What wood will warm up the house the fastest?

Hi, when coming home from being out of the house for 10 hours & the woodstove is cooked way down to little more than embers and the house is chilly; what firewood puts out the most heat in the shortest amount of time? I do not know how to prove it. Personal experience has me loading up a bunch of DRY pine or spruce, split on the smaller side with the damper at full throttle This seems to warm the house way faster than any hardwood I've tried.

Has anyone formally studied this? The vast majority of Google research that I've done comes back with BTU's/cord.

 

I’d say you’re doing right. The soft woods will light and get up to heat quicker. That’s my experience.

 

Well, the proper answer is, dry wood.

I like your way of thinking that some pine will get a fire going & hot, quick, fast & in a hurry.

 

Softer woods(if DRY) will create heat FASTER,
Harder woods have a higher latent BTU value, but release heat Slower over a longer time

I have never used it that way, but I suspect that Cedar would produce some of the highest temps faster than any particular wood that I can think of, but I wouldn’t recommend burning 100% Cedar splits for very long, especially with the draft wide open

Cottonwood is another that will produce heat fast with the draft open, again with the caveat that it is Dry, and in my experience leaves little ash


Doug

 

I like pine a lot for quick heat I'm sure spruce is around the same.

 

We use pine and poplar for kindling to get a fire started. I’ve also got several cord of poplar for shoulder season wood this year and it will warm up the house in short time. There’s only a few spruce trees on the property so I haven’t tried spruce yet.

 

Looks like we all share the same mindset. Woods that are lower on the btu scale but burn quickly. They release a lot of heat in a short period of time.

 

Agree with the others on this. I use dry hemlock to get the stove hot quickly.

 

X2

 

On the topic of kindling, Cedar has always been my “Go To” wood, but my old “Plan B” of old railroad ties split small and soaked in used motor oil works well too, a bit messy but you don’t need any newspaper, and lights well with just a match



Doug

 

Sugar maple.

The choice of lower density woods like pine is not needed. Any wood dried and split small enough laid down in a criss-cross pattern will produce lots of heat (internal drafting with lots of surface area).

I have a large grate and can lock on my 1000 cfm blower quickly with any size/specie DRY wood (wood-coal furnace), i.e. lots of drafting (triple wall stainless steel 8" chimney, jet engine).

 

Agree with others here. I used to have a lot of Cottonwood I’d use in the morning and right when I got home from work. I’d load up with a bunch of smaller splits and the stove would heat up fast. I actually miss having cottonwood around for that purpose.

 

A bit of a tongue in cheek response here, but I would say a properly placed fan to move the hot air from near the woodstove into the cold house is the #1 factor.

 

You got it right. I keep a few ricks of pine for getting fires going.

 

Pine.

 

Silver maple

 

We use doug fir for FAST heat.

 

X2.
I have some poplar toasting right now that is doing a great job too...