this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2025
64 points (95.7% liked)
Australia
4412 readers
152 users here now
A place to discuss Australia and important Australian issues.
Before you post:
If you're posting anything related to:
- The Environment, post it to Aussie Environment
- Politics, post it to Australian Politics
- World News/Events, post it to World News
- A question to Australians (from outside) post it to Ask an Australian
If you're posting Australian News (not opinion or discussion pieces) post it to Australian News
Rules
This community is run under the rules of aussie.zone. In addition to those rules:
- When posting news articles use the source headline and place your commentary in a separate comment
Banner Photo
Congratulations to @Tau@aussie.zone who had the most upvoted submission to our banner photo competition
Recommended and Related Communities
Be sure to check out and subscribe to our related communities on aussie.zone:
- Australian News
- World News (from an Australian Perspective)
- Australian Politics
- Aussie Environment
- Ask an Australian
- AusFinance
- Pictures
- AusLegal
- Aussie Frugal Living
- Cars (Australia)
- Coffee
- Chat
- Aussie Zone Meta
- bapcsalesaustralia
- Food Australia
- Aussie Memes
Plus other communities for sport and major cities.
https://aussie.zone/communities
Moderation
Since Kbin doesn't show Lemmy Moderators, I'll list them here. Also note that Kbin does not distinguish moderator comments.
Additionally, we have our instance admins: @lodion@aussie.zone and @Nath@aussie.zone
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Fires are horrible. Very difficult to controll the heat output, they also are very costly to run, require a lot of maintenance, and require a lot of space to store the wood.
They're about the best feeling source of heat around, so not horrible.
It's not particularly difficult to control the heat output, it's just a matter of how you load it and how much air you let in. They don't do well for extremely low heat output, but at that sort of cold just put on a jumper instead.
Used to cost about $20 a tonne for wood a few years back when I was in a place with a fire, plus maybe another $50 per tonne in fuel for the ute and saws to gather it (so ~$70 a tonne total). Was a hell of a lot cheaper than gas and a lot cheaper than electricity.
It's just popping up onto the roof once a year and taking ash out every week or so, I never found it a big deal.
This I'll grant you, given how tiny modern yards are. You need a square metre or two for the wood and another couple for room to split it - not much in a traditional suburban backyard but it's noticeable in newer blocks where you have bugger all room around the house.
You go and collect your own wood? From land you own? Is it sustainably sourced? I don't know where you live but it's a few hundred a ton, here, now and has been for about 10 years.
That was buying firewood permits off NSW Forestry in the broader region around Canberra, which I looked and they're still doing at $16 per tonne (albeit only in the further away forests at this point). They give areas you can pick firewood from after logging operations, you're just not allowed to fell trees. You do have to be able to go out and saw it then haul it back yourself. If you've got a current collection area near you it's a very cost effective method, even if you have to drive a fair way it still works out cheaper than buying it elsewhere.