Boxelder burns similar to soft maple. Good shoulder wood and far from garbage, but kind of a pain to deal with the tangled branches and rarely straight rounds.
BTU on boxelder is 17.9 MBTU per cord. Even if you're only pushing one cord per hour and you must do much more than that, he's getting some pretty cheap cords of firewood that still burns better than cottonwood or about the same as silver maple. I burn about 25- 30 % pine at no cost to me but cutting, splitting and stacking time at 13-14 MBTU. I come out far ahead considering the effort considering the alternatives. At some point it does mean I toss some pine in the dump if I get over that 25 - 30 % . I just do available oak and red maple first and then spend any leftover time on pine.
Most folks are surprised to find out that boxelder is a member of the maple family. Our good friends north of the border call them ash leaf maple.
I've said this before, but I like Elm, like has been said, built in kindlin, and it coals up well...my neighbor turns his nose up at it, so when he runs into it, I get his share too does suck to split sometimes (not always though) He gets funny about Cherry sometimes too...never have figured that one out. I like Box Elder and soft Maple too...not great for a January night, but almost any other time mixing some into a load works great!
Did some googling. This looks a little more like I was thinking. I found a few in Detroit a couple weeks ago and wondered what they were Norway maple
I always loved cutting up standing dead elm trees. Yeah splitting it sucks but that's what the hydraulics are for. Built in kindling is great. I've always thought it was great cause it always seemed to burn so hot. Turns out it was probably the only stuff I was burning that was actually dry No wonder it seemed to burn hotter.
I'm with you. I'll take all that. I love the heavy hitter high btu stuff too, it just all has it's place. If I can burn 2 cords of shoulder wood a year, it saves my high btu stuff for the cold. Plus, all that high btu stuff makes a ton of cosls that don't burn down well unless you throw some softwood on top.
Yeah I'd agree with the Norway maple looking like a more than silver maple looking like ash. However, I think box elder looks more like ash than any of the other maples looking like ash.
I've run into elm twice now. I won't strike out.. 1st one was a dead standing removal, that I let lay for a long time. Didn't split well, so I let it sit till a deep freeze. Hardly any difference, so I soldiered through it, cursing the entire way. When I burned it, it left big ash bricks in my stove that the shakers would not break apart. I had to use a poker to break them up to the point they would make it to the ash pan (inserted double cursing here). So I figured I'd never try again. Then my friend needed one removed for his lot clearing. Gave that away to a friend that bought 2 cord from me. It was "bonus" wood, so I didn't charge him. A while back I was helping Mike split and we hit some gum. Very very similar. I'd not bother with it either. Not even for the fire pit.
I've seen that too. These trees have a normal looking maple leaf though. Box elder leaves are a bit different
Did have a smart azz comment about which ash are we talking about but decided to not be a duck. Of course now you'll all suffer because that was my quota of not being a duck filled for another month. Plus there's probably some good black ash vs white ash jokes in there somewhere
I completely agree. Perhaps I'm a wood snob, but here in Kentucky the availability of premium hardwood is endless. If I was in a wood desert like some folks I'm sure I would take what I can get and be happy. I give most of mine away. My dump will hold 1.5 cords heaped over the top. Was gonna take a friend a load this weekend.
