How much are you paying for firewood?

[Uben]

I paid $150/cord this year in Texas. I bet it is sky high in the New England area.

[mattvermont]

1. $220/cord n Vermont

when I bought 2 cords. That was a little high at the time, but I needed it then.
I think the average is still around 200.

[Marrah_G]

2. I heard from a family friend it was over 300 a cord in NH

I was considering putting in a woodstove to save money. With heating oil down to 2.69 I don't think I would be saving much. I'm going to fill my tank on Nov 3rd.

[WePurrsevere]

3. For a real cord, cut & split mostly hardwood we just paid $150.

in NNY but we have to get it here. Normally they're been running $180 up to $240. but the lower is often a mix of soft and some hard and higher priced is cut/split hardwood and delivered. Even though it's a bit hard on us to get it here, we can go slow (the guy we bought it from's a gem)and thankfully we have a large sturdy trailer and some help to load and off load.

We have an old dual furnace and will get some oil for assisting over night (so DH can get some sleep) and when we're gone for a bit (we're normally home) but oil is $3.59 a gallon according to our local providers website and to heat the house with oil would run twice as much as with wood and there's no way living on a low fixed income that we can afford that.

[Uben]

5. Mine was all split oak....

.....cut to 18" length to fit my wood stove. The $150 was delivered and stacked.

[WePurrsevere]

15. Wow.. that's great then! We couldn't touch it for that up here with it

cut, delivered and stacked. The demand is quite high up here though so that may have driven prices up a bit. Downstate NY near the Capital District is even higher.

FWIW our 12 cords is probably 90% maple and the rest is cherry, white birch and poplar (all from a landowner cleaning up his woods of newly fallen & broken trees... which made me feel a bit better about using wood.)

[conscious evolution]

4. Free

Two of my housemates are tree surgeons.They bring wood over whenever we need it.

My advice is get to know a tree surgeon.They carry the big straight long peices to sawmills but the limbs and gnarled peices go to landfills where they have to pay to dispose of them.You can be doing them a favor by taking them off their hands.
We also get there woodchips for mulching purposes.

[Uben]

6. We have an arborist here....

.....that cuts oak trees he has to remove into firewood and sits on a parking lot nearby and sells the wood about 30% cheaper than others because the wood is not seasoned.

[radfringe]

7. we found a guy

that splits/delivers it for $90/cord, 2 cord minimum

however - average prices are going anywhere from $125-$175 a cord, and many of these guys are already out of wood

we live near wilkes-barre PA

[B Calm]

8. Free, my country neighbor has a fence row of cherry, hickory, and osage orange

he wants cleaned out. I already have this winters firewood cut and working on next years.

[jakem]

9. Western MA - $225. for the good stuff.

[bean fidhleir]

10. A better question: WHY are you paying for firewood?

Burning anything contributes to the CO2 overload and brings us closer to the point of no return.

[ThomWV]

13. For affordable heat - why else?

Apparently you have not spent many nights where the temperature is sub-zero and you have no money for other forms of heat.

[bean fidhleir]

18. If that's your only source of heat, then fair enough

(And, just FYI, yes during my childhood we spent many a night without heat in winter. Many a day, too)


(edit) I should note, though, that burning wood is often a double hit: not only does that contribute to CO2 saturation through releasing the carbon stored in its body, but unless the tree died a natural death, killing it ended its ability to remove additional carbon from the air.

[lumberjack_jeff]

24. First, most firewood is a byproduct of logging wastes.

Second, mature forests don't sequester additional carbon. They grow to a certain volume of biological material and stay there. Dead trees decompose, releasing their carbon mostly as co2. Growing forests "remove additional carbon from the air".

Collecting firewood from a logging operation simply releases the co2 by burning as opposed to decomposition. Nothing is lost to the environment but the btu's are applied to useful purpose.

Granted, in urban/suburban areas the particulates from inefficient stoves can be an irritant, but sustainable wood burning is a comparatively environmentally responsible choice.

[bean fidhleir]

26. You are just a *treasure-trove* of misinformation, Jeff

Trees DON'T stop growing. Except after they're dead, of course.
http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/forestry/education/foresttreasures/readtherings.html

Firewood is generally not "logging waste"
http://extension.unh.edu/news/2006/05/where_does_firewood_come_from.html

[lumberjack_jeff]

28. Trees don't stop growing, FORESTS do.

In my area, when a forest reaches about 100-150 years it stops adding biological volume.

Regarding your second link: You call me a sophist? The point I made is that no one clear cuts for the purposes of harvesting firewood, a point which your own link supports. Firewood is (in logging country) created from secondary products in logging. If the price for pulp is low, it frequently isn't cost effective to haul it to the mill. This is where firewood cutters make something valuable from this WASTED material.

Even if pulpwood prices are high, there is still lots of wood that (because it's crooked or short or small diameter) is unsuitable for anything other than cutting into short pieces.

[lumberjack_jeff]

14. Firewood is carbon neutral, just like every other biofuel.

Why do you hate biofuels?

[bean fidhleir]

20. Could I ask you to list those burnable substances that are NOT biofuels?

Petroleum started out as plant life. Coal started out as plant life. Rocks don't burn. What's left?

[lumberjack_jeff]

21. Potassium. Magnesium. Hydrogen.

Biofuel is defined as solid, liquid or gas fuel derived from recently dead biological material and is distinguished from fossil fuels, which are derived from long dead biological material.

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biofuel

[bean fidhleir]

25. Do you know the word "sophist"? Because you are one, Jeff

Nobody burns any combustable minerals as a fuel source, so your "answer" is an evasive non-sequitur.

Claiming that burning non-fossil material yields a more benign, even "neutral" result is anti-scientific, sophistic rightwing nonsense. Burning worsens the atmosphere. That's the net reality.

To claim that it's just replacing carbon previously taken out of the atmosphere is worse than meaningless, it's malign disinformation.

That's because the taking-out occurred 50 or 500 or 50M years go, whereas the harmful putting back is happening NOW, when the natural cycle that kept things in balance back then has been disrupted by deforestation, overpopulation, etc. So the planetary respiratory cycle, mediated by the forests, is no longer working. Earth is gasping, and people burning things is like people smoking in the hospital room of an emphysema patient. It's stupid and brings every living creature closer to an ugly premature death.

[lumberjack_jeff]

27. You asked if coal was a biofuel. I answered.

Carbon-neutrality is a very specific concept. Burning biofuels are preferable to burning fossil fuels from any source, because the carbon released by burning is re-sequestered by the new plants growing where the fuel was harvested. It is as true for corn, or algae or soybeans as it is for wood.

Where does burning firewood imply deforestation? Deforestation is what occurred to build the neighborhood you live in. It is what occurred to create the farm which grew your organic spinach salad. It is what occurred to plant the fair trade certified coffee beans sold by Tully's. It is what occurred to enable the nickel mines which extracted the raw materials to build your Prius.

It is not what occurs in modern forestry, and certainly not what occurs by gathering the waste from logging to use as residential fuel.

But I'm wasting my breath. Your home is obviously heated by rainbows and leprechaun kisses.

I've become convinced that an environmentally friendly lifestyle is a low-consumption lifestyle. If you buy a solar panel, you buy the manufacturing, the mining of the silicon, the wastwater that creating the wafers produced.

More can be done to reduce the particulate emissions of residential woodstoves. Other than that, wood is a superior heat source, if for no other reason than there's only one energy conversion involved.

[MadHound]

29. Two things

First off, wood is indeed a renewable resource. Currently I can manage my fifty acres of wood to provide myself with an indefinite wood supply, which also means that I will be keeping that patch of forestland as an active carbon sink and wildlife refuge.

Second, you really should investigate modern woodstoves. The vast majority come with catalytic converter or combuster that remove aprox. ninety percent of the pollutants going up the stovepipe.

You scorn woodstoves, yet what is your solution to heating one's house? Electric, unless you're hooked up to solar panels or a wind turbine, certainly isn't a clean solution, neither is coal, heating oil or natural gas, all of which are non-renewable resources. So unless you've got a better solution, you really shouldn't blanketly criticize those of us who burn wood, after all, we might just know what we're talking about.

By the by, what do you heat with, non-renewables, renewables, or simply the glow from your own sanctity?

[bean fidhleir]

31. "or simply the glow from your own sanctity?"

If you think it's about scoring cheap points, then I feel sorry for you.

I wouldn't mind being able to go places that I can't safely cycle to. And my rent covers my heat, so I could turn it up as high as I like. But I don't drive unless I must and I wear a cardigan and I only have a fan for summer cooling and I keep all the lights -CFL bulbs- off that I'm not using. Not because I'm noble or playing someone noble on the internet, but because THE F*CKING PROBLEM IS REAL. It's not about me, and it's damnsure not a drama on tv where the world will get saved just before the final commercial. It's a real problem that's already killing the poor and the marginalized, both human and non-. And it will get around to us, too, unless we wise up.

But don't let it trouble you. Have a cookie.

[youthere]

11. I'm paying for it with a sore back...but I'm not complaining...

We have a friend who has a tree service, so he brings all the stuff he cuts and dumps in on our property. It makes for a LOT of cleanup but hey..it's free. I'm so sorry for those that aren't as lucky.

[ThomWV]

12. Here one would run you right at $100, maybe a little less

Generally wood is more often sold by the truck load around here. A lot of young guys cut wood and sell it that way. The going price is $65 a truck load (8' bed, full sized pickup loaded until the tires nearly pop, about 2/3~3/4 of a cord) and the wood would be good stuff, no poplar or any kind of pines; around here that would be mostly white oak, a good bit of elm and maple, some red oak and hickory, maybe some walnut now and then.

On Edit: Whoops, almost forgot - lots of wild cherry.

[flstci]

16. Firewood here in Texas should be next to nothing this year.

Ike brought down a BUNCH of trees and a lot of them are still laying around for the picking.

[dysfunctional press]

17. $110/face cord delivered and stacked, mixed hardwood.

$90 each if you get 3 or more.

i did A LOT of pruning in 2007, and i have a lot of my own wood to use this year, but i'm still getting a face cord, at least.

[snooper2]

19. free...get what I need from the trees on my lot

nt

[slackmaster]

22. It's free at my place this year

I am in the process of taking out four trees.

[deaniac21]

23. I delevoped a small cold fusion device which I installed last

year. It uses practically no electricty and I just have to keep it fed with water and monitor the deuterium gas buildup (make sure the safety valve is operational). I wish the rest of the world would catch on.

[williesgirl]

30. For DUers needing wood in the N.VA area, I have a ton of oak trees down

in my back yard. Have 6 acres, 3 of which are fenced in and developed. These are beyond the fence. You are welcome to contact me and make arrangements to come cut one up and take it home with you to split. You can drive down to the area I'm referring to. Just let me know. Free of course.