C.L. example of Alaskan wood dealers knowing that no one knows what dry wood is...

That really, really pisses me off. I have a good friend who lives in Fairbanks and the idea of this schmuck making money of the need of people to heat their homes in one of the coldest, harshest winters on planet Earth just makes me want to kick him in the pants.

I sent him this email:

"You should be ashamed of yourself. Either you're too stupid to know that dry wood ALWAYS burns faster and longer than "half-seasoned", and if you are then you have NO business doing anything involving firewood, or you're a scam artist who is taking advantage of people who are desperate to heat their homes and need good fuel, and lying to them in order to make a quick buck."

~Rose

For posterity:

"Birch Firewood-Half Dry/partially seasoned. Burns hot and twice as long as fully dried Birch.

$200 per cord-cut to your desired length
$25 extra to split
Delivery is free.

We also have Green/Unseasoned in 8 ft lengths for $150 per cord"

So it's unsplit, uncut logs, to be cut & delivered ready to burn. Nice

Oh, this should be fun. I got this reply:

Wow, what an incredibly rude email. This is the very first time someone has complained or called me a con artist. I'll explain it to you since you don't understand. Half seasoned will always burn longer. Birch, Spruce, any kind of wood. It has a higher moisture content. Simple laws of nature. There are many online resources that will confirm this. It doesn't burn as hot as dry and it leaves more creasote, that is the downside. A lot of people buy it to mix in, it is much cheaper than dry birch which I sell for 375 a cord, but that was sold out a long time ago. I burn it in my home, to keep me and my family warm. I'd be glad to give you some free to try for yourself.

375 A CORD?? For BIRCH? Are you out of your MIND?

This was my reply:

Okay, so you're an idiot then. Let me explain this to you-

The wood is not burning any longer- it just taking longer TO burn. The moisture content must be evaporated before it can burn and produce heat. You are wasting BTUs evaporating the MC.

X amount of time to evaporate a 25-30% MC + Y burn time once it starts producing valuable BTUs = Z
A amount of time to evaporate a 15-20% MC + B burn time = C

So you factor in X amount of time to evaporate the higher MC plus Y amount of burn time might give you Z > C, but you are using valuable fuel and wasting time in order to make the same amount of heat in your home. It is not a benefit, it is a deficit.

Most people who are burning wood as their sole source of heat have no other option. Most of those people, additionally, do not know how to sweep their own chimneys. Intentionally selling them a high moisture, creosote producing wood -a soft wood, at that- and telling them that it's SUPERIOR to seasoned wood- it is nothing short of criminal in my opinion. Are you also telling them to make sure that they sweep their chimenys two or three times a year instead of only annually? In most modern EPA stoves and even most moderately efficient older stoves, you need DRY WOOD in order to operate them safely and efficiently.

~Rose

RoseRedHoofbeats said:

Oh, this should be fun. I got this reply:

Wow, what an incredibly rude email. This is the very first time someone has complained or called me a con artist. I'll explain it to you since you don't understand. Half seasoned will always burn longer. Birch, Spruce, any kind of wood. It has a higher moisture content. Simple laws of nature. There are many online resources that will confirm this. It doesn't burn as hot as dry and it leaves more creasote, that is the downside. A lot of people buy it to mix in, it is much cheaper than dry birch which I sell for 375 a cord, but that was sold out a long time ago. I burn it in my home, to keep me and my family warm. I'd be glad to give you some free to try for yourself.

375 A CORD?? For BIRCH? Are you out of your MIND?

This was my reply:

Okay, so you're an idiot then. Let me explain this to you-

The wood is not burning any longer- it just taking longer TO burn. The moisture content must be evaporated before it can burn and produce heat. You are wasting BTUs evaporating the MC.

X amount of time to evaporate a 25-30% MC + Y burn time once it starts producing valuable BTUs = Z
A amount of time to evaporate a 15-20% MC + B burn time = C

So you factor in X amount of time to evaporate the higher MC plus Y amount of burn time might give you Z > C, but you are using valuable fuel and wasting time in order to make the same amount of heat in your home. It is not a benefit, it is a deficit.

Most people who are burning wood as their sole source of heat have no other option. Most of those people, additionally, do not know how to sweep their own chimneys. Intentionally selling them a high moisture, creosote producing wood -a soft wood, at that- and telling them that it's SUPERIOR to seasoned wood- it is nothing short of criminal in my opinion. Are you also telling them to make sure that they sweep their chimenys two or three times a year instead of only annually? In most modern EPA stoves and even most moderately efficient older stoves, you need DRY WOOD in order to operate them safely and efficiently.

~Rose

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Rose Remind me often to never get on your bad side! Thank You So Much Jay. J/k That should have him thinking over the weekend!

I just spent six hours stuck in an airport with a two year old. And then I spent five hours on a plane with the same two year old. I'm not usually this cranky. =P

~Rose

hmm.. I guess i'm missing something. The poster seems honest about what he's selling. Not as if he's selling "seasoned" wood thats not. just my $.02....not that it counts

Rose, I understand where you are coming from and respect that but perhaps your wording could have been a bit softer. Honey draws more flies than vinegar. So please, don't ever let me get on your bad side. lol

Yes dear, whatever you say dear. ;-P

RoseRedHoofbeats said:

375 A CORD?? For BIRCH? Are you out of your MIND?

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I can't even find that price in Alberta for seasoned firewood. It's terrible really. Most of our options are overpriced softwoods... Some guy nearby trying to sell larch at $650/cord...

I've been searching trying to find somewhere nearby where I can buy a load of log length hardwoods...

RoseRedHoofbeats said:

The wood is not burning any longer- it just taking longer TO burn.

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Huh?

After trying for weeks to find decent wood and almost getting scammed about nine dozen times, I rather lost my sunny disposition with dealers like this. They're no better than scam artists. I would use just as harsh a tone with an electrical company or a power plant that tried to pull a fast one like that, too.

The problem is claming that wet wood burns hotter/faster/longer/is better. It doesn't. We all know that. Water in the wood impedes the whole burning process. The water must evaporate first -essentially, the wood has to finish drying out- whether that takes place in a woodshed or in a stove. The problem with drying wood in your stove is that your 1) Wasting time, 2) Wasting fuel and money, 3) Producing creosote which is dangerous and bad for the environment, 4) and hampering the effiency of your stove. My absolute longest friend, that I've known since I was 11, lives in Fairbanks now and she buys wood for her stove, and so do her mother and father in law. People selling half-seasoned wood isn't anything new, but the idea of someone selling them some line about wet wood like that absolutely burns my britches.

~Rose

Honestly, your out of line Rose. Go back and read it nice and slow, line by line. Not one lie in his advertisement. At worst it was a slight deception when he said "burns hot" but I have made a hot fire from green firewood before. He isnt one of the CR advertisers that is trying to push this off like it is seasoned wood. He even followed up with a good reply to your email. I think your being a bit too biased because of the bad experiences you had from truly bad dealers

I have not issues with the CL ad, he doesn't say it's seasoned wood anywhere. If someone decides to buy partial seasoned wood from him it may be for next season.

Wallyworld said:

RoseRedHoofbeats said:

The wood is not burning any longer- it just taking longer TO burn.

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Huh?

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That's what I've been saying about oak compared to pine, oak doesn't burn longer, it just takes longer to burn. ;-)

Seriously, the length of the burn time isn't the issue between seasoned and unseasoned wood. Environmental and creosote issues aside, with the right stove settings either wood can be made to burn for a shorter hotter period of time or a longer cooler period of time, but whatever the length of the burn, seasoned wood will produce more useful heat from the same volume of wood because it isn't evaporating the water.
If the wood is burning, it's burning. Arguing that you can't count the burn time because the wood still contains moisture just doesn't make sense. Better to argue that high moisture content wood produces less usable heat than low moisture content wood, because that's the real point.
I could get a 10 hour smoldering fire out of my old Blaze King smoke dragon if I loaded it to the gills with some large half seasoned rounds, but I can only get about 8 hours out of my new EPA stove with about half the volume of nice dry splits. So was the Blaze King and wet wood better because it could burn longer? No. The difference is in the heat output, that is what makes the EPA stove and dry wood so much better, that and the clean burn.

AKSHADOW said:

Wallyworld said:

RoseRedHoofbeats said:

The wood is not burning any longer- it just taking longer TO burn.

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Huh?

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Seller claims wetter wood burns longer. That's not true, the truth of the matter is that the wood stays in the firebox longer because it takes a long time evaporate the water out of the wood in order to get it to burn. So yes, it does burn but only the outer edges, the rest is drying, and the result is the wood stays in the firebox longer which makes it seem like its burning longer

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I've been burning wood for many many years, I understand what wet wood does in a stove, The sentence makes no sense.

Here is just one source I found for Alaska.
Of course the U of Ak Fairbanks facts probably won't mean anything to this CL seller
http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF5/555.html
dry wood is cleaner burning also (but another fact that may upset the CL seller)
http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF20/2024.html

You should try and get dry wood in South East Alaska. 250 for a "cord" of spruce

That's about what it goes for here.

I'll play the contrarian here. I dnt really have a problem with that cl ad. He is being fairly honest about what he is selling. Alot of guys will claim they have mixed hardwoods, lead you to believe it is oak, ash etc and you end up with soft maple poplar etc. And alot of guys will claim there wood is seasoned for over a year when it is really was split like a month earlier. This guy is being honest about the species and honest about it being not seasoned. As for claiming it will burn hot and longer than dry wood, there is a grain of truth there even though it may be misleading, but that's just a man advertising and talking up his product (without out and out lying about it) I don't really have a problem with that. That kind of stuff goes in in every industry whether it is outlandish mpg claims in vehicles, square footage heated in a woodstove brochure or trying to convince people that partially seasoned wood is useable. And as for the price, hey if the man can get that much money then who am I to tell him to sell cheaper.
I just think the seller has the obligation to not misrepresent his product or service. Then the onus is on the buyer to be educated on the product he or she is buying.

I agree. Whether it burns longer or takes longer to burn, the guy is saying it's in the stove longer. Also, I've seen plenty of people on here who add green or semi-seasoned wood to a load for various reasons.

The guy was walking the line, absolutely, but he wasn't an outright scam artist and he was describing his wood accurately as far as I can tell....

Further, it's important to note that 99% of people in this world believe truths told to them by people they respect. So don't ascribe malice when ignorance is just as likely. I was told by my father in law, with dread seriousness, that burning pine is almost a sure-fire way to get a bad chimney fire as all the sap stays in the chimney. He's been burning for a long time and has it "in his blood". I respect him too. But I came on here and found out the truth. Alot of people would just believe it.

I read the CL ad 3 times, still looking for how he is ripping people off.
I see far worse on ebay and cl daily....just my 2cents.