Poo help please!

[Charlottechicken]

I've been trading eggs with my boss at work as her partner has an allotment. As we are trading veggies for eggs it is easy to work out the value.

 

However, I have a friend with a bit of woodland and would dearly love some of her logs for my woodburner. I don't want to be cheeky and ask for too much, but how much wood do you all think is fair for say 1/2 dozen eggs or even a dozen? So far I've not had to buy any wood so have no idea of the cost.

 

They have had a few trees chopped down, really big trees, at least 60 feet high, and have enough wood in piles for probably the next ten years, so to ask them to trade I wouldn't be depriving them of fuel. The wood isn't seasoned, so I would have to keep it for at least a year.

 

Any thoughts?

[Eggasperated]

We've just paid £130 for a ton of mixed seasoned hardwood logs -delivered, don't know if that's of any help to you.

[Couperwife]

what about asking how much wood they would give you for half a dozen eggs

 

then you could negotiate a deal of some kind, even something like half a dozen eggs every Saturday for the next 2 months?

 

this any use?

 

cathy

x

[Charlottechicken]

Ummm..

 

How much wood would you accept for, say, a dozen eggs though

 

Thanks for the price, how much in volume is a ton??

 

I think I'll have to ask for a single log

[Christian]

We pay around £70 for 2 cubic metres. Judging by the pain in my back when I have shifted them all and then stacked them in the log store, I think you are talking a fair few dozen boxes.

[Eggasperated]

 

Thanks for the price, how much in volume is a ton??

 

 

Loads

Probably 3-3½ cubic metres, depends how well I stack them in the log shed .

[Charlottechicken]

We pay around £70 for 2 cubic metres.

 

Ah, thanks Christian! Broken down that's £35 per cubic metre or a 10cm cube of wood = 3.5p.

 

Thanks, it's really helpful to have a volume, and a price to go with it!

[WitchHazel]

We pay around £70 for 2 cubic metres.

 

Ah, thanks Christian! Broken down that's £35 per cubic metre or a 10cm cube of wood = 3.5p.

 

Thanks, it's really helpful to have a volume, and a price to go with it!

 

That's not quite accurate as when the wood is delivered, it's not tightly packed/stacked, and the logs are irregular shapes, so there is less wood in a cubic metre than you are calculating. Lets say that a typical "log" is 30cm x 10cm x 10cm, (or 25cmx12cmx10cm) that would be 3000 cubic centimetres, and if they were all regular rectangular blocks of wood tightly packed, I'd get 333 per cubic metre. Let's assume a 10% loss for air gaps and logs not being regular, call it a round 300 per cubic metre.

 

We pay £80 per cubic metre, or £120 for 2 cubic metres, for one year seasoned hardwood, delivered but not stacked. That's cheap for our area. This means that in my case I would be paying about 26p (20p if I have 2 cubic metres delivered) per log. Christian would be paying around 12p per log.

 

Scaling that back to your smaller example (10x10x10), in my case that would cost me 8.5p (7p); Christian, 4p. (but don't forget you'd be having 900 of these smaller logs, and 900 x5p= potentially quite a lot of eggs)

 

btw, don't judge by weight. An unseasoned log, which isn't as good to burn, is full of water and is heavier than a seasoned log. The best logs are the ones where the bark is cracking and starting to come off.

 

EDITED TO ADD: I would definitely start by asking them what they see as a fair exchange. If the number they come up with is less eggs than the calculation I've just gone through, agree that it seems fair and go with it!

[Lavenders_Blue]

Sorry to jump in, as I know nothing about the price of logs! But as far as I am concerned the 'value' of something is what you are prepared to pay/offer for it and what the other person is prepared to take for it. This is as true for something that is priced up in a shop as something you are bartering - we've all seen things in shops that we like but see the price and think 'oh it's not worth that', so we don't buy.

I know this perhaps isn't terribly helpful to you, as you're looking for a starting point to see whether you should be offering 5 or 50 boxes of eggs, but I'd say think about how many logs you're after and how many boxes of eggs you're prepared to give away and then haggle a bit from there!

It's really difficult to think about things in non-monetary terms though, as it's the norm, and bartering is pretty much alien nowadays.

[Couperman]

I would say that this is about a dozen eggs worth just going by the price. It is 0.03 cubic meters, about a large carrier bag full.

 

http://www.coals2u.co.uk/real-wood-logs-net

 

It depends how much they like super fresh eggs I suppose and unseasoned logs must be worth a little bit less.

 

Kev.

[Christian]

Blimey Hazel, I didn't know you were Carol Vorderman!

 

The new log man we have found is very good value. The cheapest we have found and the most reliable. He even stacks all the wood for an extra £15. We don't pay for that, as my OCD couldn't handle untidy stacking

 

Running low again, so will give him a call. We need another log store, so will build one as some point.

 

Any luck with your bartering CC? Now that Spring is here the eggs should be flying in!

[The Dogmother]

I barter a lot and have just 'paid' some neighbours in eggs and homemade preserves for a whole load of wood that they've just taken out of their house when renovating. So re-used wood as well, thus doubly green

[Charlottechicken]

Thanks for bumping this up, I had forgotten all about it

 

Witchhazel - yes, I should've realised my calculation was the space the wood would fit into, not a cubic measurement of the wood itself

 

Lavenders Blue - That's a really interesting (and deep) point, as I was just doing a straight swap with actual prices, it has really made me think (so much that I have a headache ). After all, in a world of bartering, I think the poor would be poorer in a straight swap according to the value in money (judging by my own skills and what I have to offer)!

 

Wood is fairly expensive round here, however, I've been really lucky and now have a garden literally full of Victorian wood from two houses in the road which have undergone extensive work recently, so the bartering idea has not yet raised it's head. It is mainly old floorboards and joists, and is bone dry and very well seasoned! The latest lot has woodworm holes so it is all in green waste bags down the garden, but burns just beautifully! Both households were keen to get rid of it as there was so much it was going to cost a lot to dump, so I saved them the price of at least one skip each! I appear to have enough wood for at least this coming winter and maybe winter 2012 too There's about 3 cubic metres so far, no gaps though as the wood is all straight sided

 

I will broach the subject with my friend, and I'm sure it'll make for interesting conversation!

 

Thanks for all your contributions, it has been very thought provoking

[The Dogmother]

The actual worth of something changes according to who you speak to an their scale of values. Especially if it's something that they really want.