Very dry Eastern Red Cedar

I found a lot on Western Red Cedar but nothing on ERC. Its a different tree. Very dry and gets very hard when older. I've used it a lot around here and it burns very hot. My question is how big a log or split can i put in a stove without overheating it? Some of the wood i have is 6 to 9 on the moisture meter, the bark was peeled before storage about 5 or 6 years ago.

 

A bigger piece will burn with less heat than if it was split into smaller pieces( more surface area on multiple smaller splits). The better way to control a burn is to control combustion oxygen if possible.

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I have some cedar here but I am still letting it season so have not burned any yet.

 

Burns hot and fast just like eastern white pine. Depends on the stove, chimney and weather outside.
I don't think I've ever filled the TN19 more than 2/3 with pine. It can be a lot of flame for the first hour of burn.
I have a horizontal pipe coming out of the stove that tends to collect a little soot and I'd rather not ignite any creosote that might be hiding amongst it.
ERC is actually juniper. A lot come up first growth/pioneer species here in abandoned cow pastures. We also have some Northern White Cedar thatis actually arborvitae and Eastern white cedar that is actually a cypress. They all burn hot and fast.

 

billb3 i am getting the TN20 in a couple of weeks. How do you like your TN19? There is hardly any info on the TN20, its like nobody buys it.
The ERC we have is not the same type as the junipers that grow on the pasture around here. These are tall old stand trees a lot of them 100 + years old.
They do burn very hot and fast. I used to use them as fire starters for outdoor brush burning.

 

Just use it for kindling.

Sure is good looking wood.

 

When I lived in Eastern Wyoming about all I had to burn was ponderosa pine and I really liked finding a good cedar because it lasted longer in the stove. Made for better overnight burns.

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There are some beautiful boxes hidden in those pieces.

 

TN19: forget trying to get a fire going in a cold stove by leaving the front door open a crack, smoke comes out the back via the reburn tubes. We have 3 feet of horizontal chimney pipe which probably doesn't help. It's just a 2 cu ft stove so in Jan/Feb when you're really working it, with a couple inches of ashes and a couple inches of oak coals there isn't enough height left for a good load of splits or at least as many as you'd like so you wouldn't have to feed it again so soon. Other than that it's a fairly easy to use stove .

The ERC will get big if you give them time and thin them out and they have decent growing conditions. Same with the arborvitae. I have one that was planted when I was 4 or 5 and it's about 40 feet tall. Growing in bare gravel. It's not a pretty shrub/tree any more. The ERC here get overgrown by the pines and maples and most don't make it.


All the "cedars" and pines are nice to burn first thing in the morning in a cold stove. Especially any split down to kindling sizes.

 

Thanks billb3, I think the TN20 is a little bigger but i'm not sure how much. The extension service guy here told me the cedars where in the juniper family but not the same. There seem to be a lot of different kind of junipers.
I don't remember the names that was 7 or 8 years ago. When I'm done splitting I'm going to collect cedar tree skeletons. A lot of the smaller trees and saplings that die leave the hardwood, very hard and dry. Great kindling.

 

You are so right. But i don't know that i'll ever get to that. The basics seem to keep me too busy. I peeled a lot of cedar before we started building and saved odd branches.
Bugs got into the white wood so now i fear most of it will end up being firewood.
Speaking of basics got to get back to work. Have a great day.

 

Hi billb3, 9i just checked on the actual height of the fire box. That really is low. It looked a lot bigger. do you think 5" diameter or split side is too big?
I may have to split smaller. The big old open fire place i used to have took anything you threw at it, this is so different.

 

How much of the cedar do you have? You might just want to consider making it fire starter/kindling and split it as you have free time. Plus, you might could sell some of it on flea-bay for people looking for it to make boxes.

I do know what you mean about burning hot. I have not really burned pine and almost let the stove get too hot a couple of days back. I was busy in the little office so not in the same room as the stove. I went in to check and the stove was up to 600F STT; which is OK but ESW said don't do a long continuous burn at that rate but if I had not checked, the stove would have went higher. Flue temp was up near the no go zone as well. I cut the air back and all was good. If you find that that turning the air all the way back does not dampen the fire, then you might have a strong draft on the chimney and need a damper in the flue as well.

 

Hi Kimberly, we did order a damper just in case, it can't hurt to have it.
As for the cedar that is our main wood supply besides oak and not much else. There is a lot of disease in this humid climate. Most of the elms are dead or dying,
there were some really nice old ones. We have some hickory and black locust, the latter usually small trees but fast growing. Cedar should be ok for the smaller fires.
It doesn't get very cold here and when it does it's not for long. We are picking the chimney parts up tonight.

 

You'll want some big ones. I just split and don't worry about size. When I used to split by hand I'd start off kinda small but by noontime the split size were kinda large, as in good enough, gotta get this done. 5 or 6 inches isn't too big for sure. I've slid some slabs in that were as wide as the door. The problem with 7 or 8 inch square splits is trying to get three or four or more of them in. A 14 inch log split in two works but anything bigger I tend to split 4 ways. Anything bigger exclusively won't work - so you need some smaller ones to go along with fatties. . All small ones don't seem to last as long, but it might burn a bit hotter.
Mine are mostly 5 and 6 inches with a few bigger ones 8/9/10 and my smallest ones are about 4. All the same size might look good in the stack but in JAn/Feb I tend to fill the burn box a little tighter.

 

billb3 you are a jem Nobody has that info posted. True North doesn't publish the size of the fire box besides a generic 2 cu ft. they tell the max length but nothing about width or height of the firebox.
Looks like i'll be ok on most of the rounds but will have to split a bit smaller on some. That helps me soooo much
Just picked up the chimney parts. we are getting closer

 

I looked at the stove and it seems you will be loading north south as the longest. I started out in my stove east west but found that it was harder to load as logs want to roll forward. In order to know how long to cut your wood, you need to know firebox size and the diagram I saw did not give that. You also want to leave some space between the wood and the glass. Knowing how deep your fire box is will let you know if you need to shorten your wood so I would find that out if possible if the stove won't be arriving any time soon.

 

Thanks Kimberly, billb3 helped me straighten this out. He has a TN19 which is basically the same stove the TN 20 is the newer model (not always a good thing). The tn 20 has an ever so slightly larger firebox according to the manufacturer. However the only thing they let you know is the max length of 18" on the wood, no height or width of the fire box. As a result of not being able to find that out i split some of the wood too big but not as badly as i thought.
This is a wonderful forum.

 

Every find any beautiful girls?