Firewood Part 1

I recently told a friend, heating your home with wood heat is a full time job. It's often backbreaking, sweaty and dirty, but it's very rewarding. A lot of the work is preparation, splitting, stacking, etc. Below is one of many observations after heating my home with wood heat for three years:

Observation 1: If you are buying your firewood, your energy savings are going to be greatly marginalized. True 4x4x8 firewood cords will cost you in the range of $125-$200. When you're heating your house with firewood, you will burn through a cord SHOCKINGLY fast. Depending on how fast your home loses heat, you might find that you'll spend as much on wood as you would on gas or electric. To truly realize home energy savings on firewood, you need to get it for free. You can do this several ways...

1. Finding wood is pretty easy if you're looking for it. Typically during the Spring, trees are being felled because of disease, age, damage, etc. Some tree trimmers will leave the wood on the curb, free for the taking. You can find 90% of your wood this way, but be quick, there are others just like you looking for the wood too!
   
2. I've never done this, but I've been told some local forests will sell yearly permits for $10-$50 which allow you to take dead trees. You are responsible for sawing and hauling the wood out.
3. Did you know some municipal dumps have a LARGE amount of green waste? Typically tree limbs, branches and sometimes good chunks of wood. Local municipalities dump the wood from city owned trees. It's a shame really, particularly in this economy, they could split and season the wood themselves and sell it back to citizens at a discount...