Heat logs vs kiln dried logs?

[Adsibob]

We have some leyland Cyprus  logs that are seasoning in are garden and will hopefully be ready some time next year. I know they aren’t great firewood, but they came with the land. In the meantime, I’m looking to buy some wood for our stove to get through the winter. Was going to get kiln dried, but then came across these, which are made from compressed saw dust and nothing else. Wondered what the pros and cons were vs kiln dried logs:

 

https://www.homefire.co.uk/homefire-heat-logs-shimada.html?utm_campaign=543767_Homefire%3A Black Friday Early Access 181122&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Homefire (CPL Distribution)&dm_i=6XY1,BNKN,XUXDO,1EVDN,1

 

Thoughts?

[SteamyTea]

Just now, Adsibob said:

Thoughts?

Still going to increase CO₂ levels unnecessarily, pollute the local environment and need extra work.

 

[Radian]

14 minutes ago, Adsibob said:

I know they aren’t great firewood

Better get your ear defenders on. They go off like firecrackers.

[ProDave]

£8.45 for 12 logs, and they don't even say the weight.  Anyone care to guess how many kWh of heat you get for your £8.45?

[JohnMo]

That looks an expensive night or possibly two nights of heat, didn't realise that stuff was so expensive.

[Nick Thomas]

We tried these, kiln-dried logs, and peat, at our house up in Shetland (the wood stove was our only source of heat for several years). The heat logs did work out to be more heat for less money than the kiln-dried logs, but they were quite messy to store and handle. They break apart into small disks with a lot of dust if treated with any kind of force. They also suck up humidity and go banana-shaped, before again breaking up into those small disks, if you leave them outside of their plastic coating for more than a few days.

 

We were paying ~36p/kg for the heat logs, and maybe double that for the kiln-dried logs, but we were buying by the tonne.

 

The peat was a local thing, with hindsight I wouldn't have used it.

Edited November 18, 2022 by Nick Thomas
clarif heat source

[Adsibob]

Thanks @Nick Thomas, you win the prize for being the only one to have actually answered my question. So if you were to buy again, would you go for kiln dried?

 

@SteamyTea, fear not. This is not our main heating source. It’s just for occasional use, twice a week at most and it’s not currently cold enough to justify it.

[Nick Thomas]

I prefer the kiln-dried logs, but I'd probably be buying the heat logs. The savings were pretty hard to argue with ^^.

 

If it's occasional burning for pleasure, rather than your sole source of heating, the kiln-dried are definitely the way to go - they burn a lot prettier.

 

 

[nod]

We’ve a wood burner in our first build 

2 more going in our next 

There not that efficient 

But nice to sit round at Christmas 

 

I called to pick up a flu liner 

and was told from fitting a dozen per year 

They can’t keep up with demand 

Lots of hard up folk will be burning pallets this year 

 

Edited November 19, 2022 by nod

[Adsibob]

So recommendations on where to buy kiln dried logs? An online supplier that delivers to London would be best.

[nod]

6 hours ago, Adsibob said:

So recommendations on where to buy kiln dried logs? An online supplier that delivers to London would be best.

You would be better looking on local FB As delivery is big part of the cost 

Seasoned logs are fine 

 

[Nick Thomas]

We always bought from firewoodcentre.co.uk - they always forgot to charge extra for delivery - but they seem to have put their prices up and run out of stock for now.

[jayc89]

8 hours ago, nod said:

We’ve a wood burner in our first build 

2 more going in our next 

There not that efficient 

But nice to sit round at Christmas 

 

I called to pick up a flu liner 

and was told from fitting a dozen per year 

They can’t keep up with demand 

Lots of hard up folk will be burning pallets this year 

 

 

Sounds familiar. We have random trees around our paddock boundary, I couldn't even name them all. We borrowed a local farmer's telehandler and cage a couple of months ago and really went to town on cutting them back - added bonus that it will allow more light into our garden next year. Some is already chopped up and stored away, some still need chopping, but what we've used so far as been pretty rubbish, quite light, burns quick and gives off little heat. 

 

We've even been making our own firelighters; dryer lint, egg cartons, wax cheese wrappers etc. and I'm still averaging £7/day in gas right now!

[jayc89]

SWMBO picked up some Birch Briquettes from Lidl the other week. They weighed 2kg each and burned for probably 2 hours. They didn't seem too bad. I think she said they were £5 something a pack so worked out at around £1 each. 

[SteamyTea]

A letter in this week's comic.

 

 

Thanks for shining light on solar's clear advantage (1)

Published 16 November 2022

 

From Fred White, Nottingham, UK

 

Thank goodness Michael Le Page highlights the rarely stated gap in energy yield between crops grown to produce biofuels and solar photovoltaic panels, of 50 to 110 fold. Those figures need proclaiming in headlines(5 November, p 27).

 

What possesses Western governments to press on with subsidies for biofuel crops so large that farmers literally can’t afford to ignore them is beyond comprehension. Such a huge difference in yield makes biofuels (as opposed to energy from bio waste) technically, morally and economically indefensible.

[Thedreamer]

I have burned the occasional homefire heat log, they last a long time. If it was exceptionally cold like -5, I might put one in at the end of the night. Often a cold night, is followed in the morning by strong facing solar gains.  

 

Ideally only burn what you can grow on your land or order a lorry of unseasoned logs to be stored next to a shed. If you cannot do either of these then a wood stove is [probably in an inappropriate setting.

 

I heated the entire house last night with four/five bits of spruce and an handful of alder branches. 

 

 

 

Edited November 19, 2022 by Thedreamer

[Kelvin]

Like a few others on here I am anti log burners and we aren’t fitting one in our build. That took some ‘negotiating’ with my wife however. Hypocritically though we do have one in the rental and have been using it but are just burning trees that have fallen in the large garden that we seasoned plus the gorse logs I pulled out of our plot last year
 

I have principles and if you don’t like them I have others. 😂 It has underlined how much I don’t like the things though. 

Edited November 19, 2022 by Kelvin

[saveasteading]

Cypress logs also send a lot of resin up the flue. I  have some in the garden and they need pruning.

So I mix them with the purchased hardwood and fruit tree prunings and that seems to work better.

If the cuttings were not being used for fuel, where would they go more sustainably? Not bonfire obviously.

 

Compressed sawdust shouldn't cost a lot, as the value of sawdust is barely above nil. But it does, perhaps as the market is small...and there is a premium for having no mess or animal life.

[SteamyTea]

For the same price as a wood burner, you can get 4 kW_p of PV (ish).

If you exported all your generation at 5p/kWh, that would be £200/year.

At today's electricity prices that would buy you about 500 kWh of power.

Or to put it another way, 250 hours of running a look alike, 2 kW output stove.

[Adsibob]

To be clear: my wood burner is a guilty pleasure. I find snuggling up in front of it relaxing, and it really is something we use infrequently. We will burn locally felled wood where possible, but at the moment all our stocks are wet. Hence splashing out on a few bags of dry logs. 
 

not sure to what extent this is just marketing, but our stove complied with the most stringent EU regs, I think it’s called EcoDesign.

[Ferdinand]

16 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

Still going to increase CO₂ levels unnecessarily, pollute the local environment and need extra work.

 

 

You need to plant twice as much Lleylandii as came out 😛.

[SteamyTea]

17 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

 

You need to plant twice as much Lleylandii as came out 😛.

It is not as simple as that.