Saturday, May 07, 2016

Getting Ready for a Warm Winter

So we have taken a double delivery of wood from our local woodman, Laurie, and Jim and Jackson, the hardware guys, have installed our new wood heater.
It may look a small pile of wood to some but eucalyptus hardwood is extremely dense (Air Dry ρ around 1000kg/m3) and burns slow and hot (can be 100% Relative Heat Available/Unit Volume) unlike softer woods (radiata pine 500kg/m3 and 45%).

Eucalypts or 'gumtrees' are native to Australia. There are over 700 species. Around us are the Sydney blue gum, the grey ironbark, blackbutt, stringy bark and yellow box to name a few.
Most make great firewood and are collected by licensed companies or individuals who take it from the harvest residue left in state forests. Most operators cut and split the fire wood to size. Some even supply round and split posts for fencing.





















We will probably start evening fires around June and need a similar amount of wood delivered to get us through until end of September. We usually only have the fire going 24/7 for three weeks or so during that period.
Of course I have a bit of fallen timber and old fence posts to cut up to supplement the supply.

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