Over a year ago we moved to the Highlands for change in pace of life, unknown to me the amount of things I was about to learn. The house we bought has a stove in the livingroom but also a log burning biomass boiler (Perge) with a humungous 3,000 litre accumulator water tank. There’s also an oil fired boiler which is the primary source of heating, but this thread is about wood so...
With the price of oil being quite high this time last year I thought I’d make use of the wood boiler.
At first I started by cutting up fallen trees and branches in the forest and then buying wood from local suppliers at between £50 to £65 for a tonne shaped bag, depending on if it was soft or hard wood. The moisture content varied too, the best at 15% and the worst being 25%. I say tonne shaped bag because that’s exactly what it was, not a ton by weight of actual wood (which they make it sound like). More like 200kg and say 20% of that is water on average. It became expensive heating the house by wood but still not as much as oil at the time.
So I bought 20 tonne from the local forestry commission with the bright idea of cutting it and seasoning it myself
. I actually bought it in the beginning of the year but due to the virus I didn't get it until July. Saving over £2k in wood doing it this way but its serious grafting without a lifter of some sort, just roll 'em down (I wish)! Don't underestimate the weight of a log, once it's rolling it'll take you out and flatten you, and they bounce quick.
I’m not even half way through it yet.
Got to look out for these big buggers! Wood wasps, pretty harmless really. They love dead wood.
Lots of splitting done and still to do. I cut 500mm lengths as it's perfect for the boiler. Some half that size for the livingroom stove.
He's not much help but very well camouflaged...
I really like my Makita DUC405 battery chainsaw, 16” bar, performed well throughout all this but spare batteries are a must. Saves all the stinky fumes from a petrol chainsaw although the start switch can be a pita every time you pick it up. However I may have to borrow a bigger chainsaw for the larger logs.
Here’s one of the wood stores with some wood waiting to get split. Once I've done the 20 tonne I’ll probably be able to fill this ten times over so I’m making wood cords around the place to season the wood.
With the pandemic one good thing is that the price of oil has dropped quite a bit so it’s actually been cheaper to run off oil lately than burn wood. That's handy as I've been so busy with other things I've let the wood prep slide a little. I’d actually like to get rid of the biomass boiler (dirty, smokey and needs cleaning all the time) and move to a ground source heat pump but that’s another story.
So yeah, wood! A year ago I never thought I'd be doing this but life is like that
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Unless you don't have one 
