Not to be confused with the other burning garbage thread... What about paper products?Paper towels, kleenex, cardboard, corrugated cardboard, paper, books? Many of this stuff is made from trees and has a very low moisture content. Surely we can burn some paper products?Many of us use some of these items to start our fires-- in fact, most stove manufacturers suggest using newspaper to start your fire. But a lot of these products have extra in them, and then there is the dreaded "shinny" newspaper. And some advert are coated with a wax, Menards uses this paper for instance. And then there are adhessives, sometimes mixed in. And why are cereal and soda boxes so shinny, is this the same stuff that they use on newspapers? So how can we tell what is safe to burn and what is not? Can you just burn a little bit outside and watch the type of smoke it puts off and tell what is likely safe to burn? If it looks like a new pope was elected it's safe to burn inside? Discuss.
I need to start burning my discarded purchase orders instead of tossing them in the recycling bin. 99 out of 100 times that I go to the dump the recycling rolloff bins are full to the top. I have a few customers that live in the same town as me, and I dont want them to see PO's to me from their direct competitors. sitting at the top of the bin. Need to break that habit while the stove is running.
This is a good topic to discuss..... Something that people don't realize, pigments used in paper products usually are derived from metal oxides. Copper, magnesium, etc. Large quantities of these oxides aren't good for stainless flues, nevermore your lungs......
Here's what I put in my outdoor wood furnace that isn't actual firewood: Egg cartons (usually have some kind of bacon grease stains on them) - and not the foam ones! Occasional (1-2/week) small corrugated cardboard boxes, typically firestarter use TP and paper towel roll tubes Documents w/ sensitive info (canceled checks, tax stuff, anything with bank account info) Steel cans with meat scraps, bones and grease from cooking (yup, and it works great) Total weight of non-firewood items amounts to a couple pounds a week, mostly from the meat scraps and bones. I fish the cans back out (sans labels) when they surface from the coal bed. What I don't burn? Pretty much everything else. No colored paper, no newsprint unless necessary, no pressboard, even "wood products" stay out such as MDF, particle board, OSB and anything painted. Edit: I should mention that I put paper towels and kleenex in my compost, along with shredded newspaper (black and white only).
With a catalytic combustor, the only thing that goes through my stove is firewood, and an occasional fat wood and some kiln dried furniture wood scraps for a starter. I think I used a couple balls of newspaper once to help warm the flue and to control smoke spill on a cold start.
I am with Turbo, I start the fire with kindling and a 1/4 super cedar. Only time I have ever used news paper was to get the flue warm on a down draft.
The only thing that I burn besides wood is , those mailing that you get from CC companies that have checks in them that you can write.
I burn financial mail like credit card statements or offers. Other stuff I burn from time to time: Paper towels TP or paper towel tubes Small paperboard boxes Microwave popcorn bags
I burn wood & occasionally some potentially problematic personal info. CC Checks/offers or such. Very little of that as I don't get much thankfully. I lit my stove with cardboard, the brown stuff in October & it won't go out till Spring.
Freakiest I get is cardboard every so often to kick start things if I don't have time to keep an eye on starting a fire. A couple well placed boxes set to catch right after the kindling can really help out. With an owb that virtually never goes cold from November to March, these occasions are pretty rare. I will admit to accidentally burning a pair of shoes two years ago. Had a box with a few boxes folded up inside it ready to head to the dump placed by the door. I wanted to light the boiler before bed so wife could call for heat in the morning, being a nice fall day to be followed by a cold morning. I fell asleep watching tv, woke up well past bedtime, and wanted to set the fire and get to bed, so I set up a load of splits in the back of the boiler, tucked the cardboard in front of it, and got my newspaper/kindling ball leaned against the cardboard. Lit her up, shut the door, and off to bed. Fast forward to Sunday, "hey honey, where are my old sneakers? I'm headed to the dump and want to make sure they go." "They were in the cardboard box by the door. The one with the other boxes folded up inside it." Oops.
Ive actually only burned the small 2 oz paper cup for a fire starter as far as a paper product goes in Black October. The rest of everything else is burned in the pit. I do burn cardboard but often its from a box so large I can’t fit it in my recycle bins. This was also pretty clean, minimal printing on it. Everything else is just purely wood scraps and splits. Don’t bother asking me to burn osb or any kind of treated wood its not happening. Any that I did was purely accidental and minimal. (Cedar fencing).
ditto half sheet newsaper when cold start 3 or 4 times year.. cat always in bypass all other stuff starts outdoor burnpiles.. private documents.. recycle is free so is not private info it gets recycled
How about this kind of thing? What about all the sites that show how to make heating "logs" w/all the trash mail we get. I tried to post some here but could not. I sure would not one of these burners in my neighborhood.
"Black and white" newspaper is one thing.....plain, old school corrogated cardboard is one thing.... But glossy coated cardboard, colored newspaper and magazines are totally another.
We have a recycle truck come by every 2 weeks, so all the paper/cardboard ( no personal info ) goes in there. I light my stove which is non cat with B & W newspaper and splitter chips and bark pieces. Soon enough it won't need lighting, cause it won't go out.
We too have a cat stove so we quit burning papers long ago. Years ago I did that but over time we kept getting more and more glossy stuff and colored ink so I quit that even before we got the cat stove. On heating that chimney, rather than a wadded newspaper to jump start the flue, we simply put a part of a super cedar at the edge of the flue. But it is rare that we need to do this. I think we've done it 3 times total.
To elaborate on what has been said, I want to throw my two cents in; I have a good friend who has his own business and is a chemical engineer here in South Jersey, he is still working at age 74. Him and I spoke in great lenght about burning because he does as well. Now "I" know little about the chemical processes durning the burn stage but he doe's. He said basically if it's glued, colored, waxey, corrigated, photo paper, newspaper advertisments are all "nasty" for your stove and breathing. Glues are exceptionally bad for everything! I just had a friend recently who his piped was choked down to about 50% because he was burning plywood and laminates from flooring! I chewed his ear off about that. Anyway, his advice is other then say "natural" non dyed paper, "black and white" newspaper or plain cardboard, "non-glued" should NOT go into any stove! Things like Beer boxes junk mail and so on should all be destroyed or shredded. We even discussed certian things like "Dura-flame" logs and other things that are made with "wax" and propellent starters are really bad juju! Anyway, my two cents! I trust this man very much and known him for 35 years, his wisdom I will follow. Dave
Pretty much just black and white newsprint. We recycle cardboard/chipboard/paper here so we rip the names and addresses off to shred them and sometimes I burn them. On occasional envelope with the clear mailer window I hope is cellulose based. Other than that still keeping most colored inks out because I don't know how to tell which are safer soy based and which aren't. We quit daily newspaper delivery because the local rag was availing themselves of the scam where they charge you for 8 weeks delivery but then only deliver 6 weeks because they added in a "premium" section on Sundays. They wouldn't stop so we cancelled. Now there's a class action suit and we'll probably get 27¢ back. Should probably try some super cedars and stop the paper altogether.
