Firewood prices during this inflation

We will never see the end of wood burning...for a lot of reasons.

 

Let me hear your reasons.What might help if the greedy fools running prices up run the prices of fuel so high we'll have to go back to cutting wood with crosscut saws and axes.Pulling the wood out of the woods with horses.Not many would be up for that.

 

There's more forested land in most places now than there was 100 years ago.

 

Nobody is going to go back to crosscut saws and axes either...society is too soft and weak for that.
Heating with wood is cheaper than paying the man, there is little to no logging around here (most firewood comes from tree companies) and developing nations that have heated and or cooked with almost exclusively nothing but trees, still have trees. Efficiency in wood heating systems that consume less wood and better insulation can be added in as well. Those are just a few reasons why.

 

Most places in developed countries...

 

How many people were there 100 years ago and that few number compared to today did a pretty good job of clearing forest.If a third of todays population turned back to heating with wood how much forest do you think there'd be.

If these costs of living keep going up people will soon become desperate.Woodstove sales will go through the roof by next winter.People will buy saws at first and may not be able to afford to run them.Maybe solar powered saw are the way of the future.Then again who would be able to afford to buy land if you don't already have it.Then if you do have it they can tax you right off the land.No problem for the law makers who will be scrambling for their own survival.This is a situation of being between a rock and a hard place.Efficient wood heating systems is the one good spot.

 

Not saying I'm one of the smart guys, but I did a rough calculation comparing wood to natural gas a couple years ago and came to the conclusion it's about a wash if I had to pay for firewood. I've never actually bought firewood, so it doesn't matter, but interesting nonetheless.

I did the calculation again to see where things stand now.

The caveat is that this only applies in Iowa if you're on Alliant Energy. Utility tariffs can be complex, so there's never going to be an nationwide across the board cost, like "natural gas costs X per therm today". The actual commodity cost on the exchanges is not the same as what we pay the utilities.

Alliant charges a meter fee, a non-gas per therm charge, and the actual gas cost. The Iowa Utilities Board requires them to publish their rates and computation method, so it's pretty easy to find. Some customers also pay demand charges, but usually those are only on commercial or industrial tariffs, not residential tariffs.

I'm gonna ignore the meter fee and other fixed costs since we'd use gas for our cooking and domestic hot water regardless.

We pay a non-gas per therm cost of around $0.30. (Their website's down right now so I can't look up the exact figure.) The price of gas fluctuates with commodity prices. When gas was spiking last November they charged a high of $0.8690/therm. February was much cheaper at $0.6067.

Adding the two together we paid a high of $1.169/therm and a low of $0.9067/therm during the winter.

A therm is 100,000 BTUs.

Using the FHC chart, the BTUs/cord of the species I burn/have the most are:
- Elm: 18.4 million BTUs/cord
- White oak: 24.2 million BTUs/cord
- Red oak: 22.1 million BTUs/cord
- Mulberry: 23.2 million BTUs/cord
- Shagbark hickory: 25.3 million BTUs/cord

My large stocks of elm drag my average down, so I'm gonna say my stuff averages 20 million BTUs/cord. That's probably a conservative average for the typical stuff advertised around here, too, but let's be generous and assume it's mostly oak at an average of 23 million BTUs/cord. I usually see people selling mixed hardwood, but also occasionally just oak.

That means there are 200-230 therms in a typical cord of wood around here.

To compare costs I'll add the combined non-gas cost + gas cost ($1.169/therm for Nov. and $0.9067/therm for Feb.) and multiply those by either 200 (for a mixed hardwood cord equivalent) or 230 (for an all-oak cord equivalent).

In November, the natural gas equivalent to a cord cost $233.80 to $268.78.

In February, the natural gas equivalent to a cord cost $181.34 to $208.54

Firewood prices on Craigslist and Marketplace are usually $80/truckload around here, though I saw anywhere from $70 to $100 this winter. I figure a typical truck load is around 1/3 of a cord. That's $240/cord, with a range of $210-300/cord.

Friends who buy dump truck loads and whole cords have told me they pay anywhere from $250 to $300 per cord. $300 is on the higher end. Most people don't charge more than that around here.

So even when natural gas prices were spiking in November, it was still only $270 or so for the same amount of heat as a cord of oak and just $230 to equal a cord of mixed hardwood. That's within $20 of typical wood prices – basically a breakeven.

When prices were lower in February, heating with natural gas was significantly cheaper than paying for wood.

So there's basically no way for me to save money if I buy wood. Natural gas would have to climb really, really high. For reference, last fall gas futures hit prices they haven't reached since 2008.

For us, all of the savings come from scrounging our own.

Of course, all of those savings just get spent on chainsaws

 

That’s been my outlook own the matter. So many people will work for nothing.

 

I remember a couple years back natural gas and propane were at historic lows in my region. Most people thought I was foolish messing around with burning wood. I have been burning for almost 13 years now. I knew in the back of my mind that these gas and electric rates would eventually go up. Well they have. To many people put there faith in these politicians and government to look out for there best interest. People need to think about being more self sufficient. I truly believe hard times will come.

 

Thank you sir, that is very helpful!

 

All of this is very useful information. It’s nice to see people quantify their reasons with actual facts and figures. One thing I do have to ask though, is your gas furnace high efficiency and what did it cost?

 

Yeah, our gas furnace is pretty new and high efficiency. I think it’s 94% AFUE. Our wood stove is an EPA stove and also a pretty efficient at 77% HHV efficiency.

Honestly saving money isn’t the main reason we like wood heat. The savings are nice for sure, but if you figure in saws, splitter, and the stove itself it’ll take a long time to amortize those costs. And that’s valuing my time at zero. Which is fine since I love cutting wood — it’s fun not work.

 

I have been asked to sell firewood, and my reply is always the same. "No, I work too hard for it to just turn around and sell it!" (But I have given a few cords away over the years.)

 

I like the calculations. I've done similar for my part of Missouri. Our old town house was electric heat. The 2 biggest differences I had was I included the efficiencies to adjust cost to achieve the same BTUs applied to heating the house. I also had to assume the same house temperature.

The old electric house we kept at 65F and would still have a $250+ bill in winter. The farmhouse with wood stove is set to 70f all winter. I back calculated what that extra 5f would cost us in electricity and it was scary. The old house electric heater house i would plastic cover all the windows and some doors not used in winter. The wood heated farm house I don't do anything until we get a subzero cold spell. I just burn a little more wood.

I'll have to redo the math but to keep the same temp in the farm house I think it was going to cost about $2k in last year's prices. I don't have $2k in my 5 saws and log splitter. They paid for themselves the first winter.

Wood prices stay pretty low around the farm due to the many oak sawmills in the area that sell butt ends, slab wood, and scrap lumber. I have notice alot of truck loads are in 6ft beds when 20 years ago an 8 ft truck bed was way more common.

 

With wood prices rising, what are you doing to secure your firewood from those who would take without asking?

 

I had this problem in SC. What I did was use braided spider wire strung up and hooked through a snaggle of eyelets that were hooked to a piece of plywood and cross members to pull down quite a pile when the line was hit. It only had to work a couple times. I stacked the splits at 8 feet on a ladder. One time I heard it, and they ran away probably limping, and the other I wasn't home that night. They didn't steel anything though, just left apparently.

 

I would suggest a Remington, Ruger, Winchester, Glock, Savage, Smith & Wesson or something along these lines…

Oh & a nice sharp shovel…

 

Dang it! I'm missing the Remington, got everything else covered. Oh yeah, and a couple mutts that give plenty of warning too.

I leave a lot in 8' log form till I split and deliver, dead Ash & Elm mostly. Harder to walk off with.

 

Nice. I didn’t factor in the efficiencies because I’m not totally certain that AFUE and however they calculate wood stove efficiency are interchangeable. I’m also not 100% sure what are furnace efficiency is. Either way factoring in efficiency would tilt things even further in favor of gas as far as price goes.

I really should calculate what it would cost to heat out home with gas to the same temp as we do with wood. That’s one of the biggest benefits of wood for us — we can keep the house nice and toasty with no guilt. I’m proud of the effort I put into firewood so why shouldn’t I burn the fruit of that labor to make my family more comfortable? We keep the main living space at 75 in the winter with wood, but we’d never dream of doing that with gas. It would probably cost a fortune if we did.

 

When we first moved in we found out how much HHO it took for a winter. After we started burning wood, we found out how much HHO we used. We calculated we eliminated 75% of our oil consumption. Going thru 100 to 150 gallons of HHO is way less expensive than burning around 600 gallons of HHO. The savings have more than paid for my saws, splitter and assorted hand tools for putting up firewood as well as the gas and oils consumed.