softer hardwoods...some thoughts

I hear a lot of people talk about softer hardwoods such as maple, cherry, sycamore, hack as
"Shoulder season wood"..while this is somewhat true i believe they are also great cold weather woods also for the simple fact that they dont coal near as much as the harder woods locust, hedge, oak, hickory, mullberry etc...you can get alot of heat from the softer woods and they burn down quickly, which means fuller reloads..dont get me wrong i love my super hard woods but i usually reserve them for overnites...thoughts?

 

I love woods like soft maple and cherry! If I was retired I wouldn't worry about the better hardwoods since the softer ones season so quickly and are easier for me to scrounge around here. At the start of this season I had slated 2 cords of soft maple, a cord of ash and a cord of red oak. I usually mix all season long except for when it's bitter cold.

 

I like cherry, maple, poplar, all as a wood to mix in with the longer burning hardwoods like hickory and ash and elm.

Granted I have a fireplace still, but if I simply burn the longer lasting higher but wood, the wife doesn't like the lack of brightness a softer wood gives off when mixed in with the longer burn woods.

 

I burn a decent amount of Cherry. In fact the stove has been eating cherry all weekend. I certainly can tell a difference between the hickory, but I like cherry firewood cause it's plentiful around here, easy to work with, smells good cutting it, splitting it and burning it, and does a nice job of producing BTU's.

 

Split oak,

I like mixing in softer woods in the morning to get a hot fire going and burn down the coals. Amazing how quick you can get a hot fire with small splits of softer dry wood.

I have medium lower btu wood like cherry, sycamore, red maple and then I have the really low btu wood such as Hemlock and Aspen that I use for starting fires and burning coals down. If I ever need more heat, but the stove is pretty full of hardwoods, I just mix in a few splits of Aspen or Hemlock to get the fire going quick and hot. I always save the oak, hickory, beech for overnights or when we're not home.

All the different woods have a purpose and give us a lot of options. In that same line of thinking, different split sizes are nice to have also for the same reasons.

Mark

 

I don't mess around with less than primo wood anymore unless it is in the way. With my setup I need long continuous heat...no quick hot fires needed.

If I had a different stove in a different location than the basement I would almost certainly overheat the house with a load of oak...Hedge or black locust in the fall and spring. This house goes through BTUs like women go through shoes...so cutting a load of cherry when a load of hedge is equally as easy to get isn't worth my time.

 

Normally I save Silver Maple for when its 35 to 45 degrees but occasionally will put on a big oddball or gnarly chunk before going to sleep or leaving for the day.
Most of those are burned up in the Spring/Fall,but there's usually a couple left over.

Still have almost 1 cord (about half what was dropped off) of Silver from Feb 2014.Havent burned any since early January.Plus tree service contact dumped another 1.5 cords of Silver in December 2014.It was all processed/split/stacked in a couple weeks,that wont be burned until Spring 2016.

I can usually get by half of the season by burning the softer woods,but this Jan-Feb has been much colder than last year.

 

I've leaned to appreciate some soft maple this year for times when I need some good heat but know I'll want to be able to load the stove full in 5 hrs or so. I generally burn a good amount of cherry as it is plentiful around here but this year just because the way the stacks were I haven't burnt a lot, more american elm which is a change for me and I like the way it off gasses. That is the other thing I am really starting to see is with the cat stove some of the lesser than top end stuff gas better and with the cat cooking I get some real nice heat.

 

Oak and hickory are hard to come by around here. I don't mind the maple, cherry, hackberry and other woods like that at all. The best part is that I don't have to sit there and stare at a stack of wood for 3 years waiting for it to dry out enough to burn properly.

 

Just one question before I go to bed. These soft-hardwoods you speak off. Is that like going out to eat sea food and ordering Jumbo shrimp?

 

On the really cold days if we are coaling up I like to burn a load of these shoulder woods to give the mulberry and locust coals a chance fo burn down. No shame in it.

 

An oxymoron...lol

 

I envy folks that have a great variety of woods available to them. Around here for me it's mostly oak and pine, with some maple. I'd love to have more cherry, locust, beech, birch, etc. I've only burned a very small amount of these woods over the years. 95% oak burner here.

 

People think I am crazy but I love Softwood! It dries quick and you can burn a load hot and fast to get the stove warmed up and a nice coal bed without worrying about coaling. I always keep some pin e and maple around to burn down coals with. The first couple of months of this heating season I heated the house exclusively on Buckeye and Yellow Pine with no problem at all getting 10-11 hours burns and keeping the house temps up.

 

Soft hardwoods are the primo woods for me, I love burning our abundant west coast Big leaf maple and white Birch when I can get it

 

I agree at night I get way better heat and length of burn out of a load of Shagbark Hickory and White Oak.!
Thinking about this a bit more part of the reason I probably don't complain about temp swings with my stove like some with non cats do is I tend to run loads of softwood during early and late burn season getting about the same burn time and half the heat output.

 

The only wood I seperate is Oak, 2 reasons. It burns hotter and I use it exclusively for colder days mixed in with softer woods and for very cold overnites, all oak. And secondly becuase it dries differently than most other hardwoods, so I keep it amongst it's own kind and store it that way too. I don't have the coaling issues like I used to have so the big coals oak produces isn't something I need to worry about. All the other wood that has been collected (hoarded) is dried together and stored that way too. When these two piles (oak and the rest of the hardwoods) get stored on my covered porch during the winter, I seperate them there too. It took years to get this system down to where it works for me and the heater, but I really like where it's come.

 

I don't have enough storage room to be storing oak for 3 years, so I sell it off if I get some. I turn free oak down. The only way you will see oak in my trailer is if I am being paid to haul it off. It then gets split in the front yard and sold roadside. Paid twice from the same load....woot! Any other wood, hard or soft, gets stacked together.

 

I won't hardly mess with oak either unless its really easy to get too. Even then I pass it up sometimes. I have enough room to store it too. I might do what your doing and process it and sell it to fund a couple new saws. If it don't sell I will have some oak to burn in a couple years