Firewood

Firewood is sorted into hardwood and softwood before splitting and kept separate, and then depending on how the wood has come in it is processed by various different machinery.

This enables us to cut the wood to any size to suit any customer’s requests.

Firewood is supplied as loose loads by the cubic meter (M³) or can be supplied in net sacks.

When the timber comes in to us it goes through a sorting process First, species is defined and separated (hard or softwood)

Then the appearance is sorted and graded (branchwood, rings or long trunks)

And then during the splitting process any badly rotten or contaminated wood is removed.

Any really nice lengths of timber brought in are put to one side for milling

We are able to cut any length of firewood from 25cm up to 1.20 meters, and we pride ourselves on our ability to be flexible to our customers needs.

Wood contains up to 50% moisture when first felled. Because of this we season (dry) the wood through natural drying, which creates efficient burning and high heat output. We try to reduce the moisture to below 25%.

Hardwood

Hardwood is always thought of as being the best firewood, but what is ment by the BEST???

ALL woods burn differently and give off different levels of heat, which means the burn for different time periods.

Softwood

This is the most mis-understood of all firewoods, and for some reason it has gained quite a bad reputation, but only in Britain for some reason.

These are quotes that are most commonly said about softwood.

· Softwood will spit and pop. ( some do,) but this is GREAT, why??  You get the steriotypical crackling fire with softwood, really giving you the cosy feeling on a cold winters day and especially at Christmas time.

· Softwood will soot and tar up the chimney. (not true, wet wood does this)  As long as your firewood is dried correctly, then no matter the species, it is good to burn.  Actually, as softwood burns at a much higher temperature than hardwood, the heat generated helps to keep your chimney/flue clean. It also gets heat from the stove into your room much quicker than hardwood too.

· Softwood will burn very quickly. (some softwoods are very dense and will burn for a long time)  Very quickly?? Not always, yes there is a difference, but there is also a difference in the temperature too, but if it is burnt in a stove then you can control the burn speed by regulating the air intake. Take a look at the graph in this link soft/hardwood comparrison graph

· Softwood contains resin which damages flues!!  yes some contain more resin than others, but it causes no damage. Anyone who has had a bonfire and thrown fresh pine on to it will have noticed that the bark and the resin are the most flamable and burn very quickly, but the wet logs smoulder.  This is a defence for the tree when forest fires break out so they can survive. So when you put a resinous log in your fire, the resin is the first to ignite, Bonus, its a duel fuel!!!

Softwood is going to be the future of sustainable firewood, it is easier to plant, grow, harvest, transport, process and dry. It grows quicker than Hardwood and can grow on more poorer and un-utilised soils than most of our hardwoods.

Hardwood is getting more and more difficult to get hold of as a huge amount of it has to be manually harvested by hand, where as softwood can all be done by machine, even the planting! As harwood becomes more and more in demand, and less and less available, then the price is going to increase, as it has done year on year.

Sustainability

This makes me laugh when this buzz word is mentioned, as everyone goes on about wood as a sustainable fuel, but no one want the softwood because it has an undeservred bad reputation.  A simple search on the internet can pull up othe countries favorite woods, Austria in particular favors Pine, as does Sweden, especially for thier Swedish logs or candles.

My favorite softwoods are as follows

Pine, the hottest burner

Larch, light, little resin and burns hot

Maccrocarpa, denser, less resin and burns hot

Yew, dense, hardly any resin, cosy heat.  (rare)

Cedar, light, less resin when dry, good heat smells great

Dont forget, they all smell Great!!!