Stunning fireplace, and great art too!
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Queen Wasps hibernate in the crevices in logs, when you bring them inside they wake up after a few hours in the warmth and you then have this enormous and slightly dozey thing flying around the room which can be pretty scary, took me a while to work out where they were coming from. Best to give the logs a good whack before you bring them indoors
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I wish I could remember which bugs came out of my logs - I found the answer via Google at the time.
I sometimes find a few logs have coloured spray on them - anyone have any idea if there is some kind of colour coding for disease/parasites etc ? Maybe it’s random and spray indicates a tree to be felled.
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this… probably 
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Yes. Its why we had to take down our first chestnut. It was sad and unwanted but after having been adviced by 3 different guys we could only to decide to take it down.
The good news is that we’ll have a cheap and warm winter …
Yep… btdt.
I found a few posts which seemed to relate to the US where certain colours indicated ‘to fell’ or ‘to leave’, others marked property boundaries. It would seem logical to colour code such markings but probably no international standard, though perhaps loggers employ regional ones themselves.
Late reply I know, but a tonne of firewood should be at least 2m³. Most firewood has a specific gravity around 0.5-0.6 (ie a solid cubic metre weighs about 500-600kg) so when you factor in air space around it, that weight of firewood should occupy about 2m³.
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What length of time would it take to burn 2m³ of oak logs on a small 5kW stove?
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depends obviously how long its on for every day and the type of wood but with typical use I’d say you’d get maybe 3 or 4 months but thats just a guess
With regular daily use, we usually go thro 4 to 5 m3 each year - mainly Oct-March…so approx 0.7’ish m3 per month…thats’ on a 7kW stove, yours should last longer- estimate circa 4 months total… 
I was referring to my college notes on the subject (clearly wrong); whereas, Lars Mytting in his definitive book chopping wood is rather more precise. A Norwegian cord of wood (2x2x0.6m) equates to 2.4 loose mass cubit meters or 1.6 solid mass cubic meters. Now weight per cord varies from 213 kg to 450 kg depending on tree species, with the former being western cedar and the latter holly or hornbeam.
Cyril Hart in Practical Forestry, which for many is the handbook, talks about a cord being 2.4x1.2x1.2 m that should represent between 1 and 2 tonnes depending on species.
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The better quality oak load arrive today.
They look good, and dryer than yesterday’s.
The store is about 4m³ so far.
May go for one more load, there’s room up the end
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Looking nice.
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An uncle of mine once said: wood keeps you warm three times: first taking down the tree, then cutting it, and finally the fire.
He was right!
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The trailer load is tipped out (on the road) in front of my house.
It’s a quiet cul-de-sac so it’s not in anyones way but i then need to wheelbarrow it all the way around the house to the rear and tip it down steps adjacent to the log shed.
This is about 14 wheelbarrow trips for each load. Then i need to pick up a few at a time and stack them in the shed. Finally get the broom and sweep up the little bits of mess and deposit this on the garden.
It’s not hard work but does get one warm, and takes me about 3 hours - which includes a half hour coffee break with cheese and salad sandwich 
At least i don’t have to chop the tree down! 
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I managed to order over 5 cubic metres and then put my back out before it turned up……wife, daughter and boyfriend did the heavy lift……they remind me now and again😄
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There are many variables including any background heating from other sources, plus of course if the stove is lit most of the day/evening or only in the later part of the day.
I reckon I’d probably get through 6-8 logs per evening per stove but that’s birch or beech generally, oak probably lasts a bit longer. Must try to get some oak to try.
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For the last year or two (UK), if you bought logs in the summer months you could get a dumpy sack of seasoned wood for about £50-£75. Mostly £75 this year. If you leave it too late and buy wood September onwards, all the dry seasoned stuff will have gone around here and you’d have to buy kiln dried as they can only sell wood below a certain moisture content. Kiln dried round here at the moment is a min of £100 per dumpy sack.
I picked up 6 for the next year. The pic below was 5 bags worth.
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We used to get through c. 4-5 m3 per winter. 5KW stove. I’m thinking back to the stack we used to have… I’m thinking 2.4m (depth of the barn) x c. 1.2m (stacked on pallets to allow air underneath and they were UK pallets) and about 1.5m high… that’s about 4.3m3.
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