Huge hardwood score off Craigslist.

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Handsonautotech

Burning Hunk
Jun 6, 2016
208
Lyons, CO
20160930_224413.jpg I got lucky today and landed a ton of mixed hardwood including some apple wood. She claims to accumulate it weekly. I never imagined i would be going into the winter with this much dry hardwood. A lot of it is willow she said. Some of the chunks on the trailer were insane lifting myself. I flipped most of them up onto the trailer nice and slow. There are about two more loads like this waiting there for me.
 
Apple is good as coal. Great score!
 
+1 on the great score.
 
The willow is heavy because it's sopping wet. Gotta get everything split and stacked to start drying
 
The wood gods treated you nicely, now get to splitting, test the pieces as you split if you think they have to much moisture in them, make separate piles. Good score there :)
 
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I never imagined i would be going into the winter with this much dry hardwood
Nice score!
Unless there is some stuff there that was cut standing/dead, it won't really be that dry, wood doesn't dry well at all "in the round".
Like has been said, get 'er split and stacked ASAP
 
I'm curious how the Willow behaves... I understand that it's relatively awful firewood (you'll certainly need to season that moisture out of it at least), but don't know what "awful" means. Cool burn? Lots of smoke? High ash ratio? All of these? I've never burned it. Poplar, for example, seems to take an unusual amount of time to season, is very fibrous which makes it a pain to split, leaves a lot of ash, and it reeks.
 
Nice score!
Unless there is some stuff there that was cut standing/dead, it won't really be that dry, wood doesn't dry well at all "in the round".
Like has been said, get 'er split and stacked ASAP

Most of it looks like it was standing dead. It has h7ge cracks in a lot of it and looks very dried out. You bet I will be testing it. I have to DJ ton8ght but I can not wait for tomorrow to start digging into it. I might buy another saw chain so I dont have to waste time filing.
 
Poplar is just fine. It doesn't take long to season at all. I find just the opposite.

Apple is great. I harvested a dead standing yesterday and burned it today. It just burns and burns.
 
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The Apple is a great wood, gives off a slight Apple fragrance when burned. At least in the old stoves, the new ones might be to tight. Regardless it burns hot, the willow let season and burn on the cool days saving your good stuff for the cold days.
 
The Apple is a great wood, gives off a slight Apple fragrance when burned. At least in the old stoves, the new ones might be to tight. Regardless it burns hot, the willow let season and burn on the cool days saving your good stuff for the cold days.

I will probably save the apple for the smoker.

About to tear into the pile. Let me know if you can ID any of this by the pics. There are some of the cedar rounds sneaking in to the picture behind the pile.




20161002_125306.jpg 20161002_125340.jpg 20161002_125521.jpg 20161002_125535.jpg
 
20160911_163944.jpg
The view from above and behind our house. Overlooking longmont, denver, loveland and more.


Looks like a great score for Colorado. I'm hoping to move to the area in a couple of years. How is lyons for housing?

Lyons proper is expensive mostly, lots of big homes set in hills. There are still some older small homes in town but they go fast.

While our address is Lyons we live in the mountains and we love it. It is getting really hard to get anything up here under 250k now. You will see them pop up but they disappear fast. If you have 350k to spend you can pick where you want to live. If your moving on a budget look into loveland.

Everyone and their brother has been moving here for years, they are building houses as fast as they can. It might be real hard to find a job and housing if you wait too long.

Back on track, I got through a small portion of the pile. I alsonpicked up some more earlier today. There is still a ton left for me to pick up, easily 4 more truck and trailer runs.

About 30% of what I split was below 20% moisture content. The rest I started a new pile for. I am going to run out of flat areas to store wood real fast. I may have to stack some about 200 feet down the drive in a flat area.
 
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I'm seeing lots of black locust in the pile. Pretty easy to spot with the deeply-ridged corrugated bark. Some unrecognizable from bark.

Gorgeous area up near the Front Range. Spectacular, in fact.

In some cases of such windfall, some would say "You suck!". Not me. I could deal with such suckage, though.
 
View attachment 184964
The view from above and behind our house. Overlooking longmont, denver, loveland and more.




Lyons proper is expensive mostly, lots of big homes set in hills. There are still some older small homes in town but they go fast.

While our address is Lyons we live in the mountains and we love it. It is getting really hard to get anything up here under 250k now. You will see them pop up but they disappear fast. If you have 350k to spend you can pick where you want to live. If your moving on a budget look into loveland.

Everyone and their brother has been moving here for years, they are building houses as fast as they can. It might be real hard to find a job and housing if you wait too long.

Back on track, I got through a small portion of the pile. I alsonpicked up some more earlier today. There is still a ton left for me to pick up, easily 4 more truck and trailer runs.

About 30% of what I split was below 20% moisture content. The rest I started a new pile for. I am going to run out of flat areas to store wood real fast. I may have to stack some about 200 feet down the drive in a flat area.
Been looking in loveland and maybe longmont. Longmont doesn't look at nice as loveland. Is that an accurate statement?
 
Been looking in loveland and maybe longmont. Longmont doesn't look at nice as loveland. Is that an accurate statement?

There are forums almost dedicated to questions about moving to Colorado. I was on the firefighters forum the other day and the colorado section was over run with people asking about moving here and getting a spot as a paid firefighter. I am sure you would get better information from another forum. I can tell you what the trees are like or that we do have EAB restrictions in longmont.

To answer your question,how 'nice' does one suburb look compared to another? I guess that depends on what criteria you use to judge the areas niceness. Longmont has million dollar homes and low income housing all crammed into what a city guy would consider a small area. There are two golf courses that I know of and some decent schools.

I can not speak to what loveland is like. I just know it was one of the nicer areas we found that also had 1 or 2 real cheap houses. It also has Carter lake and borders real close to the mountains like Lyons in some areas. It is between two larger city hubs, Longmont and Ft Collins. It is close to CSU.

There were some areas in both Loveland and Longmont that I would not let my daughters walk through alone.

Neither area apeals to me which is why we live at 7600 feet. Sorry I can not be of more help. If you want to pm me more questions about what it is like I could try to answer them. I would also suggest trulia or zillow for neighborhood insight.
 
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I'm seeing lots of black locust in the pile. Pretty easy to spot with the deeply-ridged corrugated bark. Some unrecognizable from bark.

Gorgeous area up near the Front Range. Spectacular, in fact.

In some cases of such windfall, some would say "You suck!". Not me. I could deal with such suckage, though.


Thanks, the view is from Johny park, behind where we are ( big elk meadows). You can take 36 to 43 to johny park ( left at fork on 43) then drive that to 7 with amazing views of Mt. Meeker the whole way. Mild 4wd needed, could do it in a car if your the balsy type. If your making the trip stop off for beer or coco.

I picked up another load today, i think 3 or 4 more trips and I might have her backyard cleaned up.

If your not far from longmont pm me and if she still has the CL post public I will steer you to it. I am running out of room. If she gathers it as fast as she claims there is plenty to go around.

I have to thank the folks that suggested CL hunting. I had a saved search that led me to this treasure trove.

We are burning some tonight, crazy how much different the stove behaves. We are not used to a piece of wood still looking like a piece of wood two hours after going into the stove.
 
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Thanks, the view is from Johny park, behind where we are ( big elk meadows). You can take 36 to 43 to johny park ( left at fork on 43) then drive that to 7 with amazing views of Mt. Meeker the whole way. Mild 4wd needed, could do it in a car if your the balsy type. If your making the trip stop off for beer or coco.

I picked up another load today, i think 3 or 4 more trips and I might have her backyard cleaned up.

If your not far from longmont pm me and if she still has the CL post public I will steer you to it. I am running out of room. If she gathers it as fast as she claims there is plenty to go around.

I have to thank the folks that suggested CL hunting. I had a saved search that led me to this treasure trove.

We are burning some tonight, crazy how much different the stove behaves. We are not used to a piece of wood still looking like a piece of wood two hours after going into the stove.

I'd love to visit to soak in the vistas, but I'm in the NYC burbs, so it'd be a haul. As things go here, my supply was good for 4-5 years, then I walked into a cord or two more, ash & sugar maple, so my shortage is space. Thanks for the generous offer. (I do have my eyes on some local shagbark, though.)
 
i thought i saw some elm in there too.... i will let you know how willow burns, i have some in my pile. from what i have read, it burns quick and hot, not too many BTU. when it dries out, it is super light, almost like balsa.... i accidentally stacked some in the pile I was going to have for next year, but will probably end up dragging that out since it was at around 9%. I did throw a piece on the firepit when it was wet, and it smelled like urine for sure. the dry piece had no scent.
 
i thought i saw some elm in there too.... i will let you know how willow burns, i have some in my pile. from what i have read, it burns quick and hot, not too many BTU. when it dries out, it is super light, almost like balsa.... i accidentally stacked some in the pile I was going to have for next year, but will probably end up dragging that out since it was at around 9%. I did throw a piece on the firepit when it was wet, and it smelled like urine for sure. the dry piece had no scent.

I have not been separating the different types of hardwood. So far i just separate dry from wet.

I stacked up next to the stove last night in prep for the weekend. Crazy to see so much hardwood. It is helping with the overnight burn. I need to get my OAK installed proper, getting a ton of cold air from the window I have it shoved in. So far all the hardwood i have put jnto the stove smells great and burns really long. It takes a lot longer to get the secondary to light off now also.

Here are pics if this mornings view and the pile next to the stove. You can see the OAK tube and my wifes little kindling chopping block.

20161006_070806.jpg

20161005_201353_1475720034212.jpg
 
I have not been separating the different types of hardwood. So far i just separate dry from wet.

that is how mine was stacked too, but as I was splitting and stacking i noticed that the willow was really dry. i could have had a lot of truckfuls of it, but I settled on 2, since i found other stuff that burned better and longer. The only thing in its own stack is the locust
 
Handsonautotech - hope those ashes next to the stove in the bucket are cold.
 
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