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Although I love my burner, I do sometimes wish that heating the house with wood was as easy as switching on the central heating.

There has been many a winter evening that I’ve got home and the last thing I felt like doing is hauling in armfuls of logs from the wood store through drizzle, rain or snow (at least lighting the fire is easy with Flamers, kindling and nice dry logs!) and that’s once you’ve got the logs in the wood store; getting them there can also be quite a challenge.

It’s always worth remembering that when you get your logs delivered, they might not be left as close to where you’re going to be storing them. My bulk bags are always dropped 50 metres away from my log store and un-packing the logs isn’t the quickest job in the world so here are a few handy hints & tips I’ve come up with:

  • Stock up in the summer. You get to take advantage of summer discounts, it rains less (supposedly…) and there’s more daylight to put your logs away
  • Have a bit of tarpaulin handy. If your logs are delivered last thing in the day or mid-week and you won’t get time until the weekend, it’s fine to keep the logs for a couple of days as delivered if you add that extra bit of waterproofing.
  • When un-packing loose logs, wear gloves – dry logs have nasty splinters!
  • If you’ve ordered the loose logs in a bulk bag, the 1.2m3 is about 10-11 wheelbarrows full and the 1.6m3 is about 15-16.
  • If you’ve ordered the pre-packed bags, you’ll start emptying the pallet 2 bags at a time but will switch to 1 about 30 bags in.
  • The bulk bags will have a mix of diameters; if you pop the thinner bits to one side in your store, they are perfect for building a base to the fire and the fatter logs are perfect for that long burn once bedded in.
  • To make the time pass quicker, have a song in your head that you can hum – I generally end up singing “something in the woodshed” by the Divine Comedy.
  • At the end of all the unpacking, think what you have save on gym membership with the workout you’ve just done.

If anyone can suggest alternative tips and/or songs to hum, it’d be welcome!