Serious Question - Why am I splitting firewood

[bob haller]

i had a family friend who heated their home with wood, and bragged about how much money they saved over oil heat:)

I then asked how much work does it take?

Oh the wood is free from a summer camp they owned:)

BUT they had to drive there every weekend for the summer to cut split and haul the wood out of their mini forest. then haul the wood home and stack and let dry for a year.

as i pointed out to them oil was cheaper.

if compared to the 3 of them having minimum wage jobs putting the same number of hours in working at the local store, and adding in the cost of gasoline to haul the many truckloads of wood home each weekend.

one family member admitted it started out fun but became a never ending job he hated the constamt push to be ready for heat, concerned all summer long...........

free heat wasnt free at all

[DerbyDad03]

Have you ever seen someone actually *laugh* when they say "Chop your own wood and it will warm you twice."?

In fact, there are many believe that Henry Ford was not even talking about chopping wood when he said it.

The phrase can be taken to mean "When you take the initiative and do something on your own, you will be rewarded over and over again."

In other words, it was never meant to be a joke.

[DerbyDad03]

re: "if compared to the 3 of them having minimum wage jobs putting the same number of hours in working at the local store"

We often hear people say "It's not worth my time to do it myself. My time is worth $X/hour and I can pay someone less than that to do it for me."

That logic only works if you actually earn $X/hour during the time that you would have otherwise been working on the project. If you hire a guy to do it and then go sit on your butt shoveling Cheetos into your mouth, then it didn't make economic sense to hire it out. The money left your pocket and wasn't replaced.

In other words, unless the 3 of them actually went out and got that minimum wage job, you can't use it as a comparison. If they pay for the oil but don't work to offset the cost, then their cash flow will show an outflow which might be more than the cost of the gas required to get the wood.

I don't know that it will, because I don't know the actual numbers, but I do know that you can't factor wages into the equation if the wages don't exist.

[bob haller]

well at minimum its a comparison of value.

to say I save 3 grand a year by heating with wood is fine:)

but, it night cst the proud person 500 bucks in gasoline, wear and tear on vehicle.

so now theire savings is $2500 bucks:)

Now if just one person works minimum wage for a take home after taxes SS and all the rest of 5 bucks per hour....

just 500 hours to be equal, and way more convenient no tending the fire, no emptying ashes, no hauling the wood inside in freezing weather.

under 10 hours a week to be equal $500 divided by 50 weeks, allowing 2 weeks for vacation

now wether or not the individual choose to work the job isnt really revelant, this still details costs

[LSMFT]

You'll never catch a lazy person doing anything that is good for their health.

[Red]

Ditto. I'm 70 and enjoy the exercise of splitting my own wood with a sledge & wedge. I keep 5 years worth of split firewood under cover just in case I get 'old'. I burn the oldest first, never have to worry if it's dry enough to burn, & refill the shed every spring. Easy to do when it's off your own land. Red

[DerbyDad03]

Sure it details the cost, but it's a fruitless exercise. I think we can be pretty sure that no one in that family is going to take the minimum wage job to offset the cost of changing from wood to oil.

If the savings is $3K before gas & maintenance and $2.5K after "operating expenses", it's still a savings of $2.5K.

You can't negate that savings by bringing non-existent (and never going to be existent) wages into the equation and claiming that oil would be cheaper.

Why not say:

"If you won the lottery, the oil would be cheaper." "If Grandma leaves you $5 million, the oil would be cheaper" "If all of the members of usenet chipped in enough to give you $2.5K/ year the oil would be cheaper"

Ain't none of those things gonna happen, just like the job at the mini- mart ain't gonna happen, so they aren't relevant to the cost comparison.

[Harry K]

One can also deduct the cost of a gym membership to get the same physical conditioning cutting wood gives one. In my case (I do 10 plus cords/yr) I would probably be grossly overweight or dead without the excercise I get. I can't stand to 'excercise for the sake of excercise' Got a treadmill, stationary bike, tread climber and couldn't stand the boredom of using any of them.

Harry K

[Harry K]

Same here. 76 heat almost 100% with wood. I have a TroyBilt splitter but it only gets used ont he knotty/tough stuff. Got around 40 cords of Black Locust cut/split/stacked and still cutting B Locust whenever I can. That stuff doesn't rot. This year I am burning stuff I cut back in either 93 or 96 (can't recall which) and even the stuff in direct contact with the ground has only a bit of surface detioration on the 'dirt' side.

Current project is 7 big B Locust to be removed from a Farmers farmstead. That should take me a couple months at the speed I work any more.

Harry K