Posted By Laura in #New!, Review, The Woodburner | 1 comment

Logs are not a thing I’ve ever thought much about. I mean, we’ve had a fire pit in the garden for years – but it’s fed from the pile of logs we’ve collected on walks in woods, leftover scraps from DIY projects, our Christmas trees, scavenging waste wood we see out and about – it grows organically without much thought.
But once had booked installation day for the new woodburner, we knew we had to consider the log supply a little more seriously.
Because  if we wanted to rely on it for heating the house (we do) then we need to ensure the fuel supply is steady and most of all efficient. So we started the hunt – and very quickly came across Certainly Wood.

And what was not  to like? A Herefordshire-based family business (okay, it’s not Dorset, but in our Made-in-GB woodburner theme this is still a fab British product)  who sell sustainable British firewood and kindling. The wood is sourced from sustainable British hardwood, and kiln dried logs or seasoned logs. As we needed to burn them straight away and not leave them to dry further, we opted for the kiln-dried sack, and once the log store was up we just had to wait patiently for delivery day.

Yoiks. The sack is far bigger in real life than we had anticipated in our brains – there was no way we were going to be lifting this up the steps. So it was clear immediately that we had need of a chain gang of willing helpers to empty the sack as soon as possible, as it was left half-blocking the path…

It took us just over half an hour with a team of 5 ferrying from the front step across the garden, over the railings into the bin yard area to Mr LittleStuff who was in charge of stacking in the Log Store.

In the end we almost-but-not-quite filled our Okeford Log Store – the 1.2m2 sack of logs not quite reaching it’s 1.3m2 capacity.
The logs themselves are fab – uniform length that will fit easily in our woodburner, well dried and smelling slightly toasted from the kiln-drying process.

Took a half way break to go admire the stacking, and turned to find one 13yr old standing on top of half a sack of logs. Obviously.

I would add a note of caution however – wear gloves. I have never removed so many splinters, we were all riddled with them. And you’ll notice in the video that Bear gets bits in her eye at one point that bother her for a while – the wood crumbs do fly around as they’re so dry. Which is obviously a good thing, but something to be aware of if young children are being forced to *cough* volunteer to help stack.

And how does it burn?

Yeah, quite nicely… :)

It’s fabulous! It takes hold really quickly – one small piece of firelighter under a pyramid of kindling, and as soon as the kindling has caught then one of the smaller logs goes on. And that’s it.

And because it’s a hardwood it doesn’t burn down too fast. There’s no smoke to be seen coming out the chimney, which tells us how dry the wood is. While the weather is so weirdly warm, we find one log at a time until it’s down to smouldering embers is more than enough to roast the whole side of the house. Just perfect.

The Small Bulk Bag of Kiln Dried Logs from Certainly Wood (which is 1.2m3) is £165.00. We strongly recommend them – a sustainable British family firm delivering ridiculously good product. What’s not to love?