. What sort of costs? PM me if you don't want to discuss prices and such on the open forum.

Thanks for info......will check out P Wilson. They seem to offer a good range. Prices are good around here.....£130 a cube is pretty standard for hardwood.

Thanks for the input......i don't think it's a doddle by any means.....i realise it's hard work......the bit you quoted wasn't intended to make light of what firewood suppliers are doing. When i've spoken to people in the trade and also searched previous posts on this forum everyone talks around 2m3 - 2.5m3 to a ton of hardwood. What is the typical range when converting 1 ton of wet hardwood cords to 1m3 firewood? £120 for 1m3 for dry firewood is pretty cheap around here........another guy i know sells seasoned firewood for £130 a cube and he's turning people away. What i'm saying is if i can afford to buy 500 ton of hardwood, a machine that can process 20-25 ton of wood a day with 2 men......to shift 500 ton in 6 months is only 7 loads a day excluding weekends. Therefore there should be reasonable money to be made if shifting enough of it, no? Obviously if i were cutting, splitting and stacking by hand then it would be considerably more work and labour and probably not worth bothering with. The thing is that i already have full time staff and the wood business would make use of our slack period so would not cost much extra in wages either.

i don't have to get it on finance but i may if the rates are good. Everyone seems to be on a downer on this site about the cost of buying and selling firewood but from the suppliers i know they're making a bloody good living........what you buying your wood for and what are you selling it for?

I'm looking to buy a firewood processor......there are many companies but who is the best to deal with? Are there any close to Yorkshire and do they offer finance on them?

Thanks for your concern.....i'm obviously not going to approach all 4000 customers to start with......more like couple of hundred. I don't want everyone to be phoning me for wood and then not be able to meet demand as this would bad for business. Most of my work is word of mouth.....i don't advertise....once i tell a few customers word will get around naturally. I understand that it is getting to the end of the season but people are so desperate around here for dry wood i'm sure i could shift plenty over the summer.....i'll offer a discount if bought in the summer months. A huge chunk of our business is chimney sweeping.....this used to be dead in summer and crazy in winter.......we offered £5 off in summer and now all of our customers get their chimneys swept in the summer......i'm sure i can do the same with firewood. It doesn't seem that much work to be honest............buy softwood and hardwood in at £35 - £55 a ton. A ton of wood should do at least 2 cubic metres........sells at £120 per cube.........thats £240.....less the original cost of the wood leaves around £200 before wages and fuel. Get a guy with a processor in.......dispense the firewood straight into ventilated sacks......stack one sack on top of another.....fork lift it into the kiln.....leave it for 2-3 weeks to dry.......fork lift it back out, put on a tipper and send to the customer. The kiln will run on the crap produced from processing the wood. I'n the meantime get another 100 ton or so seasoning for next year and then build up the stock as demand increases. Or am i missing something huge? I'm not keen on the briquettes........they look a bit naff and my customers want wood. I used to sell briquettes but i didn't like them. Also less money to be made from them.

Looking at buying in some wood.....looking for bulk quantities, green, unprocessed, delivered. Does anyone have anything or know who i can contact? Any help much appreciated. Regards, Chris

Yeah i feel we can get top money for the logs. My plan for drying them artificially is so that i can contact some customers......sell the wood and then i'm able to approach the bank with some figures.....ie......if i contact 200 customers and manage to shift 30 ton of wood within a short period of time then it should enable me to approach the bank with some promising figures and will give them idea of what kind of amounts we can shift if we approach all 4000 customers. I'd then like to borrow money to buy a processor, rent more space, buy in stock to season........etc. Drying it artificially isn't a long term plan at all.....it's only to get up and running so we can finance the business and scale things up so we have enough wood to season it naturally in the barns. I'll have fork lifts, tipper trucks............etc...... we will hire in a processor initially until we get finance to purchase our own and i've proven the business will work.

How old are you? I had a brand new 2009 Hilux Invincible double cab, 25 years old with 6 points on my licence and it was only £650. think I was with Kwick Fit insurance.

Gensetsteve - when you say £75 per ton........is the price your selling a ton at, processed, seasoned, delivered? As it goes for way more than that around here. Unless I've misunderstood.

The black container is a good idea. Maybe that and a couple of fans would suffice. I'm really wanting something now though so I can get some sold before summer and also I'll offer a discount if bought in the summer. As for the wood smoke being a killer........the stove will be flued outside so no smoke within the container. Also nobody is going to be in the containe. I'm not massively bothered about making big money from it. The main issue is that a lot of customers I see when quoting for an install are concerned about getting dry wood and when they ask me where they can get wood I have no answer for them as it's all wet around here. If we supply our own wood I can solve that problem which should sell us more stoves. If I can set a guy on and make some money from it then great.

I know this thread is a couple of months old but thought i'd put my input. I'm just starting out in the firewood business......mostly as i'm sick of cowboys selling wet wood as seasoned. Also we have a stove shop and installation service and get called out many times a year due to stoves not working properly. Every time it's down to wet wood. Also the only local guy who does sell seasoned wood is so ungrateful for the work (i give him about 350 new customers a year and he does nothing but moan) and he wont take on any more new customers so i really have no option but to do it myself and take them all back. I have around 4000 customers who we've installed stoves for over the years so it should be an instant business if i just give them a call/drop them a letter. Now obviously i'm lacking experience but i've done a lot of research and asked a lot of questions to people in the trade......obviously there will be mistakes made but that's life. Anyways........to start with we're going to cut and split a load of wood and dispense into ventilated bulk sacks...........i want to be able to start selling some wood pretty quickly so i can get some money coming back in to buy the next load of wood.........I have a 45 foot insulated (ex refrigeration trailer). I plan on fitting a workshop stove at the far end which will burn all the rubbish and sawdust from processing the timber. I plan on installing several air vents at the far end near the wood burner and then at the other end of the trailer i'm going to install several bathroom extractor fans......these are very low power consumption but if i install enough it should help distribute the heat around the trailer and also circulate air through the trailer and dry the wood. Anyone got any idea how long the wood will take to dry if i can maintain the trailer at around 35 degrees C? Once the trailer is full i plan on filling up our barns and leaving that to season naturally for next year.......once i get a year in front then i'll stop using the trailer to artificially dry it.....it's just so i can get selling some this year. That's the plan anyway.......anyone see any reasons why it shouldn't work? Cheers, Chris

thanks for the info and pm's but for some reason some of them went missing after i read them. Could you send again please? Cheers, Chris

That sounds like a pretty good way of doing it. I'm just starting out in firewood production so it saves me some start-up costs. I'm planning on ordering 28 tonn of spruce and larch, some ventilated bulk sacks, get a fork lift and we're ready to go. So we'd be looking at a couple of days to sort the 28 tonn........i'm assuming it can be dispensed straight into the cubic metre ventilated bulk sacks? Can i give you a call tomorrow at some point? Where abouts are you located?

Hi there, Can anyone help with the hire of a firewood processor? Looking at something that can manage spruce and larch. I would require the machine for a week, possibly two depending upon costs. Any help would be much appreciated. Cheers, Chris