Free Firewood For Your Own Use and Sale or Trade to Others

Last winter I switched to wood heat after seeing how expensive one month of heating oil cost. This year the heating oil is $1 MORE than it was last year so I've been keeping an eye out for firewood all year long.

In my last post I discussed how to get free or cheap wood stoves so you can check it if you want to add this to the sort of things you salvage and recycle.

I'm lucky in that I live in a rural Western county and I am able to collect dead or fallen trees from nearby National Forest lands. Over the Spring and Summer my wife and I did haul in around 5 cords of cedar, pine and fir plus a small amount of oak. The cost for the permits here is $10 per cord. A cord, for those who don't know, is a stack of split firewood 4 feet by 8 feet by 4 feet or 128 cubic feet. At my elevation in the Sierra Cascades most folks burn around 5 cords per year.

As I did my salvage work I always had my eye out for firewood. Almost everywhere folks have trees fall down and evey time I see one, I stop and ask for it. Most of the time the folks say yes take it away or, if they burn wood themselves, I offer to split it with them if I do all the cutting into rounds (they split). I've gotten quite a bit of wood this way.

Another way I've gotten firewood is as a byproduct of my recent building salvage for used lumber. I've ended up with quite a pile of broken, warped and short pieces of lumber that makes great firewood and kindling.

Also, recently, I did a gigantic cleanup of all sorts of miscellaneous material from an estate sale. There were several acres of forest and as I made my rounds picking up various things I noted many downed trees. Near the end when it was clear to the folks that I would be doing what I said and take everything, I asked if I could take the downed trees if there was time. They agreed so I made sure I had time to do so. My last 3 truck and trailer loads was all nice dry firewood logs. I cut to a length that I could handle myself to save time and then cut into rounds and split at home.

So now I've got about 10 cords of dry firewood. 4 or 5 for myself and the rest for the following year or to trade for something else I can sell or use myself.

Good Luck

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Free and Cheap Wood Stove Recycling and Reuse

Hi - I should have told you about this a few months ago, but I've been so busy with my own salvage work I've been a bit slow on the posts. I'll try to post more frequently.

At any rate, it looks like it's going to be a long cold winter in many parts of the U.S. Heating fuel prices are very high. Around here heating oil is $1 a gallon more than it was last year - same with propane. Natural gas is higher as well.

At the same time, scrap iron prices are high. I've seen many loads waiting in lines at the scrap yards with wood stoves in them. Sure a 300 pound woodstove is worth $30 or $40 in scrap but it is worth so much more as a working wood stove.

Over the last months I've picked up 6 wood stoves. Two were free, one I paid $60 for and the other two I bought for scrap prices off of trucks on their way to the scrap yard. The free ones I picked up with a wanted listing in Craigslist. Seems that once someone remodels and changes heating modes or upgrades their wood stove the old one often ends up in the back yard or garage. They're too heavy for most folks to handle, but they can be handled quite easily by one person.

I can handle them and I'm 66 years old. Any stove that I've run into I can tip on its side onto a 4 wheel dolly. Then it's quite easy to roll it onto my Harbor Freight tilt bed trailer.

With heating costs so high, woodstoves are coming back in vogue and there's a ready market for them. The last free one I got is a really nice LOPI. It retails for $1800. This one was in a back yard and the door and air control were all frozen up and it was very rusty. Some soaking with WD-40 and some high heat paint was all it took to get it working properly. As I type this I'm looking across my living room at the flames through the glass door of this little LOPI gem.

The other 5 plus the one I replaced with the LOPI are sold or will be sold soon. Depending on the year and model I can get anywhere from $250 to $1000 for a wood stove and I haven't run into one that I couldn't refurbish for $25 or less. Just be sure to stick to the welded steel plate ones. Some of the older cast iron types leak and/or have cracks.

So, try running a wanted ad in your local Craigslist, tell people you deal with, keep an eye out for old stoves in yards. If you start looking for them, you'll find them.

I'm still hunting for more and will continue to do so all year as I believe good used wood stoves is a growing market.

Good Luck

Mike

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Estate Sale Cleanups Equal Big Profits

There never seems to be an end to new opportunities in this business. Recently a friend came over and said "you gotta get over there." He had gone to an estate sale the previous weekend and went back the Monday after to pickup a few things he had purchased. The people had 3 days left to dispose of all the stuff that didn't sell. So my friend told them about me. I drove over right away and was amazed - lumber of all sorts, plumbing and electrical supplies, firewood, large timbers, an old railroad trestle in parts, irrigation pipe and tubing, drip systems, fencing, roofing, gas cans full of gas, railroad rails... on and on. As usual, I said "I can do it."

I did "do it." Working 20 hours a day, I made 14 trips with my pickup and 12 foot trailer (I borrowed the trailer from a friend). Retail value of what I collected has to be in the $20,000 range. I'll end up using about 1/2 of it and expect to sell the rest for around $5,000 cash or similar value in trade for things I need or can sell.

The above is not that unusual for me although I'd never cleaned up an estate sale before. I've been in this community for just a bit over a year and already folks are seeing me as the "salvage guy." it's all word of mouth and reputation. Do a great job for someone and they'll find more deals for you.

www.RecyclingSecrets.com for Free Home Based Salvage and Recycling Information Including: Metals, Deconstruction and Used Building Materials, Gold and Precious Metals and E-Waste. Check out: How to Make Money in the Home Based Salvage and Recycling Business