How many logs do you burn through in your wood burner in an evening?

[sylar]

Roughly of course, I know everyone will be slightly different and it depends on how late you stay up but we've just moved into a new house and have a wood burner for the first time. Had what seemed like an enormous stock of logs but we're rapidly eating through them. Wood burner on 5 - 10 approximately.

Can anyone enlighten me? And does anyone make their own logs with papers and leaves etc? Seen a few gadgets to make logs and didn't know whether they work.

Hi,
We have an open fire not a log burner, but we do burn logs and we get through a huge amount. It's all seasoned stuff that hubby collected/chopped down last year, but it soon goes.
I have seen the log maker things, but never tried one. Sorry

ATM we have our central heating on gas, Rayburn running off wood doing cooking & hot water - we use approx one medium sized tubtrug of logs per evening. Haven't yet switched the central heating as we're not convinced we've got enough dry wood stockpiled to last the winter (we've recently moved).

In our last house (very small but old wet welsh stone) we used to go through approx a wheelbarrow full per day for all heating, cooking & hotwater (also a Rayburn) - smallish barrow at either end of the 'season', barrow really piled full in January when we were lighting the burner first thing in the morning (we work from home so have it on most of the day in the depths of winter).

We have a small stove. If I burn it all day (8am-9pm) I get through about 4 quid's worth of delivered logs (an overflowing wheelbarrow full). That's burning for heat only.

Pleased to see this as I'm trying to get fully over to wood rather than burning coal too but it does seem to get through the wood very quickly. I find it much harder to regulate burning speed with wood. I think coal is easier for a slow burn and more economical (though quite clearly not as ethical!) and I'm thinking that money wise I may have to stick to using a mixture.

I've just had a look in some of my books, & figures in them suggest from 3 to 7 tonnes per year of wood to heat an 'average' 3 bedroom house, I assume hardwood, depending on insulation & efficiency of stove.

Where we used to live, a 20 tonne load of hardwood, mostly ash, would do all the heating/hot water & most of the cooking for about 8 households for a year - small houses but not well insulated and damp - but probably relatively low comfort levels compared to what many people would accept (tho perhaps those with woodburners are more prepared to wear wooly jumpers?).

Prices have gone up, we've just been quoted £800 for an equivalent load (was £500 not so long ago), but still, if we could find people to share with we reckon we should be able to get wood for approx £200 per year. BUT, that is getting it unseasoned and as treetrunks, so it needs chainsawing, splitting, stacking and seasoning for a year.

Buying dry wood cut to length we've been paying about £120 for a trailer load - we've had a couple of loads plus some slab wood we had from other sources, but in total it doesn't look like enough to do the winter.

Sylar - check with your installer but once your woodburner is really hot (about an hour after first lighting) you should be able to put logs on but the air intake lever should be up at minimum/shut and the dial (if you have one) for burning rate can be turned right down:" if you master this the stove will consume logs very slowly but emit intense heat . It took me a few months to truly master the knack. the other important factor is to know what wood your logs are as some burn much faster than others, lime and chestnut for example. birch, beech and oak burn slowly and emit more heat. Ash can be burnt green, cherry burns rapidly and produces little heat. It is worth ringing around log suppliers and find out what you're getting. Finally, we burn about two large lorry loads of logs in two fires between October and end March, with one - the woodburner - being used every day. HTH

The air regulator thingy doesn't work on my stove (we moved here in August and it didn't work then) but I am getting that fixed next week. I imagine that will help a bit as at the moment I have uber fast burn and uber slow (by banging the coal scuttle up against the bottom door). Uber slow does ok for a coal slow burn but wood just goes out . Possibly doesn't help that I managed to break the glass on the door today which of course has buggered things up even more. This thing does all my water and heating so I really need to get it fixed!

Do you tend to get all your wood delivered at once then? We have a small store which gets most of a dumpy bag of logs in with enough space down the end for a bag of coal. We have just had our second bag of wood delivered. It is seasoned and dry though of course gets a bit damp during delivery and our store isn't the best but don't know what the alternative is.

3-7 tonnes a year? About how much do we think that is in dumpy bags? I want to try to estimate my total fuel costs for the year in comparison to our old house where we had gas heating.

I have a logmaker - the one you put newspapers leaves and teabags in etc. They are very good for firelighters but not much else.

In terms of wood, we coppice our own and burn about five logs (so that'd be one an hour). We don't buy wood anymore. We decided two years ago to coppice as much as we could and reckon we are covered for about four years after a week's intensive chopping over the summer.

I get half a tonne a load - it's about 20 (very 'ish') wheelbarrows

Get the glass replace - phone the manufacturer it's fairly easy to do yourself (normally)

We use about 8-12 logs a night I guess

Is a dumpy bag one of those big bags that you get sand/gravel in? Our current pile is approx 3m x 1.5m x 2m (very roughly) I would guess, and if it were all dry hardwood stacked really neatly I think it would probably do us the winter. (As it is, quite a bit of it is pine, and a big chunk at the back won't be ready for burning til next year.)

If you buy dry seasoned split wood, I think it is expensive - the only way wood is cheaper than gas IME is if you buy it unseasoned & unprocessed & have the space to process & store it - but then of course it is much less carbon emissions.

Having the air regulators shut once it gets hot makes a huge difference to burn speed on ours.

yes a dumpy bag is one of those builders bags, so about 1m3, we don't really have the space to store unseasoned wood for a year! Been looking at websites to find an approx weight but can't.

I will be phoning for replacement glass on Monday. So pissed off with myself for breaking it.

I fill one of those big blue Ikea bags with wood and that generally lasts me a night and a half. I have mixed wood of oak, chestnut, ash etc. I get the fire going with the lighter wood and then put in the oak, like someone previously said it takes about an hour to get really hot, but once I've got it roaring away I turn the air intake down to virutally nothing and that way it will burn for about 3 hours slowly and hotly. When I put in some new logs I'll just turn the air intake up for a couple of minutes just to get it going and then right back down again. I've bought three cordes of wood, which is about 9 steres and I expect that to last me all winter. When I light the fire during the day I will be cooking on it too, so lots of casseroles and baked potatoes in our house over the winter.

We've just been looking at our log pile & costs again today (trying to decide what to do). Its very much an estimate, as we're new in this house, so not sure how cold it will get, but at the moment I reckon that if we only bought cut seasoned wood we'd go through 4 loads, which would cost us about £480 per year. When we put in solar hot water (hopefully quite soon) that should fall as we wouldn't need to light the rayburn anywhere near so often in the summer time.

In practice I think what we'll do is get some dry split wood, and supplement it with unseasoned slab wood offcuts from a local woodyard which we'll have to cut - though of course then there's wear & tear on the chainsaw (new chains, chain oil etc don't come cheap).

To compare, our gas direct debit was set at £50 per month, which was the estimated consumption based on the previous owners - though of course you never know how accurate that is and how much the companies are trying to get your ££s in advance!

Takver we did that last year and bought compressed pine from a local woodyard and just chopped that up, it would cost us about 10 euros for a trailer load and it burned really well, in fact am thinking of sending DH again this year just to bulk out our proper wood.

Because it was pine it was really soft and didn't really play too much havoc on my chainsaw. It's probably a good idea, also pine burns fast and hot.

I don't think you're paying a bad price for your wood I've just paid 600 euros for hopefully enough to last me now till April, fingers crossed.

I have one of those paper log makers. They are quite time consuming to make and take ages to dry out. I tend to make a few in summer then give up. They are only really good for firelighters.

I think the price is ok, too. I'd rather have ash slabwood ideally - not as bad on the chainsaw as oak, but doesn't take up as much room as the softwood! Luckily I think there might be some available later in the winter, fingers crossed . . .

Well I've been having more of a look at costs and it looks pretty good. At our old house the direct debits were pretty high so if you subtract from those our electic for here that leaves us with £900 a year to spend on solid fuel before it gets more expensive than gas! I'd like to burn wood only but this year is a bit experimental being our first with solid fuel. We need to see about how much we use this year then over the summer build a decent wood store to acocmmodate our supply for the following winter.

This is really helpful everyone. We're very lucky in that we have 5 acres of woodland and have also inherited a large stockpile but we are new to all this so I have no idea how long we leave the wood to season? Are we talking weeks or months?

Trees felled this winter should be about ready to burn next winter. It will season better if its cut to length & split before stacking. A couple of good links are here and here.
Are you planning to fell your trees yourself? If you are, and you really are new to it, you might want to get some advice/help from someone experienced, and also seriously consider going on a course to get a chainsaw certificate (not that you need the certificate, obv, but from the point of view of learning all the safety stuff).

Its actually mainly protected woodland and we are not planning on felling any from that ourselves but the previous owners were not so law abiding and chopped down about 30 seemingly just to clear the way for quad bike tracks !They've then just left them where they fell or used the trunks as borders on the tracks. We've figured we might as well use those and chop them up for firewood now that the damage is done. No idea when they chopped them down though. They may well have been lying there for a year or so. They'll be wet though of course and so will need drying out.

We'll have a good stock of branches and twigs though for kindling and we'll be able to use the branches that need removing when they're dead etc.

Hoping DH is going to get the woodland management bug since chainsaws scare me to bits.

It might be worth taking advice on managing the woodland - even if you're not planning on any systematic felling (or coppicing) some management is usually recommended (thinning etc).
Where we used to live we got advice (along with grants) through Better Woods for Wales, I'm sure there'd be some kind of equivalent in England/Scotland.

We burn about 1 large about 8-9 inches across) log an hour. You should try tweaking around with the air inlet on your stove to keep the flames lazy rather than fierce. You'll be getting the most efficient combustion like that, the least ash and the most heat.

ps: nothing wrong with chopping down the occasional tree. Your woodland will most probably have been managed until pretty closely about 60-70 years ago, possibly even later.