What do you pay for wood?

[spinal]

Leaving aside those who get wood for free (which in London is a little hard... but I will try when I have more time) I've just ordred 3x bulk bags of wood, delivered for £80.

Does this sound reasonable? I'm a bit short on time as I'm trying to cook Saturday; but for my next order I may change if it's cheaper elsewhere.

M.

[faz]

Doesn't look too bad compared to some of the suppliers I have looked at. It's when you buy it for 7 quid a sack in Homebase that you need your bumps felt

[muddy4x4]

Sounds good value, but depends what you have brought. If its all good seasoned english hard woods you have had a result ! If its mainly softwoods and a bit of hardwood thrown in for good measure then its expensive. For cooking Pizza I use the 'Ole Sole Mio briquettes, they are fantastic for this, but at a price. If we just need a Hot wfo, i use selected hard wood logs, and anything that I don't like the look of goes into the Chiminea to keep people warm. I have an old range rover and a trailer, friends who have woods, so a couple of times a year I give my labour and skill with a chainsaw for a few loads of choice hard wood. Season it for a year or two and your away. I know people who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. If the trader who supplied wants your ongoing business, you should have a fair deal. Good seasoned hard wood is not cheap.

[spinal]

How do I tell the difference between hardwood and softwood?

I am considering the sole mio bricks - we'll see once this load of wood is done

M.

[h12rpo]

Hardwood is from deciduous trees and softwood aint so unless you know the species it can be difficult to tell........for example balsa wood is a hardwood !!!!

[conic]

Spinal, £80 delivered that price is good and should last you for a good while even if it is softwood. the priority in this case is to get the oven booted up and making pizzas for saturday.
This time of year when demand is high for firewood for logburners the price goes up anyway.

my advice is go for this deal and enjoy yourself then you can carry on searching at your leisure, i am confident you will find some for free one day.

Conic

[turkey]

as said the term hardwood is down to the tree and not really its hardness / density or strength.

In general try and use the lighter logs to start the fire, these should take easier and give quicker heat but die down faster, then move onto the heavier more dense logs to get good long burns and dont be tempted to play with the fire constantly, I say this as I believe its good advice, not something I have managed to do myself yet tho

as to what I pay, I brought (collection) bags of small hardwood logs for £7 each, these where probably 3 or so times the size of a supermarket bag and really stacked with wood, it worked out about half a bad for each firing of the oven. Will be getting proper logs next time to try but these where very convenient as easy to split to smaller sizes and once the fire was going they where perfect fuel lumps to just throw on as is.

[tonyb]

I'm not overly convinced about the hardwood preference over softwood in a wfo. Assuming some of the rhymes are broadly true there is as much difference within hardwoods/softwoods as there is between them. Being able to choose individual varieties would be useful but commercially they are mostly just sold mixed. What we are probably more interested in is the price v energy density and some of the burning characteristics, particularly spitting. Personally, I tend to use softwood to get the wfo to temp and then switch to hardwood whilst cooking pizza.

[Fat Bob]

Yup - we use chesnut which spits a bit and costs 35 Euros a square metre for warming and for cooking and a better smoke flavour oak at 45 Euros a square metre.

Chestnut works fine in the wood burners to heat the house.

[salilah]

Wish we had access to those, Fat Bob!
We paid £80 for a cubic metre of hardwood, well seasoned, and all selected to be small enough to go into the oven (8-9" long) - which should keep us going a while...
Need to have a word with our tree surgeon though, I think, for longer-term use!
S

[Fat Bob]

Salilah in France wood comes in split one metre lengths - we do have to cut it down further - though some wood burners are designed to swallow a half or hole log.

Strong Northerly wind tonight but we are having pizza in the Zero Insulation Low Fuel Pizza Oven.

Gotta go to bed early - stupidly agreed to sing the Messiah tomorrow... Am meant to wear a suit and a dickie bow - like I have that kinda stuff in the house - tough - they take me as I come - they said surely I have a dark jacket - so it looks like it's the Belstaff Trials Master - I will be fine if it rains...

[h12rpo]

Can picture you in a belstaff amongst a sea of dinner jackets ;D ;D

[pizzaofdreams]

Aaah the joys of buying wood. Because my batch of self gleaned hardwood is about ten years away from drying out in this years climate I have had to buy kiln dried wood for the Pizza oven. I know you will probably all go off on one about how expensive kiln dried wood is (and so it is) but unless you have really well seasoned wood, for a commercial oven it is necessary. I have had many deliveries this year and fallen for all the old metre cubed tricks out there. My observations are in order of importance to me:
1. A metre cubed on a pallet is about twice as much wood as metre cubed builders bag (loose fill). I bought a metre cube in both forms this year and when you buy it in a pallet stack it is really tightly stacked and you get loads. In a builders bag it is about 50% more air than a neatly stacked pallet. So I always buy by the pallet stack now. (it also makes a great wood store with a little modification)
2. Wood type - many suppliers will send mixed hardwoods, most of it not the stuff you want. I have only come across one supplier who sells several different single species pallets as well as a more general mixed pallet. For my Pizza oven I want the heat quickly , but I also want it to burn cleanly with no spitting. I don't use Oak, it burns too slowly to the point of not really flaming, I love fruit wood but is spits like a bitch so that is no good as clients don't like picking out the lumps!, Birch burns hot and quick so is alright to pep up the fire but a bit too quick to run all day. Ash is great as we all know, but the bark is a cm thick or more so lot's of wasted bulk. Beech is my current favourite. Virtually no bark, high calorific value, only problem is it leaves quite a lot of bulky cinders over the course of a day.

I bought a pallet from White Horse Energy and it was mixed. Fairly good in length terms but I spent about 4 hours choping it down to a suitable size for the oven. Most of the blocks were a third or half a log rather than the ideal 3-4" at the wide end of the wedge.
I bought a pallet from Timports and was able to choose the specific type of hardwood I wanted and they selected a pallet with more of the smaller pieces on specifically for Pizza ovens. I was very happy with the service and the advice to go for Beech over Ash because of the lack of bark. I will buy again from them. It is kiln dried so more expensive than well seasoned wood though.

[spinal]

I've started filling my oven with wood after a good bake... that way, the residual heat dries off the wood for the next fire (and it's already in place )