For me its just a few smaller splits of pine or spruce. This year Ive been doing a top down fire after work, then some modest pine or spruce splits and then an overnight burn of larch. If I do an evening fire with pine it gets hot quick and burns out leaving the house colder than I like in the morning. The larch being much higher in btus spreads it out more so that there are coals in the morning and a toasty house.
here its pine and uglies ,but its been so warm today looks like 70 again at this rate it will be a while before we dig into the good stuff
Shorts ,knots, but swells, crotches, cherry,hemlock, poplar and basswood. Actually have a small stove for shoulder season and the Woodchuck furnace does the work once its consistently below freezing. The furnace will take upto 29" . The shorter stuff gets separated out for the Englander.
That sounds pretty awesome to me. I would like to try all the different kinds of firewood. I just found a decent size dead limb on a mulberry yesterday and hope it is dry enough to burn this year as I have some mulberry in my stacks now but it won't be ready for a few years. As a kid I used to have fun throwing those sticky hedge apples but never have experienced burning it.
Red oak is my go-to wood once winter really gets going. I have burned some Black Locust but not enough to really say how hot it is. Never burned hedge - heard great things about it and would love to try it. Used to be I burned oak all the time, then I hit on the idea of saving the best wood for the coldest part of the year.
If you was closer I would let you take some of what I got to burn and try it. I never burn hard woods unless I have to or over night burns, We use soft maple as the main wood then like I said the hard woods then if it gets real cold then hedge.
This year it's cottonwood, red pine, and box elder. The sugar maple beech and hickory will come out on butt cold nights, with elm and ash for the tweener temps.
My approach is to burn the low btu stuff, the small stuff, the chunks and uglies, boxelder, walnut, and such, on days when I'm home, like days off, or weekends. It really doesn't matter what time of year for me, or how cold it is outside, I'll burn less desirable stuff when home. Now, overnight, and when I'm heading to work, I stuff the stove with oak, hickory, locust, mulberry, ash, or ash, sometimes cherry. Would like a garage full of hedge.
Hedge is the holy grail of wood! It's also knowns as Osage Orange. It's found in the Indiana area. It's a cherished wood to be envious of. I never saw it in my area of the North East. The best way to describe it is this: "Oak is to Hedge as Pine is to Oak"
When I got a new stove last season, I had to relearn a lot of things and burning in the fall was one of them. I read a lot of info saying to just make a small fire. I tried many times to make small fires, but was never able to get a clean burn. Over the summer I thought about it and figured out that I had to fill the fire box to get things working properly and I figured the only way to do this and not cook us out of the house was to use small wood pieces. I filled a rack with small splits, as small as some would consider to be kindling. It's a variety of wood, ash pine and various scraps. I fill the stove about 2/3 full with small splits in a crisscrossed fashion and put 2 medium splits on that. This method has been working great so far. The stove reaches desired temps quickly and settles to the coaling stage a lot sooner. I can start one of these fires in the morning and it keeps the house warm all day when the hi temp is around 50, without cooking us out of the house. Works great for overnight fires too.
Much like the other fellers, I burn the uglies, scraps, softwoods, and other quick burning woods. I do try to keep some smaller dry stuff around for starting the larger fires when it actually gets cold. Luckily my stove holds a fire for 12 hours and embers for 3 days, so I can clean up most of the small stuff now. Lots of free willow, box elder, and scrap woods free on craigslist after a windstorm.....
Don't care the species, I use up my "uglies" mostly. I only have 4 woods, Oak, Maple... "and lot's of it"... Cherry and some Hickory.
Really pine, maple , cedar, poplar. But I dont keep much on hand. Oak still burns better on low n slow burns. And it takes just as long to cut n split oak as pine so I may as well get better wood. With the big catalytic stove I can control the heat out put pretty good and rely less on wood species for that.
All Black locust is crazy. It sends my cat tempretures into the nuclear zone on a full box of it. That is if its on a higher air setting. I have to usually mix oak to keep the cat temps down some.
