Yes I know that cottonwood is junk wood for some but I burn it every year and I have become used to having it. This should last me for awhile. I had a couple of my Poulan saws out. Always good runners. Now you would think by looking at these rounds that they would be dry as a bone but I checked them and they are still at 32 percent.
good sized rounds for sure Mag Craft . Whatever wood works for you and is available. I wouldve guessed lower moisture content myself. What is the percentage of hardwood vs softwood availability in your area?
Like Wildwest pointed out there is not a lot of hard woods to be scrounge around here. I go to the mountains for lodge pole pine for the soft woods. About the best wood I have been able to get so far around here is ash and elm. But it does not matter because it all keeps me pretty warm during winter. I have also started on my ugly pile for next fall.
Nice, I like cottonwood. It's the "two birds, one stone" theory. You're taking out a mostly nuisance and wanted tree while at the same time getting lots of good shoulder season wood.
How close is cottonwood to Tulip? (a wood I’m familiar with) I burned almost all Tulip this winter just to get rid of it. No one else wanted it and it never got stacked so it had to go. I’ve made a few fires with oak in this shoulder season. My normal fare. I’m actually missing my tulip So easy to light and quick heat with no coals. Got a new oil furnace this season so I kept that running in the background. Didn’t push the stove to heat my entire house. I think as long as I didn’t mind feeding the stove often the dang tulip could heat the house better than oak. Still have about six cord of tulip that’s properly stacked. I’ll try it next year during a cold snap.
Mag Craft I think we've agreed in the past that the cottonwood out where you live is a bit better than the cottonwood in the east. If so, it would be difficult to compare with yellow poplar and I could not compare it jo191145 because I've never burned yellow poplar.
That sounds a lot like the lodgepole pine we burn, easy to light, quick to burn, stoke the stove frequently, no coals. I picked up some huge cottonwood rounds from tree trimming once, did not take notice (except the smell). Funny, I wonder what Tulip tree is, and what I call Poplar out here is different than Poplar I've seen out east. Add Aspen too.
True. Poplar and Tulip are different things depending on where you are. This is what I burnt this year. I call it Tulip but my mom said it’s not quite Tulip but she doesn’t know what it was. She bought and planted this tree. Could be they called it poplar,,,who knows? We have Tulip in the woods which we call tulip. It’s a poplar. Oh hell whatever LOL There’s Catalpa mixed in too. Should be more of that in next years pile. Not sure if I could tell them apart now that it’s split and grey. It’ll burn.
I have two "tulip" or yellow poplars in my woods and posted a thread a bit ago about them. When they flower i will post pics wildwest . Backwoods Savage had asked me to as well. Tulip shaped seed pods and loose seeds
Yes you are correct. From what jo191145 mentioned I would say that the cottonwood here is very different from Tulip. The cottonwood here will burn fast but it does coal up good, and it leaves a lot of ash behind. Not so good on the ash. Like Wildwest mentioned the lodgepole pine does not coal up good so that is why I like the cottonwood.
We do not have those Yellow Poplar up here, never seen them. We have the White Poplar, or Aspen it's called.
Yes they are. Only problem is they’re so high you need binoculars to see them Usually the tallest trees in the forest. They shoot up straight and fast and enjoy life above the canopy.
I didn’t want to revive this thread in a bad way, I got a score of cottonwood and usually this isn’t a huge thing to post up about. A couple weeks ago, just down the road a couple of weeping willows were taken down. These were MASSIVE. “Leave it alone”. I got the cottonwood and the help getting it in the truck and trailer. Then I thought about the willows and did a BTU check and willow came up actually higher than cottonwood. Ehrrr? Ok then, but remembering and admitting my “quarrel” with cottonwood being stinky was an observation of burning it while it was still wet. Cottonwood was burned a few months ago and while it wasn’t perfect it did the job. Stuff makes awful good kindling and often straight stuff so splitting is not an issue. Probably the biggest downside to this stuff besides the lower btu’s is the amount of water in it when green. When looked at with willow, willow looks like a cottonwood/apple counterpart, twisty so its hard to split, seems to take forever to dry and seems to smoke a bit even dry. There is someone who I’ve read on that burns only willow to heat his home and those are only trees that surround him. Go figure, it works for some! I’m sure location makes a difference in their qualities from West-Midwest and East. But it would seem that these poplar, tulip wood, Aspen and cottonwood have some similar traits that they are soft-hardwoods, they aren’t best in that crazy cold some get but would be better than absolutely nothing. As a gopher wood-definitely heats you more than once. While it burns fast, it’s a happy flame. The bigger the pieces are for the stove the better. At least it’s cut split and stacked, to be burned whenever. Likely a FatBoy Snack.
