I have heard several of you guys reference burning soft Maple for shoulder season. I normally burn Ash, Oak, and lots of standing dead Elm, so I have no experience with the soft woods in my stove. I am clearing out some soft Maples for a part time job and he doesn't want the wood and I figure if I cut it I should burn it!!!! So what can I expect after it seasons------more ash and shorter burn times or is there more to it? Thanks fellas.
Yes. Pine, Poplar, Red Maple (last 2 are soft hardwoods) for milder temps. Saves the better wood for the real cold. I don't need the long coaling and extra heat during those times, that you get with more dense hardwoods. The Red Maple will keep the stove warm longer than I at first thought it would. It's a good shoulder season and early/late winter wood. If you had nothing else, it would more than suffice all winter, with slightly more frequent reloads. Absotively take it home.
I'm still burning through what was left of last years uglies from some sugar and silver maple. The silver is soft and yes it coals more and doesn't last as long but like papadave said, it still does the job. One thing nice about the soft stuff is it starts up a little easier and faster than dense woods do. Makes it nice since you normally start a lot of shoulder season fires anyway when you aren't reloading 24/7
I'm still on popular and apple uglies.. half cord maybe.. but unless it gets cold below 0 I will leave ash and hard maple til it does. IS is throwing easy 10 hours of heat out of shoulder wood. cause there is still 4 cord on wood deck and I refuse to unstack and stack again..
Hell I haven't even started on the shorts and ugliest yet, I'm still burning the chit wood. They are talking highs in the twenties til mid Jan now.
Still rockin' my shoulder wood too and getting 12 hours! Tonight'll be a test though. Supposed to get down to 7* so we'll see what happens. Just like the rest of you, I'm usually well in to my hardwood stash by now. It's turned in to a bit of a game for me - how long in to the heating season will the soft woods take me?
I had put up 2 1/2 cord of pine for shoulder burns but it's been so mild here we have only had 3 fires to date. At this rate I will only use one cord of the pine till the end of December and save the rest for next year. Every thing else is Red and White Oak mostly Red and that's enough for the next 3+ seasons. I love to cut all winter so looks like I will be selling some more cords of Oak this winter.
Yeah, what papadave said. But lower btu woods ( shoulder wood) will put out less btu's, and less heat too. That's a good thing, unless you like opening windows or walking around in skivies.
Have burned 1/3 cord of silver maple so far. Mixed in a little ash and oak for my overnight burns the last 2 nights as it was down into the low 20's. Gonna be burning the silver maple till its gone though as I have my denser woods stacked behind it. Great fall weather here in NY. Hope it holds for a while, I have my eye on a big dead locust on a friends property.
I'm only approaching about 1/3cord burned so far. It's in the low 40's outside now, and the house is 70-72*F on just 2 loads of box elder today!! Last year at this time I just breaking into my 2nd cord of wood to be burned. If this keeps up; I may get to 3 year ahead this Winter. I've already replaced what I burned already with new stuff+ a lot more. Have lines on trees that neighbors want down, and access to more wood just 2 miles away!!!
Ronaldo, you can expect a bit of a surprise with the soft maple. It is one of the quickest drying woods there are. 6 months usually do it fine. It also burns good and leaves plenty of coals. No, you won't get as long of a burn as oak; a little shorter than ash and oak but still a decent burn. I recall a few years when we burned almost exclusively soft maple and got along just fine. Just had to get up a bit earlier to add wood to the fire on the really cold nights. In addition, if you make kindling out of the soft maple you will like it. Soft maple is one of the easiest splitting woods there are and for kindling, it dries fast then lights off easy and burns hot. Hard to beat. One more big plus for us is that deer love to eat the tips off the soft maple limbs. Therefore, in hard winters we will often drop several for the deer to give them a bit of a boost for their food source.
We really do not sort out shoulder season wood but I do tend to try to burn more cherry, soft maple and anything partially punky in spring and fall. But rarely have punk. Usually have cherry and soft maple. Otherwise, white ash, white ash and white ash.
Around here; soft maple usually means, silver maple!! Great firewood as BWS said; as it splits relatively easy (by hand), seasons fast, and is usually quite available to us hoarders and scroungers!!! Heated my house on a lot of silver maple/soft maple last year!!!
Sounds good! I did notice A LOT of little buds on the tips of the limbs. I am stacking the brush(limbs) and figured I'd have rabbits interested, but didn't know about the deer liking them.
