News

Spring may finally be here, but there will still be plenty of cool days and cold nights over the next few months when you’ll want to comfort and warmth of your wood fire. It’s also the ideal season for barbecues and outdoor dining. Now is the right time to make sure that you have enough firewood to see you through until the warm weather really sets in.

This time of year, however, sourcing firewood can be easier said than done, as the firewood season is wrapping up in Australia. Right now, mixed hardwood is not available in the Southern Highlands and surrounds, due to it having sold out over winter.

The great news is that, here at Timber and Wood, we have top quality Pure QLD ironbark firewood for sale. This is the only firewood currently available in the area.

Pure QLD ironbark Firewood

Firewood is graded based on its available heat – this refers to how much heat the wood gives off when it is burning. Hardwood emits more energy and heat than softwood does. The heavier or denser the wood, the longer it will burn.

QLD ironbark is a dense, durable, and versatile hardwood. Used for carpentry, construction, flooring and decking, it is also premium firewood. It is the preferred firewood of many homeowners in Australia.

Benefits of Ironbark Firewood:

• Burns at high temperatures
• Does not release a lot of smoke or ash residue
• Burns longer than other types of firewood
• Renewable energy source
• Does not release harmful pollutants
• Environmentally safe
• Ideal for grilling and barbecuing food

Visit Timber and Wood

Timber and Wood is proud to be your premium firewood supplier in the Southern Highlands. Choose us for:

• Ordering Firewood Online
• $0 Delivery Fee
• Pick Up Available
• Free Kindling with every cubic metre of Firewood

Call us today on 0414949287 or email [email protected], or simply order now to secure your supply of Ironbark firewood to see you through the rest of the cold weather of 2023. We look forward to hearing from you.

Spring has sprung! The warmer weather and blooming flowers make spending time outside irresistible, and you’ll want your garden to look its best for the new season.

Just like your home’s interior feels amazing with a thorough spring clean, so does your garden and yard. With the season’s glorious sunny days and balmy breezes, there’s no better time to get outside and ready your garden for the coming months. It’s also a really important time to get your garden ready for summer – cleaning out and preparing garden beds, pruning, replanting, and cleaning patios and gutters.

But what if you don’t have the time or the inclination to do all those tasks that need to be done?

If you’re in the Southern Highlands, Timber and Wood has the garden maintenance solutions you seek!

Garden Maintenance Jobs to do in Spring

1. Lawn Care: ensure your lawn is primed for the coming months. Renovate it or lay new turf. This includes weeding, aerating, and setting (and sticking to) a mowing schedule.
2. Fertilising: lawns and plants require feeding as they burst into spring growth and blooming. Lawns need specialised fertilisers, while garden beds can do well with organic-based fertilisers or compost. Potted plants need slow-release or liquid feed.
3. Cleaning Up: now is the time to clean up your entire yard – prune dead growth and get rid of branches which overhang your roof. Clean out garden beds and old pots which you wish to replant. Remove garden waste. It’s also the perfect time to clean out gutters (important for bushfire safety) and pressure clean hard surfaces like patios, driveways, and pool areas – you’ll be amazed just how much dirt they hold.
4. Mulching: renew your mulch layer on garden beds and potted plants so that they cope with the coming summer heat.
5. Pruning: prune winter-blooming plants as they come to the end of their blooming cycle, as well as those that bloom in early spring (after they have bloomed!). This includes roses, camellias, lilacs, and magnolias. Prune the dead or damaged wood.
6. Planting: This is the fun part!Plant the following vegetables now: cabbage, strawberry, carrot, capsicum, celery, zucchini, tomato, leeks, lettuce, spinach, cucumber, broccoli, beetroot, and endive.Herbs to plant include chives, coriander, basil, mint, dill, sage, thyme, oregano, and parsley.

   Spring flowers to plant now in the Southern Highlands include alyssum, aster, carnation, chrysanthemum, cornflower, cosmos, dahlia, dianthus, marigold, petunia, zinnia, foxglove, lobelia, and hollyhocks. (The bonus of planting flowers and herbs is that they attract beneficial bees, butterflies, and ladybugs to your garden).

7. Pest Control: protect your food plants and flowers from pests using natural pest control methods on an ongoing basis.

Why Hire Timber and Wood for your Garden Maintenance?

Timber and Wood is delighted to offer comprehensive garden maintenance services to residents and business clients in Bowral and the wider Southern Highlands area, including:

• Lawn Mowing
• Weeding
• Edging
• Hedge Trimming
• Pruning
• Garden Waste Removal
• Pressure Washing Hard Surfaces
• Gutter Cleaning

Whatever your garden maintenance needs, we are here to help! No job is too big or too small – from simple weeding or lawn mowing to a complete garden revamp, we have the tools, the experience, and the passion to get out there and make your yard or garden look fantastic.

Get your garden ready for the warmer months in the Southern Highlands with Timber and Wood’s garden maintenance services. With service you can trust, we guarantee to not only meet but to exceed your expectations.

We offer free quotes, so why not give us a call to have a chat about what you need today?

Call 0484 233 383 or email [email protected].

Alternatively, you can complete our online contact form and we will get back to you ASAP.

Is your home looking spick and span for spring? Not only is now the perfect time to throw open your windows and have a thorough clean, but it’s also time to take care of all the “little things”- general repairs and odd jobs that you know you need to do but just never seem to get to.

Property maintenance in this way is crucial to keeping your home looking great, and also to ensure that small issues don’t become bigger problems over time.

But what if you’re not much of a handyman or handywoman, or if you just don’t have time to get it all done? If you live in the Southern Highlands, call Timber and Wood! We are your go-to property maintenance solutions provider.

Property Maintenance – What to do this spring

The list of odd jobs to do in spring could be as long as you want to make it – there’s always something you can tinker with. But there are some basic jobs which come around each year and are usually lingering issues which worsen over the winter months. The arrival of spring’s warmer weather signals that it’s the right time to tackle them.

1. Indoor Painting Touch-ups: spruce up chipped, flaking, or tired doors, doorways, window frames and sills, cornices, and skirting boards with a fresh coat of paint. You’ll be amazed by how much difference such a small job makes, without requiring to paint walls and ceilings.
2. Pressure Cleaning: there’s a remarkable amount of dirt and grit which becomes ingrained in driveways, pathways, pavers, tiles, walls, patios and poolsides. Wet areas are also vulnerable to developing mould, mildew, and moss. Pressure cleaning in spring will breath new life into your hard surfaces outdoors.
3. Clean Gutters and Drains: remove leaf litter, twigs, and other debris which has built up over autumn and winter. Clogged gutters can cause water damage to you home – this is very expensive to fix. Additionally, in bushfire-prone areas, leaf litter in gutters and on rooftops presents a greater risk to your property. While you’re at it, check your roof for cracked, loose, or broken tiles and other damage, and get it fixed before water damage becomes an issue in your home.
4. Chimney/Fireplace Cleaning: the end of winter is the perfect time to have your wood fireplace and chimney cleaned, so they will be fresh and clear and ready for use next autumn.
5. Trim Hedges: prune trees and shrubs and trim hedges to remove dead wood and encourage bushy regrowth. (Doing this later than at the beginning of spring may damage fresh new growth on your plants). General garden maintenance should also be on your agenda.
6. General Repairs: this includes everything from fixing rotting fences, decking boards, and railings, to staining decks, replacing creaky hinges or loose door or cupboard handles, to re-sealing your shower recess and cleaning your oven.
7. Outdoor Painting: winter can wreak havoc on your outdoor painted areas. Touchups and repainting can prevent bigger issues from developing as well as make your home look fantastic. Scrape, prime, and paint bubbling or peeling paint, especially doors, door frames, window frames, eaves, wooden fences, and gates.

*Note that property maintenance is even more crucial if you’re preparing to sell your home in the coming months!

Call Timber & Wood for Spring Property Maintenance

Conveniently situated in Bowral, Timber and Wood offers a wide range of property maintenance services to clients throughout the beautiful Southern Highlands area. With free quotes and competitive pricing, we have the handyman solutions you seek to suit your budget.

Our friendly and experienced staff are safety compliant at all times and we guarantee quality workmanship and results you’ll be more than satisfied by.

We specialise in:

• Indoor and Outdoor Jobs
• General Maintenance
• Repairs
• Gutter Cleaning
• Pressure Washing
• Painting
• Garden maintenance including lawn mowing and hedge trimming
• Chimney Cleaning
• Waste Removal

No matter what your home maintenance requirements, we are here to help, and no job is too big or too small.

Contact Timber and Wood today for our high-quality property maintenance services. Our friendly team works professionally and with integrity, and we’ll have your home looking fresh and summer-ready in no time!

Call 0484 233 383 or email [email protected]. We look forward to hearing from you.

As any experienced camper knows, there is an art to building the perfect fire. Haphazardly throwing an arm load of logs together won’t cut it. The same thing is true about starting a fire in your wood burning fireplace. If you want to build a good fire that will burn for a long time and produce a lot of heat without a lot of smoke, you need to have a safe fire starter, the right fuel, and an understanding of the basics.

There are three fundamental things that you have to have to start a fire: heat (a fire starter), fuel and oxygen. These three essential components of a fire are called the fire triangle. You cannot build a fire without all three. Heat is what starts the fire. Fuel and oxygen are what feed the fire to keep it going.

Building a Fire 101

Step 1 – Open the Damper
The damper is usually located at the point where the firebox and the chimney meet though some fireplaces have a damper at the top of the chimney. It is a vent that can be opened or closed.
When you aren’t using your fireplace, the damper should be kept closed to keep drafts out. When you are using your fireplace, it should be opened to let oxygen in and smoke out. If the damper won’t open, you should wait to use your fireplace until it is fixed so that your home doesn’t fill up with carbon monoxide and smoke.

Step 2 – Choose the Right Fuel
The kindling and wood that you choose to fuel your fire are important. Newsprint or scraps of white paper (with non-toxic dyes) along with small sticks or chips of wood, work best for kindling. You should not use magazine pages that are heavily saturated with ink or pieces of painted or varnished wood because they can produce toxic smoke when they burn.

You should choose seasoned logs for firewood. Wood is considered “seasoned” when it has dried out for at least six months. If you build a fire with wood that isn’t seasoned or is waterlogged it will create a lot of smoke and emit little heat. It is also better to burn hardwoods, like oak, maple and cherry wood, instead of softwoods, like pine or firs. Hardwoods are better than softwoods because they burn longer and produce less smoke.

Step 3 – Stack the Logs and Kindling Correctly
To build a fire that will burn for a long time without a lot of work, you need to stack the firewood and kindling so that oxygen can get in. The best way to do this is to place rolled up pieces of newspaper or scraps of paper under the grate and lay pieces of kindling over it. Then stack the large logs on top in a zigzag pattern so that each log is touching but there are gaps in between them.

Step 4 – Light the Kindling with a Safe Fire Starter
Use either a long match or a lighter with a long handle to ignite the paper and kindling. Never use lighter fluid! Lighter fluid burns at a very high temperature and produces large flames that can easily cause a house fire.

We have a lot of experience building fires here at Timber and Wood Bowral.

We know from experience that you can start the perfect fire by following these 4 easy steps.

Let us know if this guide helps you… Or give us a call if you have another question about your fireplace!

As the nights draw in, there’s nothing cosier than a crackling log fire or warming woodburner. Here is our expert guide on the history of the woodfire, the best wood to burn for the perfect blaze and tips on how to light a fire.

Woodsman and author Vincent Thurkettle explains the history behind the wood fire and the role it played in the evolution of the human species, along with tips on how to light a fire, best wood to burn and storage.

History of the wood fire

Evidence is growing that we had fire long before we were actually human. Many anthropologists now believe that it was almost two million years ago that our early hominid ancestors first learned to tame wild fire, to domesticate it and reap the rewards of light, warmth, protection and cooked food. Curiously, it is the last of these benefits that provides the best evidence.

While early hearth sites have been studied by archaeologists, centuries of wind and rain have caused most to melt back into the environment and become indistinguishable from the burnt remains of natural fires. The further we go back, the harder it is to say whether a slight hollow with scorched earth and charcoal fragments is a hearth or simply the remains of a burnt-out tree stump.

The physical evidence for very early, deliberate fire sites is sparse and often tenuous and many scientists now believe that the best evidence for the earliest use of fire is in fact not the hearth sites at all – rather, it’s us, the human mind and body.

We have small mouths and teeth and a short digestive tract when compared to the other primates. It seems that our bodies may have physically adapted to consume cooked food. Cooking meat and plants breaks down starch and proteins, making it easier to absorb the food energy. This pre-digestion of our raw food through cooking allows the day’s energy requirement to be absorbed much more quickly. It’s been calculated that a human would need to eat for 9.3 hours a day if all of the day’s food was eaten raw and unprocessed. Researchers have observed that non-human primates spend an average of 48% of their day eating, compared to only 4.7% for humans.

These differences in our body’s digestive system are strong evidence of an unimaginably long relationship with cooked food and the curious phenomenon of fire.

But it is not just a physical adaptation: we are mentally different, too. Even today, people tend to sit around a campfire in a circle – which is fun, but not important. But just imagine the effect on our nascent social development to sit and face each other for hours each evening. The mastery of fire had lengthened our day; sunset no longer heralded a time of predators and fear, darkness no longer held dominion – and our species blossomed.

Fire was staggeringly important to the development of modern humans and even today has an essential role in our lives – we still delight in the joy, warmth and self-sufficiency that a full woodshed promises as the nights draw in and winter arrives.

How to light a fire

There is nothing to beat the cheerful blaze of a log fire, the home feels cosy and ready for all that winter can throw at us. With a little know-how you can have a perfect fire ready in minutes and a steady ‘low’ fire for the rest of the day. Here is how to create the perfect log fire in five simple steps.

1. You’ll need an ample supply of fully-seasoned firewood logs. These logs should have a moisture content of around 20% and it’s best to have a range of sizes. Fill the wood basket in daylight to save going out to the woodshed after dark and remember that an open fire will burn around five times more than a wood-burning stove.
2. Good kindling is essential. Keep a small basket of dry sticks split to 1-2 cm diameter. These can be supplemented by fallen sticks and branch wood gathered during country walks – beech sticks are best. Pine cones and dried orange peel are also really good kindling. See video below for tips from Vincent on how to make kindling.
3. Many people like to clean out the grate and remove the white fire ash – this is wrong. Leave a blanket of ash 3–5 cm deep and make a slight saucer sized depression in the middle where the kindling will go. The ash is brilliant at holding the very first embers and will help the fire to get going more quickly – it will also protect the inside of the woodstove prolonging its life.
4. Place a large log to the back of the fire and a smaller log to the left and right of the fire. You now have a log lined enclosure to light the fire, with an ash base. Place the material you will first light, rolled up paper, shreds of cardboard or a tiny piece of firelighter, in this space and arrange several sticks of kindling on top. Have a couple of small split logs, say 5-10cm diameter, ready to place on top of the kindling once you are sure it has lit. With a wood stove have of all the air vents open at this stage and maybe the door just slightly open.
5. The trick is to get the fire burning really well for 30 – 45 minutes to warm the chimney and get the stove up to working temperature – about 200 C if you have a stove thermometer. Then partly close the stove air vents, so that you have beautiful rolling flames above the fire. Feed your fire one or two fresh logs when the burning logs are half embers. Keeping the fire ‘low’, that is burning just enough wood to keep the stove running efficiently, is an art, but worth learning as it is the secret to an easy life of perfect fires.

How to store and season your firewood.

As winter bites, it feels good to have a store full of well-seasoned logs and know that, whatever nature or the modern world throws at you – in storms, power cuts or shortages – your home will be warm. But you need to be sure you have enough wood of the right quality. Knowing how much to buy in is a matter of judgement and depends on how much space you have to store your logs.

The importance of seasoning cannot be overstated. Logs dried out to a moisture content of between 15–25% are said to be fully seasoned. You can check this with a moisture meter – readily available and easy to use.

Drying is very important because it takes a lot of heat energy to boil off the moisture in wood – energy that should instead be heating your home. Hardwood logs will burn when freshly felled but have a moisture content of about 35%: so a kilo of fresh hardwood logs contains roughly 0.35 litre of watery sap, a little over half a pint. Just visualise the heat needed to boil this water away in a saucepan – what a waste.

Needing the perfect fire? We can help.

Call us on 0484 233 383.

Here we have our new skid-loader being put to work. Making it easier to provide our clients with a faster, more efficient service for our pick up’s and deliveries.

We have just stocked up on our well seasoned mixed hardwood. Get your orders in and stay warm this winter ?? Prices start at $160 per cubic meter.

Just got our new Mitsubishi Fuso tipper truck. Making deliveries quick and easy, being a city cab makes it very accessible. Goes almost anywhere a car could so we can place your orders as close as possible if not, exactly where you like it!