Log splitter hire makes sense when a storm has brought down trees, a woodland has been thinned, or you have a winter’s worth of rounds stacked up and no wish to split them by hand. We hire the Ifor Williams trailed hydraulic log splitter from our Okehampton depot, delivered across Devon, Cornwall, Somerset and Dorset. This guide covers how to set up and run a splitting session, how to season firewood properly, and what the Ready to Burn rules mean if you plan to sell any of it.
In this guide
Who hires a log splitter?
Most of our splitter hires come from estates, farms, golf courses and landowners dealing with timber they already have. Typical situations include:
- Storm damage after an autumn or winter gale, which can leave fallen trees across hedges, drives and fairways.
- Woodland thinning or hedge laying that produces a pile of cordwood.
- Ash dieback felling, which has left many landowners with more timber than usual.
- Households with a wood burner and a garden tree taken down by a tree surgeon.
- Estate and course managers processing their own timber for staff, holiday lets or clubhouse fires.
The splitter is part of our groundscare range on the sports and landscaping equipment page, alongside the GL&D chippers that deal with the brash.
Why a trailed hydraulic splitter?
Splitting by hand with an axe or maul is fine for a few barrowloads. For a fallen oak or a stack of beech rounds, a hydraulic splitter is faster, more consistent and far easier on your back. Being trailed means it can be moved around a yard or brought close to where the timber lies, instead of carrying heavy rounds a long way. That matters on a sloping West Country estate where the wood has come down in an awkward spot.
Setting up a log splitter hire day
A good layout halves the work. Set up so rounds come in on one side, split logs go out on the other and nobody has to walk across the working area.
- Pick firm, level ground with room around the splitter. Chock the wheels.
- Cross-cut rounds first to a length that suits your stove and the splitter, with square ends so they sit steady.
- Stack rounds within easy reach of the operator to cut down on lifting and carrying.
- Put a trailer, crate or builder’s bag on the output side to catch split logs.
- Keep the area clear of children, dogs and spectators, and keep off-cuts and bark swept away so nobody trips.
Safe use
A hydraulic splitter is slow but very powerful, and it will not stop for a finger. Read the operating instructions when it arrives and ask us anything you are unsure of.
- Only one person should operate the controls, and only trained, competent people should use it.
- Never bypass or tie down any control or guard fitted to the machine.
- Wear safety boots, gloves and eye protection. Chips and bark can fly when wood splits.
- Keep hands clear of the wedge and the split line, and do not hold the round while it splits.
- Do not try to split knotty or twisted pieces by force. Turn them, split from the other end, or set them aside.
- Stop the machine before clearing jams or moving it.
If you employ people who will use the splitter, the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 (PUWER) apply. In broad terms, employers must make sure work equipment is suitable, maintained, used only by people who have had adequate information and training, and fitted with the controls and guards it needs. Brief anyone using the hired splitter on its controls before they start, and keep the instructions with the machine.
Hire is self-drive and the hirer is responsible for safe operation. Insurance is not automatically included, so arrange cover for hired equipment through your insurer or a specialist such as insurance4plant.
Seasoning firewood after splitting
Freshly felled wood is full of water. Burning it wet wastes most of its energy drying itself out, blackens stove glass, tars up chimneys and produces more smoke. Splitting is the first step in drying, because it exposes more surface area.
- Split soon after felling. Split logs dry far faster than whole rounds.
- Stack off the ground on pallets or rails, so damp does not wick up.
- Cover the top, not the sides. Keep rain off while letting wind pass through.
- Choose a sunny, breezy spot. In the damp South West, airflow matters as much as time.
- Check with a moisture meter. Split a log and test the fresh face. Aim for 20% moisture or less before burning.
Drying times vary with species, log size and the weather. Many hardwoods take well over a year in a Devon or Cornish climate, while softwoods dry faster. Test rather than guess. Bring logs indoors a few days before burning so the surface dries off, but do not store large quantities of wet wood inside, where it can add damp to the house.
Building a log stack that dries
A good stack is narrow enough for air to pass through and stable enough not to collapse. Build it no more than a couple of logs deep, or leave gaps between rows, with the bark side up on the top layer to shed rain. Brace the ends with criss-crossed logs or posts so the stack stays upright as it shrinks.
Face the long side to the prevailing wind, which in most of Devon and Cornwall comes from the south west, and keep it clear of walls so air can move behind it. Label each stack with the date it was split, so you know which to burn first.
Selling firewood: the Ready to Burn rules
If you plan to sell logs in England, there are rules to know about. GOV.UK guidance on selling wood for domestic use in England explains that wood sold in volumes under 2 cubic metres must be certified Ready to Burn, with a moisture content of 20% or less. Wood sold in larger volumes does not need certification, but the seller must give customers a notice on drying and storing it. Local authorities enforce the rules. Check the current guidance before you start selling, as requirements can change.
Smoke control areas
Parts of some towns and cities are smoke control areas, where only certain approved appliances can burn wood. The GOV.UK guidance says that sellers must tell customers they can only burn wood in an exempt appliance within a smoke control area. If you are supplying logs to households in a town, include that information, and point customers to their local council to check whether they live in one.
Log splitter hire: how long do you need?
Most landowners clear a pile in a day or two, but a big storm clear-up or a felled woodland can take a week. Weekly hire is our most popular period and gives you room to work around the weather and other jobs. If you are clearing timber as part of a bigger estate project, ask about combining the splitter with a chipper, a compact tractor or other agricultural equipment.
A rough rule is to look at how the work will be staffed. One person on their own will spend much of the day fetching rounds and stacking logs, so the splitter stands idle a lot of the time. Two or three people, with one on the controls and the others feeding and stacking, keep it busy and get through a pile far quicker. If you can only spare one person, a longer hire period lets the work fit around other jobs.
Preparing the rounds before the splitter arrives
A log splitter is only as quick as the supply of rounds feeding it. Most of the work on a splitting day is cross-cutting, carrying and stacking, so getting the timber ready in advance means the hire is spent splitting rather than waiting.
- Cut to stove length plus a little. Measure your stove or fireplace and cut rounds slightly shorter than the firebox depth, allowing room to load them. Consistent lengths stack better and split more predictably.
- Square the ends. A round with a slanted face can tip or kick out sideways when the wedge bites. Square cuts sit flat and split cleanly.
- Sort by size. Put the large, heavy rounds closest to the splitter and the small ones further away. Some small rounds will not need splitting at all.
- Set aside the awkward pieces. Forks, crotches and heavily knotted sections are slow and can jam. Deal with them last, or keep them for a bonfire or habitat pile.
- Clear metal and stone. Hedge and boundary trees often have wire, nails or fence staples grown into them. Look before you split.
Chainsaw work needs a trained, competent operator with the right protective clothing. HSE expects anyone using a chainsaw at work to have received adequate training. If the timber is not yet cut into rounds, get that done by someone qualified before the splitter is delivered.
Which timber splits easily?
Species, moisture and grain all change how a round behaves on the splitter. This table gives a general guide based on common South West timber.
| Timber | Splitting | Firewood notes |
|---|---|---|
| Ash | Usually splits cleanly with straight grain | Lower moisture than many species when felled, but still needs seasoning |
| Oak | Splits well when fresh, harder once dry | Dense and slow to season, often well over a year |
| Beech | Splits fairly easily when green | Good firewood once properly dry. Split promptly to help it dry |
| Sycamore | Generally straightforward | Dries reasonably quickly if split and stacked well |
| Birch | Splits easily | Split soon after felling, as the bark holds moisture and unsplit rounds can rot |
| Elm | Stringy, interlocked grain, can be hard work | Burns well once dry, but take your time on the splitter |
| Conifers | Varies, knots slow things down | Light easily and dry faster, but burn quickly |
Ash dieback and felling rules
Ash dieback has left many Devon and Cornish landowners dealing with dying ash along hedges, roads and woodland edges. The timber makes good firewood, but there are two things to know before you process it.
First, dead and dying ash becomes brittle and can behave unpredictably when felled, so felling affected trees is work for experienced, qualified tree surgeons or forestry contractors. Once the tree is down and cut into rounds, the log splitter takes over.
Second, felling trees can need permission. GOV.UK guidance on when you need a tree felling licence explains that, in England, you generally need a licence from the Forestry Commission to fell more than 5 cubic metres of qualifying trees in any calendar quarter, and that only 2 of those 5 cubic metres can be sold. Exemptions apply, and trees under a Tree Preservation Order or in a conservation area need the local council’s consent. This is general information, so check the current guidance before any felling.
A worked example: an estate storm clear-up
This is an illustrative scenario, not a real customer. After a winter gale, a small estate in south Devon has three beech and two ash trees down across a drive and a paddock. A tree surgeon makes them safe and cuts the trunks into rounds, and the chipper deals with the brash.
- Layout: the splitter is delivered to the hardstanding by the barn, and the rounds are brought to it with a compact tractor and loader rather than carried by hand.
- Splitting: one person operates the splitter while a second keeps rounds within reach and takes split logs to the stack.
- Stacking: the logs go straight onto pallets in an open-sided shed, with the beech and ash kept separate so the faster-drying wood can be used first.
- Hire period: a weekly hire allows splitting to fit around other estate work and the weather.
- Next winter: the logs are checked with a moisture meter in autumn, and only those at 20% or below are burned.
The bulk of the time saving in a job like this comes from bringing the rounds to the splitter with a machine and having a second person stacking.
What affects the cost of log splitter hire
We do not publish hire prices. WhatsApp us for a current quote. These are the main factors:
- Hire period: daily for a prepared pile, weekly for a larger clear-up.
- Delivery: quoted separately, based on distance from our depot near Okehampton.
- Preparation: having the rounds cut, sorted and close to the splitter is the single biggest way to shorten the hire.
- Extras: a chipper, compact tractor or trailer to move rounds and logs.
- Fuel and cleaning: the splitter arrives ready to work. Fuel used is the hirer’s cost, and it should go back clean.
- Insurance: not included automatically.
Estates and grounds teams with regular timber work might compare repeated log splitter hire bookings against a Flex Hire tier, which lets you swap between kit for one monthly fee.
Delivery, moving the splitter and return
We deliver the splitter to your site and collect it at the end. Tell us where it should be left, the access route and whether the ground there is firm. Somebody should be there to sign the delivery note, look the machine over with the driver and go through the controls.
If you need to move the splitter around a yard or estate, do it with the machine stopped and the wedge retracted, using a suitable vehicle on private ground. If you plan to tow it on a public road, check the towing licence rules on GOV.UK and the vehicle’s towing limit first, or ask us to move it.
At the end of the hire, sweep off bark and chips, leave the splitter where our vehicle can reach it and call or WhatsApp us to off-hire. Charges run until the off-hire is confirmed. Our hire FAQs cover payment, delivery and returns.
Frequently asked questions
How big a log will the splitter take?
That depends on length and diameter. Tell us what you are splitting and we will confirm whether it suits, or how to cut the rounds first.
Can I split wet, freshly felled wood?
Yes. Green wood often splits more easily than seasoned wood, and splitting early helps it dry faster.
Do I need a vehicle to move the splitter?
We deliver and collect. Tell us where on site you want it, and whether you will need to move it around once it is there.
Which wood is best for firewood?
Well-seasoned hardwoods such as ash, oak and beech burn long and hot. Softwoods light easily and dry faster but burn quicker. Dryness matters more than species.
Can a log splitter handle a whole fallen tree?
It splits the rounds once the tree has been cut up. The trunk and big limbs need to be cross-cut by a trained chainsaw operator first, and the brash is best dealt with by a chipper.
How much firewood will I get from a tree?
It varies hugely with the size and species of the tree. Rather than guess, measure the rounds once cut and stack the split logs, which gives you a clear volume.
Can I sell logs from wood I have split myself?
Yes, but in England wood sold in volumes under 2 cubic metres must be certified Ready to Burn, and larger volumes need a notice on drying and storing. See the section above and check the current GOV.UK guidance.
Book log splitter hire
WhatsApp or call 07841 036064, Monday to Friday 7:30am to 5:30pm, with your postcode, dates, access details and a rough idea of how much timber you have. We will confirm availability and a current quote. For written quotes or accounts, use our contact page.
