Agree. I have been burning the family out of the house with Poplar lately...then loading up on the good stuff for the overnight burns.
Black Willow, can't stand it...lots of it here by the stream...my time is better spent cutting hard maple and black cherry here.
Nah I'm an import from the coast. My son went there though. Moved to Pollywood 12 years ago so I shed my flat lander status a couple years back.
I don't really care for cotton wood because it burns up fast and is a royal PITA to split at times. I don't even mess with TOH, willow, or catalpa. I pass on sycamore and gum also because of splitting issues.
The wood people expect to be cut down , cleaned up and taken away with no damage and having full insurance. damm people next door.
White birch. Besides being a pain to split and the giant pieces of bark clogging up my splitter or ending up all over the place, it's just a junky excuse for hardwood. I cut down a standing dead birch just the other day and it was halfway rotted already. Junk.
This. And don’t bother asking me to split it for ya or with ya. For this wood being as heavy as wood can get when wet, it’s cold burning wood. More work to be done on this wood than you get out of it.
Wow really? Bummer. I really like burning it as it smells a lot like cherry. To each their own though. I got around 2 cords this spring break and about a 1/4 cord ready to burn this winter. Dried for two summers, Im already saving it because it burns so darn well.
I had this problem for the first couple years with our owb - mountain of coals so high I couldn't get enough wood in there to last a work day. I was shoveling buckets full of hot coals once a week to make room for more fuel, trying to burn then down on days off. The solution: dry pine. It eats coals and craps heat. Now in hardwood season I burn a couple loads of pine weekly and only have to empty ash maybe three times in season. It's a beautiful thing, and I feel like I'm getting every btu possible from my wood by never tossing coals.
Least favorite is the kind that sits on the side if the road for years because the homeowner doesn't want to let it go because they're going to use it, until it becomes a rotting pile of mess on Craigslist. But really, probably willow. It has a place in my stacks, but the return on investment is pretty low.
My least favorite woods to burn. Willow its just stinky, stringy stuff. Although some like it for carving and turning. Cottonwood, if it was all you could get well it burns better than snowballs or icecubes. White fir is not the worst thing ever but many better flavors to cjoose from.
