Well our rookie season is showing our inexperience. We finally got everything arranged to have a stove install scheduled at the end of september, picked up our stove etc. We knew we needed to find someone with dry wood so my husband called a number advertising firewood. The kid was super nice and went out and got a moisture meter that day to test his wood, said it was coming in around 10% for splits and he even cut the wood down to 10" long pieces for our little stove size (Morso 1440).
So he brings it, even though we had told him to please FRESHLY split a piece and test the new side he had done it wrong and the wood was anywhere from mid 20's to high 30's I believe. He took 70$ off the price and we decided to take the cord anyway (it's all oak I think, not debarked but split). Then after he leaves and we look at the stack, we are nowhere NEAR a cord, probably just barely over a half cord. He says he measure his cords by "pieces" so he doesn't have to worry about dimensions. Obviously we were expecting a cord and he very nicely said he would come and take it back.
So today we were supposed to take delivery of a cord by the "best" place around here that our sweep suggested etc. We talked to them on the phone, they were confident their wood would be right for us but would not test it themselves. So a cord of wood comes to our house and when my husband splits and tests it most is in the mid 30's with one piece of a different species testing 18%, but there was not much of that wood in there.
We still have the original delivery of too-wet oak cut down so we refused this one for now. I'm not sure if we should keep the original delivery (it turned out to be $180 after his discount for what is about a half cord). I am beginning to doubt we will find anyone with dry wood and wondering if we cannot even burn this winter.
We also don't want a bunch of wood from a bunch of different places because we live in the city and do not want to increase the risk of introducing ticks to our yard, we also have a very small back yard in which to store it .
So he brings it, even though we had told him to please FRESHLY split a piece and test the new side he had done it wrong and the wood was anywhere from mid 20's to high 30's I believe. He took 70$ off the price and we decided to take the cord anyway (it's all oak I think, not debarked but split). Then after he leaves and we look at the stack, we are nowhere NEAR a cord, probably just barely over a half cord. He says he measure his cords by "pieces" so he doesn't have to worry about dimensions. Obviously we were expecting a cord and he very nicely said he would come and take it back.
So today we were supposed to take delivery of a cord by the "best" place around here that our sweep suggested etc. We talked to them on the phone, they were confident their wood would be right for us but would not test it themselves. So a cord of wood comes to our house and when my husband splits and tests it most is in the mid 30's with one piece of a different species testing 18%, but there was not much of that wood in there.
We still have the original delivery of too-wet oak cut down so we refused this one for now. I'm not sure if we should keep the original delivery (it turned out to be $180 after his discount for what is about a half cord). I am beginning to doubt we will find anyone with dry wood and wondering if we cannot even burn this winter.
We also don't want a bunch of wood from a bunch of different places because we live in the city and do not want to increase the risk of introducing ticks to our yard, we also have a very small back yard in which to store it .
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