Save money on winter fuel bills

There is nothing nicer than the flames of a fire in winter, making us feel warmer just by looking at them. But did you know that using Logs as fuel is a cheaper and more eco friendly way to keep warm in winter? It is cheaper than coal gas or electric heating, and is a renewable and sustainable source of heating.

Tips:

Buy wood as dry as possible.

It is very simple really, Dry (seasoned) logs will burn longer and give more heat out, and will therefore work out cheaper.

Buy as early as you can.

Spring if possible, for cheaper 'wet' wood, and let it air dry over summer and Autumn. It is fine to buy later than Spring, just make sure it is seasoned by the time you burn it. Check with your supplier what you are buying, while burning 'wet' wood is still cheaper than other fuels it is much better to burn 'dry'.

Keep the logs in a log store

They will air dry. This is very important, and will make wood fuel even more economical. By storing under cover in a wood store the logs will not reabsorb the water they have lost being seasoned.

Bring some logs inside

to house dry for a few days prior to burning, try to always have enough ‘house dried’ logs ready for your fire.

You can burn unseasoned (wet) wood, but it will burn quicker and with less heat, and will leave more sticky soot, meaning you need the chimney cleaned more often. But it looks just as nice, smells just as nice, and is still cheap.

A coal grate is not really suitable for wood, so cover it with a metal base plate for best results. Reduce the area of the lowest part of fire with sloping fire bricks to deepen the ash and charcoal bed but leaving more space for logs above.

Busy Summer

Well, here at Wood Stores we had a lovely uptake on the offer to preorder our Log Stores for Autumn. Customers were thinking well ahead for storing their winter fuel. Always a good idea to buy logs in advance for good seasoning, because 'dry' wood burns longer and warmer so is very cost effective.

We are all very busy working to fill current orders, and delivery dates for new orders are into early September now.

I like to ask customers why they chose our stores for their homes, and the answer we get is that they are attractive, competitively priced, and come ready constructed. And, Jake our dog helps, he often gets a mention :) So I made Ginger George pose too, and he shows off the small Chimnea log stores to purrfection (oh yes, and my sense of humour was mentioned a couple of times too).


The smaller logstores have proved very popular too, but we found the one drawback is they are still a size that needs Pallet delivery, so is the same cost as the big woodstores. So, we are in the process of looking at having another smaller size that can be sent by courier instead of pallet.

Sadie

Order now for delivery anytime up to October, pay on delivery

Setting up the website in April, and then getting indexed so quickly, was a nice start to selling online. In all honesty it has been a whirlwind experience. We didn’t expect people to be thinking of their storage for winter fuel in Spring and Summer, and it has been a pleasant surprise to find that the design is well liked and sales keep happening. It hasn’t been 3 months yet, but we have far exceeded the orders we expected for 6 months. I think this is because we have a good design at a good price, but having been so busy have not really had time to look into this properly yet!

We are now ordering wood in at this years prices for what we predict will be the amount needed, so, if you are planning to have a log store in future, the offer is on for ordering now and not paying until just before it is delivered. This way we both win, you get the log store you need at current cost without having to pay till you need it, and we know better how much wood to order.

The start of summer

It has been a busy couple of weeks since the Bewdley Show, with log stores steadily going out to customers and more orders coming in. It is very satisfying when we hear from a customer that they are happy with their order. At the moment we have a 3 to 4 week waiting list, which for early summer is very good indeed.

Hopefully by the autumn when things get even busier we will have moved to a new bigger workshop. Plans are being made now to build a larger workshop, with the aim to be in by early autumn.

Timber prices traditionally rise in late summer, so earlybirds are getting their orders in at the current price and getting a bargain.

New Recycle boxes wood store Special Opening Offer £135

We have at last added the Recycle Boxes Store to the items we have on offer. This was delayed a little by doing the Discover Bewdley show at Bank Holiday weekend, which took a fair bit of time to organise. It was a very enjoyable weekend though, and has resulted in alot of interest and orders. The Recycle box store went on public view for the first time and thankfully met a very favorable reception! They are on at a special opening offer price, so act now, they will only stay this price for the next few weeks.

Google Indexed

Am very pleased that my website is now indexed in Google search! What a lovely Easter present to discover that the site can now be searched for. Daily visitors to the site are increasing, and I even got a phone call for an order on Good Friday!

Seems to be alot of people want to order my dog. Now this has to be stopped. I have told Jake he is not to talk to strangers, unfortunately he views every stranger as a potential ball thrower, what to do is the question!

Just starting out with log stores

Hello and thank you for reading my blog. I wanted to tell you how I started making Wood Stores, and how the website came into being.

We have an open fire in our living room, and a morso in the front room, so have been using logs for fuel for about 10 years. We have good friends who have a business in wood, so have a good source for logs.

In the depths of winter chipping ice or snow off the logs to bring inside is no fun, and having piles of logs at front and back of the house was starting to irritate my darling wife. She keep busy most of the time with her business, Heavenly Soaps, but found plenty of time to mention the logs. I told her, Logs can't be stacked neatly, they need air circulating to keep them dry and season them. But in the end it was a case of "make a log store or the heating is going on and logs are banned"!

So I made a log store. And it met with her approval. So much so she asked me to make one for someone else. Then someone saw the log store and wanted one. And the rest is history as they say.

When we moved to our home, 10 years ago, I built our kitchen from reclaimed wood. The local council had introduced recycling bins, and Mrs Heavenly Soaps requested a store for them, so the first recycle bin store was made way back then. It is only now that I am working on a prototype to sell as a flat pack, as Sadie says, she can't be the only one who hates the site of them and wants a nice hidey hole to put them in.

Anyway, best get back to it, these wood stores don't build themselves. If you have time take a look at the new website, credit for that has to go to Mrs Heavenly though, I'm just the man who makes them.