2025 Woodsure Accreditation
Why is Woodsure Accreditation important?
The Woodsure Accreditation is the only recognised UK accreditation you can rely on when choosing a firewood of the highest consistent standards.
Poor quality, or inappropriate firewood affects the efficiency of your stove/fire and is influential to poor air quality issues. Approved firewood must have a moisture level of 20% or under.
Through rigorous testing and audits, you can be assured that firewood sold under this Accreditation has come from sustainably managed woodland and will have the right moisture content for your stove.
How do we achieve Woodsure Accreditation?
Woodsure generally contact us ahead of an audit to arrange a date for a visit. They already have a saved copy of our Quality Manual, so they know the exact specification of our firewood, for example, the log length and whether its softwood or hardwood. We get a separate certificate for hardwood and softwood, so it is important that both are audited.
The Quality Manual includes our processes, how we separate and house dried and un-dried firewood (to ensure there is no cross contamination) and our Health & Safety policies.
The Woodsure team spend time in our office, checking our timber suppliers (so they can ensure the timber comes from sustained woodland) – this involves auditing invoices and felling licences. They also run through our processes to understand if we have made any changes which may not be declared on our Quality Manual.
Woodsure are interested in any Retailers who stock our products, and spot visits are carried out to ensure our packaging is displaying the correct Accreditation logo with our unique number.
Finally, before going through to the wood yard, we discuss any complaints logged in the Complaints Book to understand the complaint, the results of any investigation carried out and any resolution or changes in processes which may have been made as a result of the complaint. This doesn’t take very long!
Once in the yard, Woodsure can walk freely around unaccompanied. They know which barns store ‘wet’ wood and which store ‘dry’ wood, and they are free to collect samples from any ‘dry’ barn. This is done by collecting a random sample of logs from all over the barn – they don’t simply pick up a few logs from the front at ground level!
Picture of one of our Kiln dried barns
They also visit the kiln and check our moisture logs – every load entering the kilns must have a logged moisture reading both entering the kiln and exiting the kiln as well as overall weights both pre and post kiln drying.
After a cup of coffee, the Woodsure team depart with their samples sealed in large containers and full testing is carried out off site, the results of which are sent to us later.
Our 2025 Results
Hardwood Logs
Our British Hardwood logs passed cleanly with no advisories:
Log 1 Average: 12.6%
Log 2 Average: 14%
Log 3 Average: 19.9%
Overall Average: 15.65%
Softwood Logs
Our British Softwood logs passed cleanly with no advisories:
Log 1 Average: 11.1%
Log 2 Average: 12%
Log 3 Average: 12.5%
Overall Average: 12.01%
If you are interested in why the logs had different moisture contents, it can be down to the size of each log (remember that the widths can vary) and the species of log (for example Beech and Oak are a lot denser than Ash) so, due to the fact that we dry mixed hardwood together in the kiln for the same amount of time, it is important that our Kiln Engineer understands what species forms the majority of each load so he can manage the time accordingly to get the best overall average moisture content.