We have more pine trees around here than stars in the sky. Of course, nobody burns pine but it got me thinking. For outside firepits... hmmm... if it's fresh and sappy, it will burn but it smokes a lot. I wonder about pine that has been seasoned for awhile... will it burn in a pit ok. I have used pine as kindling, especially fat pine. Maybe we called it fatwood. You can find an old pine stump and dig down in the heart of that and I guess the sap would have concentrated and settled there and it burns like a candle. When we were young, boy scouts and such, we'd gather whatever was around. I recall pine burning fast with an orange flame due to the sap, it's like kerosene, lol. Smoke. Maybe it's a dumb thought, just curious. All we burn here is hardwoods but my gosh, I would never run out of pine just by going to the dump and scrounging windblown pines that people hauled off. In areas where they don't have much hardwood, I bet they burn pine! Now, I am talking about loblolly and shortleaf pine here.
Not dumb at all, pine is all we have out here, keeps up warm It seems the pine out there is different from the pine here, we don't have sap issues beyond a split with intact bark with sap boils popping. It burns quickly, but also seasons a lot faster, we season in rounds, then it cracks open when splitting (though that could be WWW's (my husbands) swing).
Yep I burn about 1 1/2 cord a year of pine in my stove. Like wildwest said it is easier to get than hardwood. Once pine is dried it leaves no more creosote than any other wood and I do not get a lot of smoke.
DON'T EVER BURN PINE!!!!! It's just flatout dangerous! You'll burn your house down (even in a burn pit), you'll burn your yard down, you'll burn your town down, heck you'll probably burn down the county!!!!! Even right now just sitting there in your yard it's a ticking time bomb. If you have kids get them out! NOW! If you live close by I'll come by with my pine disposal trailer and get rid of it for you. No charge just help me load it. Don't worry I'm a professional pine disposal engineer.
Here is that awful word again; seasoned. Well, you can have pine dry for 3 or 4 years or even 10 years and if it is handled right, it will burn just fine either in a stove or in a fire pit. Yes, fatwood is great especially as a fire starter. However, it is not good for those stoves have have a catalyst.
Every hunting season in the past that I went to the eastern slope of the Cascade mountains, We burned downed and dry pine in the wall tent stove. Worked great and the pine cones were excellent kindling. All extra firewood (usually about a third cord) came home with us and we would have our first fall fires in the house with it (hopefully as we ate deer liver and onions). Again, no problems. In a fire ring the expectations of BTU count, amount of smoke and ash, pitch etc. all become moot, as long as the fire provides an excuse to sit around with friends and sip whiskey. Actually, your situation, where you have such an abundance of pine trees, would only be a problem if you did not have a corresponding abundance of whiskey!
Southern fatwood, is different, lots of dried pitch. Compare it to boiling maple sap on your kitchen stove. Even if overhead vent is on, the steam will leave sticky residue.. You can do it BUT NOT in a kitchen I have to clean
Perhaps you should contact the makers of the catalyst for a more accurate answer. However, I would say that even with the bypass open, some smoke will still go through the catalyst. After all, even though it won't be a constant flow, the whole chamber will fill with smoke, which means the smoke will have to pass through the catalyst.
What catalyst manufacturer claims fatwood- which is nothing more than a piece of wood with a slightly more concentrated amount of the exact same resins found in every other piece of firewood can possibly somehow be harmful to a catalyst in bypass mode ? Concerns about man-made fillers and stabilizers in wax I might take with a grain of salt if they were misused but fatwood ?
One thing is true about fatwood is it isn’t up to temperature, it’s a low level fire so I had to ask one of you if that’s an issue but should it not be an issue once the stove is up to temp?
Don't over-concern yourself over this bill. If you can't accept it, that is okay. But if you insist, is is sort of what that fellow from the Canadian border said. Compare it to boiling maple sap. Some crap can stick on the cells of the cat and then the cat can't do it's thing.
To paraphrase Albert King: "If it wasn't for pine wood, I wouldn't have no wood at all." While not entirely true, it's close enough. Interestingly, the most commonly sold (and requested) firewood around here is lodgepole pine. This is mostly because it dies and dries standing. It is below 20% MC when you fell it. Cut today, burn tomorrow.
I'm your climate, I think I'd burn even more pine than I do now. Perfect for a quick warm up when it's chilly in the morning but the afternoon forecast calls for warmer weather. Likewise for a damp cool day when you just want to dry the house a little and raise the temp a few degrees.
Why? Sounds like you are missing out on some easy BTU scores...save the hardwoods for actual winter temps...
We season our Eastern White Pine a full year and burn six face cord during our shoulder season (fall & spring) in our Lopi Liberty without any problems. I did tell the wife that I would clean the pipe after we burned the first four face cord every the fall.
As everyone else will say, pine is fine even in an indoor stove providing it is properly seasoned and is dry enough before you burn it. Where I live, after a year of being cut/split/ stacked it will be ready to go. I live in one of the biggest ponderosa pine forests in the world. We burn it all the time. I burn it hot and don’t choke pine down when it is in its combustion phase. I also clean the stove pipe every year with a real good brushing. The problem with pine is it WILL burn green and with all the moisture in the smoke much of it doesn’t get burned up all the time and then it forms creosote as it goes up your chimney. Newer EPA stoves are much more efficient and burn a lot more of the particulates in the smoke than the older “smoke dragon” stoves. But it’s still a bad idea to burn when green.
