Wood Hound
ArboristSite Operative
Hi,i live just off 224 above Arnot forest,on Barnes hill....
Is this a cord?
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Hi,i live just off 224 above Arnot forest,on Barnes hill....
Great area. I've spent some time in Arnot forest, beautiful place. Use to eat at Beaches Diner too. Love to take a cruse out your way on the motorcycle and go up over rt223.
I cut all my wood 16" so my wife can handle it! Most modern wood stoves can't handle 24"my dad always told people when they asked the price that the wood was free. they were just paying for the labor,fuel,etc. funny thing is iv'e caught myself saying the same thing.i would rather cut longer but age (read old) and the fact that i can sell more wood in the 16" range than 24". unfortunately i would put myself out of business
if i charged much more. i'm already at the high end of local prices.
Wood Hound
ArboristSite Operative
Beach diner is gone now-Next summer if ya come around on your bike,give me hoot,i ride too...Bert
Yeah, I know they have been gone for years but they were definitely the best diner in the area.
I'll keep ya in mind. I have a dual sport now. I need to get my road bike back together for the longer rides.
Years ago I took a bunch of books out at the library. Then a cord was four foot pieces stacked four feet high and eight feet long. Perhaps this is how the railroads bought it instead of coal. One would get less when cut and stacked. Splitting also makes for tighter stacking. Apparently now with consumer protection the customer can re stack it as tight as they care to and complain and the vendor is supposed to come back and fill in the rest of the pile. Good luck with getting them back next year if you try that. A good source will probably need months lead time to deliver to you. My idea of a good source delivers green at less cost. There was a thread on here about when I joined about the legalities. The major sellers in this area seem to have processers and the price does not change depending on what length is desired. They seem quite friendly in this aspect compared to some of the comments here. Most of the stuff is loaded in a dump truck with some machine like an articulated loader. Often they have a hinged partition in the middle so they can do two half loads, of course this makes more air if one wants a whole load. Log length sellers seem very careful to avoid claiming what amount of cords will end up with. A green cord is about 6000 pounds for hardwood that is desirable. And that is for the definition I put at the beginning here. A lot of species folks use for firewood I read on this forum are not generally considered desirable around here.
Juist an aside an oil furnace or a gas or propane one seems to last longer than many wood stoves. Catalytic wood stoves have a hot spot at the catalyst and that can often shorten their life or need replacement parts. Wood stoves need chimneys that generally have more break up than they would using oil or gas. If one has to buy cut firewood chances are it is more expensive than oil to heat with. Propane is a racket not sure about that cost analysis.
Juist an aside an oil furnace or a gas or propane one seems to last longer than many wood stoves. Catalytic wood stoves have a hot spot at the catalyst and that can often shorten their life or need replacement parts. Wood stoves need chimneys that generally have more break up than they would using oil or gas. If one has to buy cut firewood chances are it is more expensive than oil to heat with. Propane is a racket not sure about that cost analysis.
Another member from NY. Nice
flatbroke
ArboristSite Operative
How much did they charge you? It is a shame. People get ripped off from sea to sea. Short loads and not dry.
When my Dad was a kid in the 1920's they sold a lot of pulp wood. It was cut and stacked in 4' length's, like you described. Mostly smallish Pine. They referred to it as "Cord Wood". If someone said they needed some "Cord Wood" it was understood they meant 4' pulp. If they wanted a "Cord Of Firewood", it was cut and split firewood. The two terms meant two different things, but the 4X4X8 measurement was the same. Not that it really pertains to this thread, it just surprised me that you found a definition stating 4' lengths, Joe.
I can easily fit that in my pickup truck. I'd say about 70 cu ft, maybe 80 at most. That's why I sell by the truckload. At that length, I could get five rows of these logs into my 6' truck bed. I can barely get four rows of my logs in my truck's bed. The half load I sold last week for $70 filled a so-called face cord rack -- 8' wide and 4' tall -- with 18" logs.
BTW, this is also a Cord!
Philbert
Philbert
I will take Philbert's Cord any day. As I have plenty of the other kind of cords. As Creo mentioned people can do and say any thing they like and no one says a word. As I have stated from California no body cares. DWaM does not care about it either. It could be changed in a brief moment, but most people here want to make wood a thing of the past. Now if you are talking about burning houses they are all for that just not bare wood. It is up to the buyer to buy an amount that they are satisfied with period. The sellers will do any thing that they can get away with. One time I delivered to a guy while it was snowing and he was told that he asked for what I could bring him. Several days later he re stacked and said bring him another pick up load for free. Rather than spend any time in debate I just gave him a small pile and told him that his phone number and address would be marked for a do not respond. Since then I have had maybe a hundred complaints and comments that the buyer only wanted one cord not two so for most part people who not know what load is. If Department of Weights and Measures would spend a tiny amount of effort to uphold some standard then few people would be interested in the process because ripping people off would be difficult. thanks
Ax-man
Addicted to ArboristSite
In response to the OP
If that pile of wood was to be stacked in a regular rack with straight sides, 4 foot high by 8 foot long that pile of wood in the pictures would probably be a face cord with a little extra.
I've sold firewood since the 80's , to most people the terms used by to describe firewood measures are confusing. You have to hold them by the hand and describe to them what the difference is between a face cord or 1/3 of a standard cord ,what a 1/2 of a standard cord is and what a full standard cord measure is when they call and ask to have a cord delivered. The term cord has been bandied about so much that it usually refers to a face cord which is the most popular wood measure sold to home owners and some sellers just don't know the difference and just refer to a pick-up load of wood as a cord. A good seller will make the distinction between a face cord and a regular standard cord .
Just a bit of trivia . Anyone know where that term cord came from?? If I am right, in the old days if you were buying a pile of wood it was measured by a string or cord. A 4x4x8 pile of wood was about what a good man could split by hand in a day, probably a long day I would imagine and probably wasn't split as fine as what we consider normal these days . This pile of wood was then measured with a cord and if it measured out it was then called cord wood. My grandfather told me this when I started out in the tree business and was selling firewood that I would sometimes get off his farm.
If that pile of wood was to be stacked in a regular rack with straight sides, 4 foot high by 8 foot long that pile of wood in the pictures would probably be a face cord with a little extra.
I've sold firewood since the 80's , to most people the terms used by to describe firewood measures are confusing. You have to hold them by the hand and describe to them what the difference is between a face cord or 1/3 of a standard cord ,what a 1/2 of a standard cord is and what a full standard cord measure is when they call and ask to have a cord delivered. The term cord has been bandied about so much that it usually refers to a face cord which is the most popular wood measure sold to home owners and some sellers just don't know the difference and just refer to a pick-up load of wood as a cord. A good seller will make the distinction between a face cord and a regular standard cord .
Just a bit of trivia . Anyone know where that term cord came from?? If I am right, in the old days if you were buying a pile of wood it was measured by a string or cord. A 4x4x8 pile of wood was about what a good man could split by hand in a day, probably a long day I would imagine and probably wasn't split as fine as what we consider normal these days . This pile of wood was then measured with a cord and if it measured out it was then called cord wood. My grandfather told me this when I started out in the tree business and was selling firewood that I would sometimes get off his farm.
Heck, I have a hard time splitting and stacking a cord in four hours with a hydraulic splitter. The stacking or immediate loading of he truck uses up an hour by itself, so I might be able to split a random thrown pile in three hours that adds up to a full cord. The variables influencing time are huge. Size and length of round, dryness, and wood species all make a big difference in splitting time.
Face cord is yet another nebulous term. Since my logs average 18", my face cords are larger than 1/3 of a cord. I tried to explain that to a customer to no avail.
Yet another factor is average size of split log. Larger splits take up less room than smaller ones. I've proven this myself on numerous occasions, but the extreme case explains it well. If I ever fill the truck to capacity with rounds cut to length and then split them all, I can never load all of the split logs safely back into the truck. There's always several splits left over because you pick up more air space between them.
That's one think that gets me. You could split a full cord into large splits or split the same amount into smaller splits and it won't be a full cord. I stack split pieces that are less than 6 inches in diameter on down to 2 inches. It depends how I feel when I'm cutting wood as to what I save. It doesn't matter to me because I only burn it but large splits stack up a lot faster.
In my mind a face cord is 4x8 by an average size burnable width. 16" 18" 20" throw them all in the stack but again I don't sell wood.
In my mind a face cord is 4x8 by an average size burnable width. 16" 18" 20" throw them all in the stack but again I don't sell wood.
Actually, it's not that hard to imagine. Suppose you had a huge block of solid wood that measures exactly 128 cu ft. If you cut it into log lengths and split it down, you create voids from the sawdust and irregularities. You would have to pack that all back down to create the huge block again, and that is an impossible mission. In general, the smaller the splits that you make, the less wood that a cord contains.
But, deliver splits too large, and the customer will complain, "My fireplace won't burn those big chunks."
And, deliver splits too small and the customer will complain, "I want more sleepers for my stove, not kindling."
I split a face cord for my dad for helping me take down a large tree and I split it like the wood we always got delivered when I was a kit. He still told me he had to split some of them. Keep in mind I hand split.
So if you take 24" diameter logs and stack them 4'x8' they will equal the same amount when split? I have never done the math but to me it seems if you take a round and make it flat it will get shorter and have less space between wood pieces. If you took a 4x8 rectangle and filled it with smaller pieces wouldn't it take more than large pieces.
I do know if I split a cord I sweep up a garbage can full of debris.
"In general, the smaller the splits that you make, the less wood that a cord contains." Wood has it right.
I have a F250 that will hold close to 10,000 LBS but it is a bit much when it is maxed out. A 3/4 ton Ford 8' bed side boards 24'' that can hold about 1 3/4 cord with out any trouble or maybe 2 cords if I am hauling only dry pine carefully. When it is split there is more air space then when larger rounds were stacked in the truck. The more split the more air space is created. My F250 can only haul about a cord and a 1/3 if it was solid wood. Thanks
I have a F250 that will hold close to 10,000 LBS but it is a bit much when it is maxed out. A 3/4 ton Ford 8' bed side boards 24'' that can hold about 1 3/4 cord with out any trouble or maybe 2 cords if I am hauling only dry pine carefully. When it is split there is more air space then when larger rounds were stacked in the truck. The more split the more air space is created. My F250 can only haul about a cord and a 1/3 if it was solid wood. Thanks
In one of these posts I mentioned that when I was a kid I had a 37 Cord 810. I found that every time I wanted body work done and they found out it was a Cord, the price tripled. I wound up selling it to buy a 39 Ford coupe, Joe.
That's precisely why the weight of a cord of a given species of firewood is nebulous and varies considerably from one published table to the next. Not only does the moisture content influence the weight of a cord, but so does the average size of the split logs, both girth and length. In addition, it's influenced by where the logs came from on the tree -- branches or trunk -- and whether the logs came from sapwood or heartwood. I've seen published tables that vary +/- 20% from one species to the next.
You said, "My F250 can only haul about a cord and a 1/3 if it was solid wood." For the record, I've never seen an F250 that can hold 1-1/3 cord of firewood, even with an 8' box. That's 170 cu ft. You would have to stack over 4 feet high. I suppose it could be done with side racks and mounded up higher than the cab.
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