Hi guys, I got a nice score of free poplar. It is nice, straight, splits, and stacks beautifully. I have an Ideal Steel and have had great success burning pine and other softwoods. Am I going to have a good experience with this stuff? Do you think it will dry in time if I cut it small and stack it well?
Hey there JA600L I just got some poplar today as well, and have an IS. If you don't mind, I'll sit over here and have some & I've been told it's fairly good shoulder wood, dries quick, but will suck up water if left in the rain.
I hear great things about poplar, just burns quick so it’s best for a starting fire and I like to compare it to cottonwood a bit. Straight and pops with little to no resistance making it great for kindling.
Yep, but in time for what? I wouldn't burn it this winter. What the hey, get it processed and give it a shot in November as a chill chaser and see how it works out. Never timed it, but I'd say it burns slightly longer than W. Pine. I have some logs waiting to be processed that won't get burned until next winter (if II can ever get to 'em this year).
I had a bunch last year. It’s good for starting up but it burns to quick for me. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I've burned a few cords of poplar in my IS. It's easy to c/s/s, dries in a few months and puts out great heat but only for a few hours. It's ok to take the chill off in shoulder season during the day and on the weekends. Save some higher btu stuff for the overnight fires. Keep the splits bigger than what you usually use.
Yep! T.P. is a great resource for easy, quick CSS. However, it's not the longest burning. It has it's place.
Here we are back with the (shoulder season) wood . As a general rule winter cut poplar, at least up here . If c.s.s. by the end of June. with a cover over it ( wood shed with Good ventilation) it is fully ready to burn by November. I think 50 below F isn't shoulder season temps . Poplar and spruce and cottonwood is all I burn. Cause it's all we got here.
If its Tulip Poplar your referring too... I dont turn it down. Its no beech, but its just a hair lower than silver maple to me. It seasons fast, its clean to handle... it doesnt have a high ash output... it does burn rather quickly, however if I pack my stove tight with it, and turn it way down, I can get a good 5-6hr burn with secondaries rolling for about 2-3hours of it. Will I load it for an overnight in a late winter snow storm, no... will I load it on a crisp fall evening when its 40’s out, absolutely.
Maybe a little like comparing apples & oranges, but I have a gasifier outdoor wood boiler and I love burning poplar in it. It uses almost exactly 1/3 more wood than something like sugar maple, yellow birch or beech. So, just load up 1/3 more splits per 12 hour period and go! Plentiful & free is for me!
First off, one can not intelligently answer this post until you describe which popple you are talking about. Why? There is tulip (or yellow) popple and there is aspen. Tulip is actually not a popple per se, at least not like the aspens; they are two different animals entirely. If it is popple as we know it and not tulip popple, then it will be dry enough for this fall if you get it split and stacked really quickly. That stuff dries fast; just like it burns. As TurboDiesel stated, it is good to burn for quick fires or even daytime even in winter but not good for overnight fires as it will burn up too quickly. I've no experience with yellow popple so can only go by what the other folks say about it on this forum.
Thanks for the info guys. I added a leaf picture so hopefully somebody can identify the wood. I have plenty of maple, locust, cherry, and ash around. Maybe what I will do is mix in a few hard pieces with the poplar to extend the burn a little. I'm a big fan of mixing hard and softwoods to even out the temperature swings.
Fairly certain that's tulip poplar. Have one near the house that I'm not allowed to cut. When we bought this place, wife was told it's a "Valentine" tree.
We have two or three kinds of poplar here but I don't think tulip poplar, which is actually a magnolia. We have quaking aspen and large tooth aspen here and I've saved some large tooth aspen to burn and wasn't impressed with the heat nor the drying time. But I didn't cover it either.
