Pretty much the same story here as with ya'll. All you hear in the fall is saws running (and gunshots). My neighbor gave me several trees two years ago, actually half the wood if I cut it to 16" rounds, which I did. my half is split and stacked and drying away. His half of the rounds are in the wet woods, some are actually partly in the brook untouched. He told me in the spring he is out of wood, so I know he'll try to burn that wet punky mess this winter. He is a nice guy but just not with the program which I explained to him, rounds sitting in water=bad.
My employer(a man that I thought was fairly intelligent) once told me that if his wood was “too dry” for his leaky Vermont Castings he would pour glasses of water over the wood in his wood box!
I have a Vermont Castings, one of the old good ones, 1983. It doesn't need a drink of water to burn wood. Oh, and mine is not "leaky".
Definitely not bashing VC more the user that performs no maintenance. “I found these chunks of styrofoam looking stuff in the fire box one time. Oh well I keep burning it” he says I have a good feeling most of not all seams are sucking air. Causing his wood to burn up fast.
My father gives me anything coniferous - pine, fir, spruce etc. and white birch. He says that they all produce too much creosote and won't burn them. I didn't try too hard to convince him otherwise because it's more wood for me.
Most of the time I try to help but it really does not take long to determine whether or not what you say is falling on deaf ears or not. If they are set in their ways, I usually just leave them go as there is no sense in trying to confuse them with facts when their minds are made up.
I really enjoy when my cousin and brother in law are pizzed off about wet wood but they always give me crap about how much wood i have. Iv told them hundreds of times not to cover the wood completely. I burn pine all the time and its always the same thing when i talk to other people about it. YOU CANT DO THAT
My dad swears if I burn any pine, no matter how well seasoned, I will burn down my house, forest and state of Pennsylvania. I gave up the argument
Hard call. Firewood is a weird thing. Even though it's been very uncommon to use it for home heat for many decades now, it seems there are many "experts" in the intricacies of wood processing and wood burning. I just let them "expert away".
That is part of what changed my opinion on pine, always heard that it produces too much creosote and caused chimney fires. I was also one that cut up my ash into rounds over the summer, then split & stacked during the last week of August, burned it that winter. Fortunately it was ash. But after learning about real seasoning (proper drying) of firewood, it made sense that people shouldn't burn green fresh cut pine. But it also made sense that if given time to properly dry, it's not the horrible house burning wood of lore. Otherwise there'd be many more chimney fires in the areas that are hardwood deficient, but softwood abundant. A lot of people are burning it safely obviously. I'll give my opinion if it comes up in conversation, but I don't try to convert the believers. Life's too short for the additional stress, especially when family is involved.
My brother offered me a tree he'd just felled. It was some sort of fir that they'd had in their yard for decoration and shade. It was about 10 inches in diameter. He had cut it into long lengths of 8 feet or so. I turned it down cause the cuts were oozing sap, and dried sap that had oozed through the bark previously was all over the tree. I'd never seen so much sap coming out of a tree in so many places.
Let it sit a few months before cutting it and it will be all dried up. I've done the same with a lot of fresh cut sappy pine.
I usually tell them that I always thought the same thing but it turns out that etc etc. make it sound like it's relatively new information to me. Seems to build a connection and reduce the natural tendency to defend oneself whenever someone tells you you are wrong.
Thats part of my reasoning. The man is no dummy and for his age is quite sharp. So it makes it even more frustrating. I have a small amount of pine drying. Going to wait until he visits to burn it. See what he says
