Hello JWV3. I think you will like it here. Good to have you. What kind of truck is that you have? Looks like an older Dodge from the back, but it’s hard to tell.
I was splitting big cherry yesterday and came across this guy in the pile. After 4 or 5 whacks and little splitting going on it became a mission to not have to save it for the splitter. Could this be elm? I kinda hope not because I think it would have been the only one on the property. It was tough and twisted.
Welcome jwv3, great job getting the wood started now. Either one of the two stoves you mentioned like dry wood. In the Mid-Atlantic you might even be able to find a member that might trade you a cord of dry for some of the stuff that you have that might not be. Keep the pics coming
Thanks for all the welcoming posts. I have a few more dead standing trees in my sights. One huge Norway maple and a couple cottonwoods. I'll go for them first to hope to have some good dry wood for the next winter. I'll probably rent a splitter when i have enough to make it worth while.
The truck is '93 Ram W350 dually. 4X4, cummins with a manual transmission. I'll get some pics of it posted as well. I recently bought it from my uncle and really love it.
If you try to run unseasoned wood through any EPA stove you'll be disappointed With no starting reference for a previous woodstove it could amaze you or frustrate based on the species you plan to have "seasoned" and feeding the beast The first 3 years will be a feeling out period with different species seasoned at intervals around burning seasons. Get the stove going on dryer soft woods and add the hard woods after up to temp and youll be be doing OK
Yeah, still working on that. I thank you for the advice. My wood isn't properly seasoned, and for the next season or so probably will not be so I'm in for the long haul. But it's all good, I now know what to expect, and what I need to do to properly get on track. This site has taught me more than I ever expected. edit.. I already had a woodstove, but not an efficient one. It was a used steel stove with no functioning secondaries, and no cat. I paid $500 for it. Looking back, not such a great deal, but it heated the house from 2012 till Jan 11 of 2018. I figure I got my use from it, and will use it somewhere else, inefficient or not. Chaz
I understand the challenge of starting from nothing. The good thing about my situation is that I will not need to depend on the stove for heat. I plan to start out slow, maybe just use it on weekends the first year. Enough to get to know it and how things work. I also don't have a large house and it is fairly economical to heat with a 2.5 ton heat pump. My largest electric bill this winter was $150.00. That included the real cold three weeks of below freezing temps in the beginning of January.
If you can source some poplar and get it CSS, you can get it dried by fall. Also, those enviro-bricks/bio-blocks/wood fuel blocks will really work good in your situation. There is a landscape place here that offered two (i believe left over) skids to my brother for $150. ($75 per skid)
Hey welcome! Yes get started on that wood pile and the summer will help. You may not get it all ready as I hear 2 years on maple but if you get a bunch of poplar or Ash cut small, it might work for you if that summer sun and wind blows well. I just installed my stove last October and burned on a 60 degree day when all was said and done. Also I had been prepping wood for a fire pit and that had bloomed to full on epic proportions on my own scale a year prior. The stove wasn’t really a thought. Then my bills came. Welcome to the club, we’re eager to know whats going on with you and your scrounging cutting splitting stacking and on the rare occasion repeating all that..... pictures say a lot!
Do not waste your time on the cottonwood. It's about like burning balsa wood. Let that stuff rot. Even pine has more btu than cottonwood. Split this year's wood small. Smaller than you normally would. It will dry faster. Stack it in the sun. Even if that means in the middle of the yard. Once you are 3 years out on wood, its alot less work to stay ahead on the supply. Welcome to Fhc.
I really can't tell if that is elm, but elm will look like that when split. All of it. Here is Maine, I don't know anyone who will bother with it. I hear it burns good, but I have no experience with it. I was warned, I stayed away from it. Most all the big elms around here are dead. We still get lots of young one popping up, but they never survive to be mature trees. When mature, they are magnificent. Our streets were lined with them until the Dutch Elm disease hit. Then they got all rusty looking and died off.
