How can you burn green wood?

SHORT: What techniques can someone use to burn 'green' unseasoned firewood?

LONG:
I am curious how people, literally, burn unseasoned wood. Right now, I am selling oak that was felled 16 months ago but stayed in log form until bucked and split since September. To every buyer that comes by, they think it looks fabulous. It is nice looking wood but it is NOT seasoned.

What I do... I always ask people...

1. Do you have any wood left over from last year?
2. Do you have a stove, open fireplace, insert fireplace or outdoor pit?
3. Is this wood you'll buy going to one location?

If they do not have any wood left over from last year, I offer to sell them a mix of this 16 mo. old but recently split wood and some seasoned wood (maple, oak, other) I have. Many of them don't care and think the recently split wood (which looks far better than recently split green wood) is ready to go. Primo! But it's NOT. Still measures low 30s moisture.

Out of curiosity, I've tried twice recently and I cannot get this 16 mo. old wood to burn in my fireplace, which has a natural gas lighter pipe. Turn off that gas and the pitiful fire goes out. So, how do they burn it if they don't have any dry wood to make a hot fire and then top off with this until it's dry? Drying in like, a year or two.

Now, I did just clean out all the ash in my fireplace and it seems a fireplace burns easier with a cushion of ash. Is that correct? I also have memories of in my youth burning wood like I am selling from a fireplace just like this. That red oak we'd buy was gorgeous but still red in color and very heavy. I dunno how but we burned it and it was in a natural gas fireplace like I currently have.

Curious what you know about how people burn this stuff.

 

I was raised burning green wood cut one truck load at a time. Persimmon for years. Blackjack before that.
Keep a good bed of coals. Load the stove. The fire will simmer and hiss until it boils dry. Then burn too hot because the damper had to be left open to boil the wood dry. Repeat.
Be thankful for your weekly chimney fire that occurs while you’re awake, because you were awake (this time) and because it cleans the chimney. We never swept the chimney, ever.

True story. No exaggeration. That’s how everyone I knew did it.
When I started heating my own home, I stayed one year ahead on my oak firewood and thought I was doing great. And it was compared to fresh cut wood. I have since learned better thanks to the forums.

 

With the stove door open... least wise that's what my dumb bil always did.
Sure doesn't make as much heat as dry wood.... but it is better than no heat at all.

 

My landlord burns partly seasoned wood all the time. He sends smoke signals to me, thuis letting me know hos fire is going.

Years back when my dad burned the basement fireplace for heat, he would sometimes crib stack green wood we cut that day on the big hearth and eventually add a split or two to the blazing fire after a week or two. Really dont know how dry it was but his claim was how hot it burned. The fireplace room would get nice and toasty and the house was warmer with the fire going.

I dont burn green wood unless its in the firepit outside.

 

That's an interesting post. And I am curious... you found a plentiful supply of persimmon? Did your family target persimmon? I see just one of those now and then, they are not as prolific as other species.

 

Growing up with a buck stove on one end and a open fireplace at the other. Life of the hissing fire was how we burned wood. We would go cut a load when there was only a few nights left of wood. Red oak was the norm. Kindling was in a wood ammo crate next to along with a stack of the weeks daily newspaper. And whatever was the cheapest bottle of motor oil, was us kid’s job to make sure it didn’t go out. If it did we babysat that fire, feeding it newspaper, kindling and oil until it had a bed of coals to boil the sap dry and keep flames all by its lonesome.

Once I was allowed to go get firewood by myself I noticed that the standing dead trees were lighter when loading the tractor bucket. I was young so I was looking for small trees that I didn’t have to split, could easily move the rounds after all the hand-sawing I was looking for the easy button. By happenstance we started to notice the fire burned good and no hiss.

 

My parents bought 52 acres with a 3-4 acre persimmon thicket on it. Most were about 14” DBH. Few limbs. So thick they grew like pines. Easy cutting so that’s what we burned.
I thought persimmon was poor firewood. Come to find out, it’s good high BTU wood that burns great. Just needs to be dried like any other wood. Before that, we had access to lots of Blackjack.

 

Simple answer - by putting forth more effort than I care to.

 

Lady just called for green wood. Adamant about it. I quizzed her and she said she has dry wood and wants the green to add to her fire so she doesn't have to tend it so much and also for overnight. I dunno if that has merit, I have read people say it doesn't make sense. I kinda see her point since we are in the deep south and it is not nearly as cold here as you burners up north.

A man yesterday came and bought some and requested green. Said he has a cast iron stove and he wants green! I would love to see how he gets it going. (Of course my 'green' is, say, 32% to 38% MC versus, say, 45% for truly green oak.)

 

My dad finally built a metal rack that went around the extended chimney flue, up and over with a metal brace and a pulley bolted on. A heavy (did I say HEAVY?) weight that hung above the chimney on said bracket. When stove would quit drawing, dad would go out and unwrap the small cable holding the weight and drop it and then drop it again until it broke through the creosote build up. Did this for years. Have no idea what the interior chimney flue looks like.

I am guilty of it burning in my OWB. I have little guilt as it is what it is for us and our situation.

 

Now there’s the correct answer.
It can be done. But why make life harder than it has to be. I’m getting too old to be running around on the roof, especially in the winter.

 

Risking a chimney fire doesn't seem to be worth it, i hope people burning green wood are monitoring flue temps.

 

I would never attempt to burn green wood, but I have burned dodgy half seasoned wood mixed with seasoned. You split it smaller and mix with dry wood. You put the unseasoned wood closest to the doghouse so it has a better chance to boil the moisture out (with more air obviously). Or, you take one log and bury it to the back bottom, so it takes a 3 hour ride in a bunch of heat before it goes up. Also, you check your chimney for build up. Again, this is with somewhat seasoned wood, not green green stuff. No clue how you'd get something that was a live tree standing last week burning today.

 

Used to do it all the time as a kid.
Dad was a steam engineer and knew combustion quite well.
Between him and my mom you'd swear they were running a power plant.
No smoke or creosote but man did we go through the wood!!
Temperature was moderated by opening the windows.

 

My father in law “sometimes you can see the creosote dripping from the pipe”

 

How do you do it bed of coals and ton of forced air and getting less heat

add being a lil too

 

In my opinion, wet wood is, at best a waste of money and, at the worst, it's just dangerous to burn.

If you have a catalyst type stove pretend you're Nancy Regan and "Just say NO!" Wet wood will trash the catalyst in short order.

If I was an attorney, with the knowledge I have about wood burning, and I had a client who purchased a winter's worth of 'seasoned' wood that wasn't, and his or her house burned because of a chimney fire, I keep the seller tied up in court untill he, and his insurance company screamed uncle! In civil court the evidentiary rules are much different than criminal court. No beyond a reasonable doubt needed, only a preponderance of the evidence. But I'm not an attorney and I don't play one on T. V.

 

W

What is the legal definition of “seasoned”?