I'm pretty sure duraflame is *much* more expensive than wood.

If you need a cord for the winter, I can't imagine 300 being that terrible of a price.

The one time I lived in the mountains, my girlfriend got a pellet stove. That thing was awesome.

There should be a lot of guys along rural highways selling firewood. Try driving down one, say at the entrance to a small town or something.

I think places around here (LA) sell firewood by the wheelbarrow for 10-20 dollars per. Prices are probably inflated here since most people don't really need fires.

Only in 2012

Yes, Sic?

Libraries are full of firewood, and they let you rent it for free.

LOL

Whatever you do, stick to local. Bringing in wood from other regions is asking to have new species of bugs introduced, like the Emerald Ash Borer around here. And these new bugs can be devastating to the local trees. They will climb out of your firewood and attach onto a nearby live tree and start reproducing like mad because none of their natrual predators are around to eat them.

$300 isn't bad to my knowledge, but we split it ourselves. We burn wood more or less constantly Dec-Feb, maybe half of Nov and Mar, and 1 or 2 cords is enough. Usually only have to refill on oil once at most, so even if you buy 2 cords for $600 total you'll probably still save quite a bit. But a pellet stove is a much simpler option and usually has significantly more output. It's especially nice if you can install it in your basement.

I live in a townhouse-style apt with a fireplace, so a pellet stove is out of the question. Perhaps I was just confused about how much wood is supposed to cost. If people think that's a reasonable price for a cord, that's probably what I'll go with.

Where do you get the wood you split yourself?

It also depends on if the fireplace(s) are the only heat source or if you are using it as supplemental heat. 2 cords worked well for supplemental heat when we had a WBFP.

But the other thing is you should let your wood season by buying it in the spring. Too late for that now, but still.

If you are going for ambiance, 1/2 a cord will probably do you all winter or just go ahead and buy duraflame logs. The furaflames are very clean and give you a nice even burn for a decent period of time.

You also might want to buy a box of starter logs. They are like miniduraflames, but make starting the fire easier. And don't forget to open the flue before lighting the fire and close it when it is out.

I mostly just tke wood from friends/ aquantences sp who have trees to cut down. A little labor intensive but a day or two choppin is better than payin hundreds of dollars. You do mean a fireplace right, for show? Not like a wood burning stove or something for heat right?

@abgemacht - Make sure you are actually getting a cord. A cord is 4'x4'x8' or 128 cubic feet. It's a lot of wood.

I'm talking about a fireplace. I don't get cold, so I keep the heat on just enough to keep the pipes from freezes. The fireplace heats the living room.

Honestly, I don't mind chopping my own wood. That's what I've done the last couple weeks. But, as I said, there's so much pine, I have a hard time finding anything else.

Yeah I just get it from neighbors/anyone who cuts down a tree and doesn't want to dispose of the wood. Making friends with tree-cutting companies doesn't ever hurt. And yeah Draug we just use it supplementally to push the temp from ~58 to ~68. We have a wood stove, not a fireplace, so I'm not really familiar with the operational differences between the two. I've never used any of the duraflame logs though. If you set up the wood in the right way starting a fire is really simple.

All the wood that we've burned as come from trees we cut down in the yard. We had 30 year old maples and oaks and such

You must have a big property.

If you live anywhere near Uxbridge ON I can hook you's up with a tree guy (arborist).

Michigan, the trees are the right height.

Oh man! Sacrilege! Maple and oak are great for woodworking. Have a lumber yard cut it and kiln dry it. But don't burn it, especially not the maple. Oak is reasonably priced, but maple is expensive stuff to be burning.

Okay, I have a wood burning stove and a fireplace, and up here in the Mountains of East Tennessee, it does get damn cold.

I usuallycut my own, and its USUALLY oak and hickory, although Hickory is best to sell to a BBQ place for $100 a rick (i forget how may ricks in a Cord, but we use Ricks for our measurement) and a rick of Oak is about 45, and they burn the same.

For me, to use electric heat is 4 times MORe expensive than burning. I built my own house by myself, and insulated the bastard very well, so my house is always toasty, so I dont know your exact situation in that regards, but you should still come out ahead burning wood.

Is it a real fireplace, or one of them sorta fake ones, that you can burn wood in, but they throw shit for heat?

Also remember, fireplaces only heat what you can see from them, unlike a wood burning stove. They can throw a LOT of heat, but generally not in the same way a stove does.

Open floor planned house?

AND if you do want to chop a lot of wood, well, I chop my own in the winter when its cold, but in the summer when I am splitting it to season it, I use a damn hydraulic log splitter...lol

I quarter them with the splitter, then season them (I have a wood shed for this) for about 6 months, then i split them again as needed with an axe in winter.

It's $100 here.

It heats the living room decent enough. The real problem is the apt is very tall but not wide. It's about 3 stories, so if I use the gas heat, the bedrooms get roasting hot and the living room is still freezing.

Where is "here"?

@lando - not really. I think its either a third of an acre or half an acre we have. Its just the people who owned the property before us *loved* trees. We've cut down 11 in the past 15 years, and are planning on taking down the wall of pine trees in the back this year, so 7 more.

and @Draug I'm not sure why they didn't try to salvage the wood on any of the *good* wood trees. I think it has to do with the fact that the elm had Dutch Elm disease, and the two maples were invested with carpenter ants. We do still have an oak that is ramrod straight for about 30 feet, but again I don't know how we'd be able to "sell" it. So we have them leave us a cord or so to burn.

Depends where you are, and what kind of wood it is. After the storms there should be some good sources of free wood in the East, if you can get there with a pickup and a chainsaw that is. It's much easier to have a cord of already-split wood delivered though. Around here we can get white oak with 10% cedar for $275 per cord this year, a little less for eucalyptus, and a lot less for pine or avocado. The oak and eucalyptus burn hot and long and with very little ash, the avocado burns clean but burns up fast, and the pine is not something you want to use on a regular basis because it coats the inside of the chimney with creosote, necessitating brushing more often. The cedar is just to add some nice smell to the oak. I hope this helps.

After scrounging free wood all my life, like when freeway road crews cut down trees that get too big for how close they are to the roadway, and helping my dad cut down people's trees just for the wood, I bowed to increasing age and a sore knee and shoulder and paid for two cords of wood two years ago, and just one last year, which lasted just fine. You should be aware that not all wood dealers are scrupulous--the first load I got was about half pine even though I paid for eucalyptus. It was a reddish pine and green, so it looked and hefted like eucalpytus, but the smell was a giveaway. I made them bring me another half cord or so for free, because firewood is pretty closely regulated and they could have gotten in a lot of trouble. Also watch out for people who want to sell you a truckload of wood at the price of a cord, because a truckload can mean anything, and at least in California, anything over about 1/4 cord has to be sold at a per cord price rather than any other measurement.