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a different firewood rip-off?


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If a stere is a cubic metre, how much wood do you get in a stere of logs? in the past 7 or so years I have used a number of suppliers, and when the wood is stacked it seems pretty consistently to be about 20% short by volume, e.g. today 3 steres fits into a space of 2.4 cu m. Am I being ripped off or is there something I'm missing here?? Like wood suppliers have special "metres" that are only 80 cm??
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So what your really buying is 0.7m3 of wood and 0.3m2 of air, pretty neat trick. I measure my wood, its cut to 50cm lengths and split. I have my wood storage marked in 1m3 measuremnts and twice I have asked for, and got, more wood because there was not enough. Seeing as oak is 65 Euros a pop down here I want wood not air. [:@]
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Steve .........

I don't doubt that you're being shortchanged: probably not by much, but shortchanged nonetheless.

When we first got here, we bought a few deliveries and at €60-ish / stere, it was a pricey business. I cut it to 25cm because it suits our grate and the stack just never seemed very big.

We now cut and pollard our own and neighbouring (with permission of course) Oak. Just paid €600 to have 4 trees cut and 16 pollarded: the deal was that they left it where it fell, but cut to 1-2m lengths. I do the rest. A lot of work, but I've got nearly 10 stere of tightly packed wood: probably 3 year's worth. That's equivalent to 15 stere delivered.

BTW, we don't just do this to economise on wood purchase: it's about managing the trees, which start to shade our outdoor living area and can get a bit 'splindly'.

I suspect that the terrain on your side of the Rhone is a bit less wooded than over here, so suppliers may be harder to come by. If you want / need to get a big delivery at a decent price, then you might want to talk to some of the boys over here and negotiate a big lorry load. They're always working hard at this time of the year and are probably open to a deal.  

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Clair, thank you VERY much for that. It was the definition of a stere for this purpose as being a cubic metre OF 1 METRE LONG LOGS that I was missing.

I can see now it's actually a version of the cornflakes packet issue - "contents may settle after packing" - smaller objects fit together more easily so take up less space when organised. (Also I guess it's a form of fractal maths for those who understand that stuff, just like the distance round an irregular object increases if you use smaller units of measurement!)

Anyway since my 3 steres is made up of 50cm logs and comes out at 2.4 cu. m. just as predicted I don't think I'm being ripped off after all. Incidentally price here (supplier in our village in the N Vaucluse) is currently €64/stere delivered but not stacked.

Thanks to everyone for the comments

Steve
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[quote user="andyh4"]

It is not just the air between the logs it is also the real loss due to the cutting.

Take 1 1m long log and cut it into 30cm lengths - now wonder where the missing 10cm went.

Answer, the sawdust on the ground

[/quote]

That must mean that each of your cuts is 5cm wide! Huge chainsaw.

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[quote user="woolybanana"]Why not try and save the sawdust by cutting over a container of some sort. Then using accumulated cardboard boxes which you fill with the stuff, burn it. I never waste a bit that way.[/quote]

Or - as someone mentioned cornflakes earlier - use empty branded cornflake packets as the collectors and then sell the sawdust as cornflakes.

Years ago my mother always used to preach to people who ate these things that research had shown that the cardboard packaging was more nutritionally useful than the actual cornflakes.  Studies on mice in the 1970s had proved it;    I was reminded about this a couple of months ago by a TV programme devoted to the subject.

Sorry,  I've gone seriously off beam on what is a very useful topic.

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