A friend of mine owns a tree service and has always given me tips to home owners that have just had trees removed and would like the rounds taken away for free. It's a nice system that helps out the HO and wood gatherers both. Only problems are that timing may not work out and the HO may give permission to someone else if you are not right on top of it. About 6 months ago the tree service bought a chunk of property for a log yard and has been stockpiling a lot of wood there. He has piles that will be sold as pulp wood, piles that will be milled and a pile that is from HO's that wanted him to remove the wood from their property. He has given me ( and a few select others) permission to cut all the firewood we want. I went to the yard this AM so he could show me what was up for grabs an and what not. The grabs pile has Fir, maple, madrona, oak, and alder(yuk) in roughly that order of quantity. I can cut any time the gate is open which is general business hours. Will probably start Thursday and get out a couple loads of madrona and oak. Then, sadly, My space available will be overflowing, My Wif will be unhappy with me and I will have to hump to get it all split and stacked. It will be the end of cutting for the year!
That looks like the ideal way to get your wood, as long as the competition isn't too fierce. Get it sooner rather than later.
As far as I know, as long as He owns the yard and there is wood available I will have access. There are only 3 others with permission to cut and they are small time wood users. His son has a casual firewood business but deals only in Fir wood as it is easy and fast to split and by far, volume wise, the most popular firewood in this area for residential buyers. He has his own pile of straight grained stuff too small to mill.
Ok stop! There's no way this is actually happening. As far as I know it's too hot for Christmas, I still aint seen the Easter Bunny, pigs aren't airborne and I get paid too much. That is a hoarders paradise right there! Nice score!
It IS paradise as far as I am concerned. I just wish it had happened earlier in the year, it would have saved me a lot of piecemeal scrounging ! I have never seen the Easter Bunny or Flying Pigs either. I may have seen Elvis once....I think.
Good stuff metalcuttr . Do you have a preference as far as oak and madrone are concerned? If you had to pick one over the other, which would you choose and why? I've burned quite a lot of oak. I doubt I'll ever burn madrone since I think it is only available on the west coast.
Here's a great btu chart that shows all the common woods if you haven't found it yet. (Grizzly Adam put some serious time into making this) Firewood BTU & Drying Chart
Oak and Madrona are very similar on the BTU chart ( thanks TurboDiesel ). Both coal up to a solid orange mass and then slowly reduce in size. One thing I have noticed is that Oak has much more fluffy white ash than Madrona. Then, Madrona has a flaky peely bark that gets all over everything. Madrona doesn't stink, Oak can. I suspect Madrona may season a bit quicker than oak but that is just a feeling on my part not based on any science. Madrona is slightly more available here near the coast so maybe I prefer it here. Maybe Oak if I lived back east. How is that for a wishy washy answer!
Thanks again Turbo and thanks to Grizzly Adam . That is an awesome resource. I have viewed similar charts but not as comprehensive as this. Interesting that Madrona does season quicker according to this chart so Madrona wins!
Sorta wishy-washy.... but as for access to this dream wood yard, you have succeeded at securing the “¥ou $uck” award.....
Eric VW I humbly accept this award. I now truly feel that I have received recognition of a lifetime. I would like to thank...what...wait..I'm not done speaking.........
Are you running for office? Okay. So when you're here in the east you'll burn oak; when you're home on the west coast you will burn madrona. That aside, let me say that I will not be the one to break the agreement we've made here today.
I am not currently running for office but that question has a lot of buckshot. I will take your statements under advisement and establish a blue ribbon panel to study the matter and develop a comprehensive plan to discover a course of action to put before the advisory committee to solicit advise as to how to answer that. But first I need to get approval from the Department of Redundancy Department!
It looks like a lot of nice saw logs too. Probably it would be a pain, but I really hate waste and would love to see some of those bigger chunks be sawn into some nice hardwood lumber. When factoring in time it would probably not be feasible, and there is the issue of picking up the wood, bringing it home log length and covering the cost of the trailer unit and sawmill, but it does seem like a shame to waste the wood, or even convert some of it into firewood. Some nice logs there I would say.
I can definitely agree with the drying time that madrona has. I had some that was dead and laying on it’s side after a bulldozer brushed it out. Honestly it smelled like feet when I cut into it, hard as could be. But that was the only time I smelled madrona like that and often I don’t cut it as its mostly trees already felled by themselves or other cutters and rare opportunity. That’s a great pile to cut from, have fun there!!!
