Threaplands Firewood guide
Why does what I burn matter?
Using your stove properly is part of our green future. In this guide we will unpack some common questions around choices of what to burn to heat your home efficiently and cleanly.
We offer all our firewood products to buy in store or online with low-cost home delivery or collection. We are confident our bulk firewood offers excellent value. If you can find the same product locally for less, we will match the price and offer a free bag of kindling with your delivery.
Is my fire the right choice for me?
Ultimately, the best way to ensure value when heating your home with wood is to have a modern efficient stove installed. Modern Ecodesign stoves can be up to 20% more efficient than older models and 70% more efficient when compared with an open fire. Want to save money on your fuel bill? Visit E.L.S stoves on our mezzanine and have a chat about their range of Ecodesign stoves.
How to contact E.L.S
01343 200 413
elsstoves@hotmail.com
Showroom open at Threaplands
Let’s start with lighting. Different manufacturers have varying lighting techniques to aid ease of use and reduce smoke emissions. Always refer to the manufacturer’s instructions when using your stove.
With the use of a firelighter and a small amount of kindling, a small amount of heat will be produced to warm the flue. Firelighters can be an easier method as they burn at a steady rate, unlike newspaper which can differ dependent on its state when burned.
We stock 2 types of firelighters, the traditional kerosense soaked resin blocks and 100% natural wood straw firelighters. Traditional firelighters are cheap, produce no
smoke and are easy to use but are highly processed containing harmful chemicals. Wood straw firelighters are more expensive but are 100% natural, easy to light and have a long burn time. Either firelighter coupled with a small amount of kindling (3-4 sticks) will produce a bed for adding your firewood.
Firewood “seasoning”
All firewood should be properly dried and stored under cover. Before burning firewood it will require to be “seasoned”- left to dry naturally under cover but with plenty airflow around the logs for 12-18 months until the moisture content is below 20% or Kiln dried, where logs are force dried in what are effectively large ovens for 4-6 days at up to 70 degrees c which will generally have a moisture content below 15%.
We recommend the use of a moisture meter to check the suitability of your firewood for burning. We sell only pre seasoned softwood & hardwood logs plus our range of kiln dried logs and heat logs to ensure clean hassle-free burning.
Caged logs
Locally sourced “seasoned” firewood is most suited to open fires and older less efficient stoves. Our cages hold approximately 1.1m3 of logs LOOSELY packed. These logs are felled across Moray & Aberdeenshire, left to dry, split and tipped into the cages. We offer 2 types- Softwood & Hardwood. Our logs are cut to approximately 25cm in length and can be up to 15cm in width. Cages may contain smaller pieces and pieces of bark from the splitting process.
Softwood logs are considerably cheaper but burn much faster. Burning softwood logs will require increased storage space or more frequent deliveries. If you want a quick fire to fill your room with heat for a short time then softwood could be the right choice.
Softwood is also excellent for starting fires but for sustained burning, hardwood will require less attention. Softwood is more likely to “spark”, where pieces of the log explode in a dramatic fashion due to steam produced from trapped moisture & sap projecting burning pieces of wood out of your fire. This makes softwood less suitable for open fires.
Hardwood logs are more difficult to start a fire and take a longer time to build heat in your room but will burn for considerably longer due to their density making them the perfect choice if you are using your stove as a primary source of heating in your home.
Our locally sourced logs are seasoned & stored outside and can have surface moisture from being exposed to the weather. We recommend buying our locally sourced caged logs 3-4 months in advance of burning and storing them in a well-ventilated log store.
Kiln dried logs
Responsibly sourced timber, force dried to below 15% moisture and ready to burn immediately, particularly suited to modern efficient stoves. Unlike our locally sourced logs, our kiln dried logs are all either beech or birch hardwood logs. We sell smaller packs for the occasional fire, value nets for easy handling and where storage may be a problem, plus crates offering excellent value where your stove is your primary heating source.
All kiln dried logs are cut to 25cm long and tightly packed compared with our loose filled cages containing virtually no “waste” bark or smaller pieces. Please be careful, many retailers of crates of kiln dried logs include the pallet in their volume description. Our overall beech crate dimension is 1m3 but the crates actually contain around 0.8-0.9m3 of tightly packed logs. This is the equivalent to roughly 1.3m3 loose. Our birch crates are 1.2m3 overall size and contain exactly 1m3 of tightly packed logs which is equivalent to roughly 1.5m3 loose.
Much like softwood vs hardwood, we offer Birch and Beech kiln dried logs which both have their advantages. Our Beech kiln dried crates of logs offer our best value but are also the most expensive. They are the best value log due to their high calorific value. Beech is extremely dense weighing nearly 100kg more per m3 of logs vs birch at a moisture content of 18%.
Our birch logs are cheaper than beech but don’t offer the same extended burn time as beech. Birch logs will burn hotter than beech and like softwood are easier to start a fire with. Our birch logs, although the same length as our other logs at 250mm, are generally not as large as our other logs which make them particularly suited to smaller stoves.
Heat logs
We stock Shimada heat logs which are a processed, man-made log. Although not in natural form, our heat logs are 100% wood. No chemicals are added during the manufacturing process of highly compressing waste material making these logs extremely sustainable. Heat logs burn extremely hot, are smokeless and suitable for all fires with a long-lasting burn but compared with logs come at a high cost making them most suited to occasional fires.
General advice
Put simply, you will get the same the same energy by burning 100KG of beech as you would from 100KG of softwood pine logs when dried to the same moisture content but you will need a much larger volume of softwood logs compared with that of beech.
Due to the potential variable moisture content in “seasoned” logs, stove installers and chimney sweeps will recommend using only kiln dried logs in modern stoves with a moisture content of 14-20% maximum. Using waste materials such as pallets and fence posts not only contain foreign objects, which can invalidate your stove warranty, but also contain chemicals which are both harmful to the environment and create residue build up on glass and flues.
Burning wet wood of over 20% moisture will soot glass, leave tar like deposits on flue pipes and stove components, and be extremely inefficient as a fuel source polluting the environment.
What would my personal preference be?
I would light my fire using natural wood straw firelighters and kindling. I would initially burn softwood logs to build heat and then move to using kiln dried beech logs.
How to buy
Our entire firewood range is available online at www.threaplands.co.uk where you can purchase firewood and much more for collection or home delivery from as little as £5.
