Cold Outside! Wish I Had Pine

I am realizing the benefits of pine during these negative degree days. I usually burn it in the fire pit or shoulder season, but wish I had saved it for now. I am running low. With all of these coals the pine really shines, as I hate shoveling coals out to make room for wood, it seems so wasteful. I have some cotton wood I may grab and see how that does for coal disposal.

 

My stacks are currently at a 4:1 pine to hardwood ratio. This weekend, I plan on feeding a lot of pine into the stove. I have to make sure I keep some hardwood in the mix to the keep the coals going.

 

Got a stump outside you want to get rid of? Dump the coals on that. Makes the dirty work feel better.

 

The Cottonwood will create a lot of ash and does make coals. Maybe not as bad as other hard woods but it will.

 

ahhhh - the advantage of having an ash tray. I just rake the coals around and ashes fall through to the removable tray. Then, new splits go on top of the coals.

Was 11 here this morning, 71 inside. Supposed to get colder tomorrow, and the day after. I am loving the oak and black locust this week.

 

Pine and spruce get a bad rap for being lower btu, but they don't coal as much so you can reload more often and get the stt back up. I'm currently heating my house 100% with spruce no problem and it hasn't been above 10f since Monday.

 

I'm burning soft maple and poplar and it heats my little house just fine. Of course it's not quite as cold here but nothing wrong with burning the soft stuff. I burn it during the day primarily.

 

I'm the same way, always give them some air. Only time I take hot coals out of the stove is to get one of my other stoves going when cold.

 

In my area all we have is pine to burn and yeah it burns down to a nice ash and it gets hot fast. Even in the 24/7 burn season I only have to clean it out every other week

 

The only issue I have with pine is it gets to a point where it becomes a semi burning styrofoam block. Have to keep the temps up so it burns completely.

 

Yep I agree there is some pine that will do that.

 

My pine is like that. I have it in extra large splits. I throw two of em on a large bed of coals then leave the air wide open and the door cracked but bypass closed. It gives me 450-475F stt's while burning down the coals. Then once those are gone I open the bypass and leave the door open about 3" for about another hour and I'm ready for a reload.

 

Pine is fine! Been home from work so able to reload the stove every 3-4 hours, load of pine burns hot and fast, house is 66F which is darn impressive for my insert. The oak will go in at bed time.

And yup, no coals. It has it's place and I have plenty of it.

 

So I wish to ask if you consider opening your stove door just a crack? Just to the point where the lock latch is actually on the door jamb so it’s drafting a bit and lets the coals get really hot? I’ve done this for my stove just to get rid of the coals but then again Im not in your cold area. Not sure if this will work to entirety but if the house is well insulated, should give you about an hour or so to burn down? If the Cottonwood worked, good on you. Just worked for me here but I hardly need to do it.

 

This is ultimately what I ended up doing, it's just difficult when temps are as low as they have been. The house drops several degrees while burning the coals down, but if I had some pine it would be no problem at all. Yesterday the temperature made it to 19* and it was much easier to do than when it was -4*.

 

twenties and above just cracking the door works fine, but when it's single digits or below zero, two large pine splits on the raked coals and you're back to over 450 stt for a few hours while the coals burn down instead of 300ish