Buying bois de chauffage

[DorothyJ]

My trust in people took a hard knock yesterday. We ordered 4 cordes of wood from a business which we had previously only bought fence posts. Yesterday the wood was delivered. He had promised a mix of apple, oak and false acacia. The first load arrived but the apple had been replaced by chestnut. My husband told the chap he was not happy with this as not only does chestnut spit (not really a problem) but also it is usually cheaper than the other three. Not really any satisfaction there as he said it burnt just as well as the apple. Second load arrived and we stacked it all in the barn where we usually keep it. My husband was not happy with the look of it. So out came the measuring tape and we find we are 1 corde short. We asked our French friend to come and see what he thought and he confirmed the amount was not 4 cordes. On ringing the man he accused my husband of lying and hiding some of the load but he couldn't come and see for himself as he was going to the Vendee for 3 weeks. Our friend suggested we get our neighbour to verify the measurements which we did and he also said we were short of a corde. My husband will not let this go and will follow it up in 3 weeks time but we don't expect to get anywhere. We shall only ever be caught once by this man and believe he is the loser as we would have continued to buy wood from him each year and also fence posts for around 2 hectares of fields. I know its probably naive but I always believe people will be honest and this experience has really saddened me. Do you think he thought 'the stupid english, they dont know anything about wood?'

[The Riff-Raff Element]

Sellers of wood do have certain notoriety when it

comes to quality & quantity delivered against what was promised. I got

caught too, some years back. Just the once.

That said, they do occasionally get unfairly slighted.

An acquaintance of mine (a bit of a twit IMO) got most shirty when he ordered

10 stere of 50cm logs, stacked them, measured the stack and found he’d

got a little over 8 cubic meters.

It took three of us to convince him that a stere of

logs 1m long should indeed occupy 1 cubic metre, but shorter logs stack more

tightly and hence a stere of 50cm logs occupies 0.8 cubic meters. That’s

the NF definition, not something we made up on the spot. He only conceded once we had taken a small stack of the logs, measured it, then cut them in half and restacked them in a smaller space to demonstrate. And even then he was still muttering under his breath.

[Logan]

Riff Raff's right. Only buy wood from a trusted source then use him every year. French farmers are particularly notorious for selling you short and wood that is either useless or poor quality. You should ask around locally. Your neighbours will be only to happy to advise who is trustworthy and who is not. Also never pay up until you have measured the amount with him present.

[5-element]

[quote user="DorothyJ"] I know its probably naive but I always believe people will be honest and this experience has really saddened me. Do you think he thought 'the stupid english, they dont know anything about wood?'[/quote]

Dorothy, please don't feel bad and don't feel singled out for this. We have had very much the same experience, several times over!

 Before we found our present firewood supplier, we were really ripped off by 3 others. Wrong sort of wood, wrong size, green wood when specifically asked for seasoned, and short in quantity - you name it, if there was something they wanted to get rid off, they would try to sell it to us....

One of those even lives just a few houses down from us, so you would have thought that he would try a little harder, as he would keep us as customers, but no! He still tried it on, so much so that my husband refused a delivery once as it was really NOT what we had ordered. After that, the man SULKED and refused to say bonjour, and so did his wife and the rest of his family. He was feeling as if HE had been ripped off!

I think it is just because we were newly arrived, not locals, i.e. we had not been to school with anyone they knew and were not family.

In our case, with me being French, it was not as if they could think "Stupid English..." And as for knowing about wood, we had done so much research that we know more than many locals!

I hope you find someone you can trust. One of the keys is to do really a lot of research, and to ask exactly for what you want, and to say that you just do not want anything else. And don't be afraid of complaining and standing your ground. Sometimes, it is the only thing that works.

I think it is just very very bad business sense, and the stupidity is theirs. It is so short-sighted, very bad for public relations, but some people are just not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and just want to make a quick buck even if they are cutting the grass from under their own feet! 

[Busy Bee]

And on the other hand, we asked at our local tabac in April - when we had all the rain and had run out of wood - and got an excellent recommendation.  The man had none in stock and it was too wet for him to collect any more for the next week or so, he then rang back half an hour later and brought us wood from his dad's stock pile that evening.

Fantastic wood, 3 logs last all night, he helped stack it in the garage and only charged us 80 euro for a 'moule' apparently 2.2 stere! 

So some of them are really nice, there's good and bad everywhere, not just with wood suppliers;[:D]

[Dave&Olive]

[Phil & Pat]

That's a very interesting point about the volume occupied by the cut logs.  If the same logs stay the same diameter, and they are stacked end-to-end like they were before being cut (as in the diagrams) how on earth can they pack more tightly?

Does the sawdust derived from the first cut really amount to 0.2 m3, and 0.1m3 for the second (same sized) cut?  No, surely not.  Two cuts would take no more than 2% of the length of a 100cm log, and re-stacking the pieces would need a small gap between the ends.

I can understand how shrinkage would make a stere of green logs occupy perhaps 0.7 or 0.8m3 when dry, because the diameter of the log shrinks.  So can anyone explain how this works please?

[Clair]

http://bucher45210.free.fr/articles.php?lng=fr&pg=130

google translation

[Patf]

Dave &Olive, Clair: quite a revelation about shorter lengths occupying less space.

We have had 2 loads of 50cm logs, which seemed to take up less space than we expected, from 2 different suppliers. So now we know, if the steres are measured in 1metre pieces.

[The Riff-Raff Element]

"That's a very interesting point about the volume occupied by the cut

logs.  If the same logs stay the same diameter, and they are stacked

end-to-end like they were before being cut (as in the diagrams) how on

earth can they pack more tightly?

Does the sawdust derived from

the first cut really amount to 0.2 m3, and 0.1m3 for the second (same

sized) cut?  No, surely not.  Two cuts would take no more than 2% of

the length of a 100cm log, and re-stacking the pieces would need a

small gap between the ends.

I can understand how shrinkage would

make a stere of green logs occupy perhaps 0.7 or 0.8m3 when dry,

because the diameter of the log shrinks.  So can anyone explain how

this works please?"

Nothing to do with the sawdust, nor with logs being dried in between.

Simply, the smaller the pieces that you have to work with, the easier it is to pack without gaps.So the same weight of wood packs into a smaller space when cut.

If you want an analogy, consider what volume a pile of rocks would occupy with all the gaps in between compared to the same rocks smashed into gravel.

[DorothyJ]

Thank you for all the information and comforting words. We have re-measured with the formula of the least we could expect and we are still over a stere short. As this is a "Scea" and not just someone selling a bit here and there I expected better but will now go back to our former supplier.