CHARLES BENTLEY Wooden Log Store

Is the CHARLES BENTLEY Wooden Log Store worth buying?

Yes, for a garden where the store stands in view of the house and you want logs kept dry without a fabric cover: the CHARLES BENTLEY Wooden Log Store costs £135.99 and 437 owners rate it 4.6. It is a 182.3 cm tall spruce tower with a slanted roof, a raised floor and a kindling shelf, standing in bare brown timber rather than powder-coated steel.

It is not the buy for anyone chasing litres for the money. Divide the £135.99 by the 737 litres inside and you get 18.5p a litre, the steepest rate on the page, while the £29.49 metal rack in the same ranking holds 920 litres at 3p. What the money buys is a store you are happy to look at for a decade and a stack that stays dry without you undoing anything first.

How much wood does the CHARLES BENTLEY Wooden Log Store hold?

It holds about 737 litres of logs, from a frame measuring 182.3 cm high, 76 cm wide and 53.2 cm deep. That is roughly three quarters of a cubic metre, and since hand-stacked logs are round and leave gaps, treat 737 litres as the box rather than the wood.

That height is where the capacity comes from, not the footprint. The 76 x 53.2 cm base is one of the narrowest here, so the store grows upwards against a fence rather than sideways along one, and the £135.99 works out at 41p for every centimetre of width it takes up.

What comes in the box with the CHARLES BENTLEY Wooden Log Store?

You get the flat-packed store, a tiered shelf, a kindling shelf and a full set of English assembly instructions, and the whole kit weighs 25 kg. The separate kindling shelf keeps small lighting wood off the main pile, which matters more than it sounds when you are loading a 182.3 cm stack in the dark.

It arrives as bare brown spruce from FSC certified Mixed Nordic woodland, pressure treated against rot, so it can stand outside from the day it goes up. The slatted sides and raised floor do the drying: air moves beneath the bottom row and through the stack, while the slanted roof throws rain off the back. Being unfinished, it also takes a stain or a paint in whatever colour suits the fence.

Where does the CHARLES BENTLEY Wooden Log Store fall short?

It is the dearest storage per litre on the page. £135.99 for 737 litres is 18.5p a litre, against 8.8p for the 913 litre Woodside at £79.99, so you are paying £56 more for 176 litres less, and the difference is spent on timber, the slanted roof and the way it looks.

It turns up flat packed and has to be built, and 25 kg of panels is a one-person job that goes much faster with a second pair of hands. No cover ships with it either, so nothing blocks rain driven in sideways; the roof and the slats are the shelter.

At 182.3 cm tall it also needs clear wall height above it, and the roof line will foul a low eave, a windowsill or a shed overhang. If the only space you have is under something, a 123 cm metal rack fits where this will not.

How does the CHARLES BENTLEY Wooden Log Store compare with other stores?

Against the Woodside Treated Wooden Log Store it costs £56 more and holds 176 litres less, 737 against 913, for a store that also arrives with a felt roof and a raised floor. The Woodside wins on litres and on price at £79.99; the Charles Bentley wins on feedback, 4.6 from 437 owners against 4.0 from 279, and on a base under 80 cm wide. Choose the Woodside for volume, the Charles Bentley for a store in sight of the kitchen window.

Against the VIVOHOME 6ft Firewood Storage it is £46 dearer, and the VIVOHOME holds 51 litres more, 788, at £89.99 with a 600D Oxford cover and zip included. Take the VIVOHOME when you want the cover in the box and the extra width, and take the Charles Bentley when you would rather have a roof over the logs than a fabric cover to roll back, and 4.6 from 437 owners behind it.