Scrounging Firewood (and other stuff)

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Right now at 8AM in Palm Desert CA it is only 91. Expected high Thursday and Friday around 116. Will be back at 6,000 latter today making sure the fan is running 24 7 because the expected high is 91 for Thursday and Friday.

I do not like to scrounge wood. I prefer to deal with the USFS or have a good contract for clearing land. I started a Oak clearing on a small ranch about a year ago and am about 75% done with several cords cut up ready to go. What I need is some Pine now. A customer called the other day and asked if I had checked out his downed trees below his property. I told him I looked over the deck and saw nothing. He said look farther. Several large trees were brought down by the utility company and left. About 40 cords are about 200 feet below the house on a 35 to 40% grade. The majority of the wood is 200 feet from a road below the house. So I have to figure how to move 200,000 lbs of wood to a culvert area which is where the creek bed meets the road. My plan is to build a couple back stops with some rope and tires to stop the rounds from rolling into the creek bed which is dry. With the smaller logs build a walkway along side the creek bed to where the creek bed meets the road. My process would be cut the rounds and let them roll onto the backstops and then hand split the rounds into quarters or more. With my wheel barrow move the quartered rounds to the back of my pickup on the the constructed walkway. The creek bed is only about 20% to where it meets the road so not too steep to walk. Wondering is there a better way or is my wheelbarrow going to get a work out. I estimate at least $15,000 of wood is just sitting here. Pics coming soon. Thanks
 
View attachment 660790 I got 2 cord's stacked yesterday from my big oak. It was only 96 degrees.Still have about 2 cord's left to do, this tree just keeps on giving.

Wow, nice stack al-k.

It's funny around here most burners are oak snobs. We mainly have red, pin, and bur oak. People pay crazy for it and they literally don't want anything but. It does last a long time but it takes usually close to two years to dry close to 15%. You can pretty much get as much elm, ash, and maple as you want.

People are funny like that. Red gum (e.camaldulensis) is the wood that most people buy here, but it doesn't grow here, closest is prolly 40km away. It's about 10% denser than peppermint. Maybe since it doesn't grow in the back yard, people assume it must be much better than what we have locally. There's a couple here that have some land and quite a few peppermints which fall over now and then. He'll cut it up and give it away to anyone who wants it, but with go and buy red gum instead. So rather than burn free wood that is in his back yard, he gives it up for nothing and pay $450 for a cord of red gum. Gotta scratch your head sometimes.
 
similar here in that the new wood stove owning middle class are brainwashed by the stove manufacturers into thinking only kiln dried hardwood is safe to burn. with the popularity of stoves rocketing (amongst the trendy middle class) hardwood prices are rocketing (as I said the other day, £135/m3 !!!). wood sellers are pushing softwood, and tbf there are some pretty good ones (spruce?) Leylandii, for example is super common as a garden hedge theat then gets far far too big and hoicked out ...good for me as its moderately dense for a softwood. I'll take it. I'l take sycamore too, not much denser than leylandii but splits so easy. One of my favorite 'secrets' is holly, its as dense as Oak ffs! its great if someone else has dealt with the spikey leaves :D. Us experienced burners know our favorites, but know all wood burns
 
Well , calling for 30C here today so Jerry and I started early , we were on a mission , at 7:00 am we were on the road and scrounged up a load of sugar and red maple

hJwla7V.jpg


We then made a beeline to the boat launch and transferred the scrounge over so we could get it to his camp .

mOSIdmJ.jpg


And then steamed it up the lake

qoGiFtT.jpg


Got it offloaded and bucked it up

Rqg3Ix5.jpg


96TjMx4.jpg


It was a great day :)
 
Not a lot of oak around me but people normally want a huge premium for it. Then you get some joker selling it for $145 a cord but that is usually someone trying to pass a face cord off as a cord or it’s green wood. I did find one joker selling “golden oak” but when I emailed him for more info he wouldn’t answer ;).

Oak wilt has hit central and southern MN hard which has driven the price down in those areas.
 
Nup. Paddy.

I reckon that one went straight through to the keeper, Kiwi.

Well , calling for 30C here today so Jerry and I started early , we were on a mission , at 7:00 am we were on the road and scrounged up a load of sugar and red maple

hJwla7V.jpg


We then made a beeline to the boat launch and transferred the scrounge over so we could get it to his camp .

mOSIdmJ.jpg


And then steamed it up the lake

qoGiFtT.jpg


Got it offloaded and bucked it up

Rqg3Ix5.jpg


96TjMx4.jpg


It was a great day :)

Where's the fish?
 
Well , calling for 30C here today so Jerry and I started early , we were on a mission , at 7:00 am we were on the road and scrounged up a load of sugar and red maple

hJwla7V.jpg


We then made a beeline to the boat launch and transferred the scrounge over so we could get it to his camp .

mOSIdmJ.jpg


And then steamed it up the lake

qoGiFtT.jpg


Got it offloaded and bucked it up

Rqg3Ix5.jpg


96TjMx4.jpg


It was a great day :)
Did you scrape the paint out of the sighting line on the clutch cover?
 
Kind of like standing in the shower on full hot, with the water heater set on 120.
My wife would do that every time she got a shower. 20180418_150035.jpg Solar water heater will feed 120+* water to the heater in the basement on days like today. One good use for empty beer kegs.
 

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