How many rounds in a cord?

[rudysmallfry]

I may have struck pay dirt. Some guys are taking down a huge maple on my street. They have no plans to keep it. If the people who own the house don't want it, but don't want to give it away for free, I want to be able to make a fair offer. Assuming 12" rounds, how many rounds are in a cord? Split cords are going for $180 in my area. What would be a fair price considering it's not seasoned?

 

[wg_bent]

If you live in Northern CA...1 round per cord (redwood)

Do you have to haul it? Tell them you'll remove it at no charge TO them.

Your doing them a favor!!

Everyone wins.

 

[nshif]

If it was stacked as 12" rounds 16" long it would take 96, but thats alot of airspace so I would guess more like 120. If you have to buck it and haul it and split it and a cord is 180$ I wouldnt pay more then 50$. But like Warren said your doing them a favor and Id try to get it for just removing it.

 

[ChrisN]

If it's really a huge Maple, be careful. some of those suckers especially 'yard trees' can be very large in diameter, gnarly, and generally a real pain to split. If it's really 12' diameter, rough calculations tell me that if it's 75' tall will equal about 60 cubic feet of volume. After splitting and stacking, it might come out to about a cord I guess. Somebody please tell me if my math is wrong!

 

[Eric Johnson]

I got about 2.5 cords out of a hard maple that was about 36" in diameter on the stump.

If you feel the need to pay them for the wood (but if you're hauling it, you shouldn't) then I agree with nshif that $50 is more than fair.

 

[yukiginger]

Is this a tree service taking down the tree? I got one to deliver off my driveway the main sections of two soft maples they took down a block from my house. Cost me a dozen doughnuts one morning and $20 to the co-owner who was driving the truck. He backed up my driveway, set up, and using his hook offloaded the sections right where I asked. These trees were about 36" at breast height. What were they going to do with it otherwise? - grind it up for mulch! I got at least 5 cords out of those trees.

I cut it all up myself and shared it with my neighbors. You might get them to deliver it. YOu decide whether this works better than you bucking it all up yourself and transporting it. This service would not leave it there, as they had contracted for the complete job to include removal. Owner also told me to let him know when I wanted more as he would gladly help me out.

One thing to watch for is metal. I was lucky - I only cut through one nail and I found another while splitting it.

Mark

 

[EatenByLimestone]

QFT on the metal. I took a 4' trunk of a co-worker's hands and have found all sorts of spikes in it. Luckily they were when splitting. Rural trees aren't always better. Pic from a Bob Smalser article:

http://www.woodcentral.com/articles/images/402c.jpg

Matt

 

[BrotherBart]

While we are on the subject of debris in free wood, a couple of years ago I was given access to a pile of logs on a cleared site. On the first cut into a log about three feet up the side of a ten foot stack of logs my saw found the hunk of concrete stuck under the log.

Lesson: Always know what is under that log. That brand new, first cut chain was ugly. And that free wood got expensive real fast.

 

[Sandor]

While we are on the subject of debris in free wood, a couple of years ago I was given access to a pile of logs on a cleared site. On the first cut into a log about three feet up the side of a ten foot stack of logs my saw found the hunk of concrete stuck under the log.

Lesson: Always know what is under that log. That brand new, first cut chain was ugly. And that free wood got expensive real fast.

True!

Up in WV, I was cutting "free" wood from the bottom of a holler. (A holler is a small valley in WV talk).

After I ruined a chain, the guy told me that they used to fire into that valley for target practice! Cut through many bullets imbedded in trees. You would think that the odds are slim, but they are not!

 

[rudysmallfry]

Well, I got the whole thing for free. I went over there to start scrounging the small stuff. The head guy came by to check on the job site and saw I only lived a few doors down, so he offered to dump the big stuff in my driveway. Sweet. By your calculations, I probably scored about 3 cords. Tomorrow's spitter day. It's my first time playing with that toy. Luckily my buddy's skilled at it, so it should go smoothly. I was a bit baffled by how easily this stuff splits. We took an axe to some of the smaller stuff, and it just flies apart. It's a live tree, so I found that interesting. Surely a lot more rewarding than trying to split crap Poplar. It's a Silver Maple, so I'm pretty happy with the score. For me 3 cords is about 2 season's worth of wood. The people are taking down their other tree next year, so there's my wood for the remainder of the decade.

 

[cogger]

This area had plenty of free wood blown down from hurricane gloria back in Oct 85' I recall. Since canes' in this area are a rarity so the hardwoods trend grow BIG before another cane' comes by.