How much space is lost in a loosely thrown load?

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Sprinter

Minister of Fire
Jul 1, 2012
2,984
SW Washington
There is a local Craig's List ad for dump bed loads measuring 11 x 4 x 7 which is 308 cu ft, but is "loosely thrown". How many cords do you think it would end up being when properly stacked? The price is right if any where near 2.4 stacked cords. It is cut and split 12" - 16". It sounds like a pretty large processing operation.
 
I've seen figures that a thrown cord of 16" long split wood can be 180-200 cu.ft., so that math would work out as follows:

308/200 = 1.54 cords
308/180 = 1.71 cords

Theoretically the smaller lengths (12") would fill more of the interstitial space between some of the longer lengths, but I'm not sure that would give you more than 2.0 cords.

(I'm assuming the wood is spread to fit the dimensions of the dump bed and is not piled above the top of the side walls.)
 
Maine state law puts a loose-thrown cord at 180 cubic feet if the splits are 12-16", and 195 cubic feet if they're 24" long.
 
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There is a local Craig's List ad for dump bed loads measuring 11 x 4 x 7 which is 308 cu ft, but is "loosely thrown". How many cords do you think it would end up being when properly stacked? The price is right if any where near 2.4 stacked cords. It is cut and split 12" - 16". It sounds like a pretty large processing operation.

My dad has a 12' x 8' x 4' bed on his F350. Cut at 16" every row is about 1/3 of a cord, and it'll fit about 9 rows (I've never managed to get more than 6 rows in it at a time) - which is about 3 cord. If we just throw it over the side (which we do from time to time) we get about 1.5 cord - maybe a little less.

I'm guessing the load you're looking at is nowhere near 2.4 cord.
 
I'm guessing the load you're looking at is nowhere near 2.4 cord.
I'm guessing you're right;) Thanks guys, that's the info I needed. I'll go with the 180 cu ft measure that Maine goes by, apparently a sort of standard estimate for those lengths. That would put it at around 1.7 cords stacked.
 
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