Why bother
Money, mostly. Our unseasoned firewood is £59 a cubic metre in a full transit. The seasoned equivalent is £95 and kiln dried is £102. If you have space, time and a year of patience, you are buying the same Dorset hardwood for a bit over half the price.
| Product | Full transit | Per m³ | Ready |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unseasoned Firewood | £260 | £59 | in 12–18 months |
| Seasoned Mixed | £420 | £95 | today |
| Kiln Dried | £450 | £102 | today |
The catch is in that last column. Unseasoned wood is not cheap seasoned wood — it is next year’s firewood, bought early. If you need to burn it this winter, buy seasoned instead and come back to this article in the spring.
Buy it in spring, stack it properly, burn it the winter after next. Once you are a year ahead you stay a year ahead, and every load from then on costs you 40% less than buying it ready.
Split it first
Wood dries out through its ends and its split faces, barely at all through bark. A round log left whole can sit for three years and still be wet in the middle. The same log split into quarters is ready in one.
Our unseasoned firewood arrives already cut to 8 to 10 inches and split, which is most of the work done. If you are processing your own timber, split anything thicker than about your wrist, and split it now rather than later — green wood splits far more easily than dry.
Stack it right
The rules are the same as for storing dry wood, and they matter more, because you are asking the stack to actively shed a lot of water rather than just not gain any.
- Off the ground on pallets or bearers, 50mm of clear air underneath.
- Roof it, but only the top. Rain off, sides wide open.
- Single rows beat a big block. A single-log-deep row with air on both faces dries roughly twice as fast as a stack four logs deep.
- Point it at the wind. In Dorset that means giving the stack a clear run at the south-west. Sun helps; wind helps more.
- Leave gaps. A stack you can post a coin through dries. One packed tight does not.
A full guide to the storage side of this is here: how to store firewood so it stays dry.
How long it takes
| Species | Split and stacked well | Stacked badly |
|---|---|---|
| Ash | 9–12 months | 2 years |
| Birch | 9–12 months | 2 years |
| Sycamore | 9–12 months | 2 years |
| Beech | 12–18 months | 2 years, and may rot first |
| Oak | 18–24 months | 3 years or more |
Those are Dorset figures for wood split, stacked in single rows, off the ground and roofed. A mixed load will not all come ready at once — the ash and birch will be burnable a good six months before the oak is. That is not a problem, it is just a reason to burn from one end of the stack and let the other end keep going.
Cutting it in winter helps. Timber felled in the dormant season carries less sap and starts from a lower moisture content, which is why our own processing follows the tree surgery year.
How to know it is ready
A moisture meter
The only way to actually know. They cost about £15. Split a log and test the freshly exposed inner face, not the outside — the outside of any log that has been in the air reads low and tells you nothing. You want under 20%.
The signs, if you have no meter
- Cracks radiating from the centre of the end grain. Wet wood has smooth ends.
- Bark coming away easily from most logs.
- Light for its size. A seasoned log is dramatically lighter than a green one of the same dimensions — you can feel it.
- A clack, not a thud when you knock two logs together. Dry wood rings.
- No hiss when it burns. Hissing and bubbling from the ends is water boiling out, and it means it is not ready.
Burning wood that is not ready is not dangerous in itself, but it wastes most of the heat, blackens the glass and builds creosote in the flue, which is the thing that causes chimney fires. If in doubt, leave it another six months and buy a load of seasoned to bridge the gap.
A full transit of unseasoned is £260 — 4.4m³ of Dorset hardwood at £59 a cubic metre, ready for the winter after next.