LOGS FOR THE FIRE...how much for a trailer load....?

After almost freezing to death last year when a friend failed to deliver the promised logs for my fire , i decided that this year i would try another source......

I remember some time back i paid about 500 zloty for a farm trailor full of wood , which my Polish friends said was a bit expensive , so can anyone give me a clue how much i should be paying for enough wood to last me from now untill march...?

I have one of those typical Polish ceramic stoves....

I pay between 100-220 per cubic metre, depending on how dry the wood is and who you know.


How long it lasts depends on if you burn it quickly, as in let a lot of oxygen at it.


I would say you'd need 5 cubic metres but it also depends on how big your house is, if it is insulated and if it is the only source of heat.


How big is a tailor?

That sounds about right - I paid 170 per cubic metre of dry, already cut
wood. I don't use it for heating, just for the fireplace, so I don't know
how much would be enough to heat the house.

Reminds me of this hahahaha

LMAO :)

Oh man that was bad, my lips fell off hahahahahahahaha

Insulated....are you kidding...Ha..! Noo its not insulated , if i go upstairs i can look directly at the underside of the roof slates , no insulation there whatsoever nor do i have double glazing , just the old draughty windows....

My only wood burning device in the house is one of those old Polish heaters , wardrobed sized , covered in ceramic tiles....if i stoke it up before i go to bed , its just about still alight the next morning....

The main part of the fire is in my living room , but the back of it protrudes into the bedroom , and gives a bit of heat in there also....

The fire does make some good heat , but i guess most of it goes through the roof and windows in winter , i am not usually warm unless i am stood with my back to it , but it does make the room just warm enough to prevent hypothermia....

The trailors i mean , are those normaly seen being dragged about by an Ursus tractor...

SeanBM - Amazing haha


Ahhhh sounds like our house in the East of Poland... terrible in the winter but amazing in the summer.... Last time we had 1 ton of coal which lasts us a while (We are rarely there) which wasnt that expensive, We have a friend who bought a van load of scrap wood for 150zl and he cut it all up... everything from old window frames to broken Ikea furniture! He said it will last him a most of winter.

I had a scarey moment with my Polish heater....First of all the dam thing nearly killed me with carbon monoxide fumes , then almost burnt the house down....

After waking up with severe headaches several mornings , and finding that smoke was leaking out of the cracks in the heater i decided to have a poke at it... just near the chimney going out of the heater i found an inspection plate , so removed this to have a look , inside i found the pipe which should have been several inches in diameter was almost totally blocked with carbon , this is caused apparently by incomplete burning , often due to using damp wood....

I chipped away at the carbon untill the hole was a more reasonable size , but could not reach all the way down the pipe , i hoped i had cleared enough to avoid waking up dead the next morning...

I lit the fire , and was much relieved to see it burning much better , with no sign of leaking smoke or fumes , i decided to risk going to sleep....

About 4 am i was woken up by a sound very similar to a mig 29 with its afterburners on , a loud roaring sound , coming from the heater.. I opened the door where you put the wood in to find the wood had almost burnt away , the roaring fire was in the chimney...!

I ran outside to look at the chimney pot , clouds of dense white smoke , sparks , looked like a bloody volcano...!

I went inside the house , ran upstairs to see what was happening to the part of the chimney that was in the upper room , getting a bit warm , but not enough to make a fire...

I thought about phoning the fire service , but decided to risk letting the fire burn itself out , as it was doing a pretty good job of burning all the carbon out of the chimney that i could not get to....

Unbelievably the roaring went on for almost two hours before it died down , and didn,t set fire to the house or the barn next door....

Since then the fire has worked very well... I am well aware that i came pretty close to not waking up due to the fumes coming out of the fire , one morning i was barely able to get out of bed and stagger to a window , had a bad head for days....

So , if you buy an old Polish farm , get the dam fire checked out before you use it...you could wake up dead....!

You should buy some proper sensors and install them somewhere under the ceiling. Whatever happens there'll always be an alarm starting off.

Indeed..a good idea to have smoke alarms , and a carbon monoxide alarm...

The price is as stated above and it depends on the kind of wood mostly.
The cheapest fire wood is birch - but it's energetic value is low.
Oak is better and more expensive.
The best are beech and hornbeam but the first is available only in western and southern Poland.

The cheapest solution is to buy the wood from a forester and cut it and chop by yourself - then you pay for "real' cubic meters of wood. If you buy chopped wood from a trailer the price can be surprisingly similar but half of the trailer is air...

Regards

£ukasz

Birch is right at the top for wood burining fires and stoves. Its heavy, dense and dries quickly - even in the winter. I have a lot of pine but its quite oily and burns rather quickly.

Wildrover if youre planning on lighting the fire in the morning and keeping it on all day everyday id say you need around 7 m3 just to be on the safe side. I recently paid less than 550 PLN for 6 m3. I had to collect, saw and chop it myself though.

last year we payed 200 zl for one such (but it was not the biggest one) but it was only spruce wood - it burns too quick as the wood of most conifer trees - if you not opt for buying coal (a tonne of coal will set you back some 600zl this year but this should not run out until the next winter) then you need some birch, oak, alder, poplar, beech or locust/accacia wood - the best fire wood is beech, accacia followed by oak (oh and you don't need a trailerfull of spruce/pine wood if you use it just to start the fire - but you still need it because you can't easily make coal or the wood of deciduous trees ignite)


you don't need this as long as your piec is a bit dehermetized (does not shut properly) and your windows let the air through which is the case I imagine (not through the panes of course ;)

still you need to close your piec only when it's already quite warm and leaving just red hot coals or some already well burning hardwood

much more caution is needed if your piec shuts pretty tightly then you should rather not leave too much unburnt stuff before shutting it - these fellows don't warm themselves quickly but they retain heat quite long


it was the soot burning out :) there must have been a lot soot in the chimney allowed by the fact that the outflow from the heater was so tight - this won't happen any time soon again - sometimes it is good to have a chimney man inspect your chimney

I've always thought of you as a strange, lost man - but now i'm starting to feel sorry for you.

Have you tried to apply for some kind of social assistance? Maybe you could scam the british system (more money than the polish)?

Gifts of money , cars , and nubile women can be sent to my home address.....

Think I will send round a chimney sweep, theyre usually dressed in black and some even wear top-hats. Some say its lucky to spot one, so if you do, get down to your local toto-lotek point fast and post 6 numbers.

You have to hold your button when you see them, then it is good luck.