how long does it take your honey locust to season? I tried burning some in my owb after a year the fire almost went out. tried after 2 years, still no good. 3 years now i'm finally burning it. but it is not burning very hot. I think 4 years would have been better
Mine seems good after 2 full years, faster than oak. Not uncommon for me to let it bake for 3 or longer. Locust is great wood for heat.
If you're splitting the Locust it should burn in 2 years. It lights hard & slow no matter how dry it is. Takes a hot coal bed & extended air inflow to get it going. Boilers sometimes don't let in enough air through the damper to get it going. When I load Locust, I will try & time the load to "kick on" temp of the boiler, more air for longer. Stack it "loosely" for airflow as well, once it's burning it will stay burning for a loooong time. At 25F my boiler burn time will increase by as much as 100% between reloads. Good stuff once you get the hang of it with your setup.
thanks for the info!!! I tried to burn after 2 years it made a lot of smoke and not much heat, and it never made a flame. and the blower would run and run and the water would just keep cooling off. I quickly learned to mix it with some better seasoned wood to help it burn. I've never had that issue with any other kind of wood, and I've burned everything from willow to hedge. I have a forced air blower on my boiler. and my honey locust was split and stacked on concrete. another contributing factor is that the honey locust I got was cut in the middle of the summer. so it had more oil in it than honey locust cut in the winter. I'm sure you already know that honey locust and black locust are not even in the same species. why they are both called locust is beyond me.
Red oak and white pine almost exclusively as that’s what I have on my 23 acres. Still have hundreds of dead standing red oaks after 9 years of cutting them. Most with no bark on them and anything 6” or less can be burned after one year seasoning. It’s amazing the difference in weight from the dead standing and any new blowdowns. I season the blowdowns for three years. Have not cut a live tree since we bought the place. The pines I use as fire starter and early/late season fires. They are 3-4’ around and 80’+ tall. I get at least 8-12 per year that snap off or blow over so never any shortage of them.
Well...Im out half dry wood so anything that would burn and heat the shop would be nice. Almost think Im better off to save the wood and burn oil for the rest of the winter..
I only cut dead honey locust. I'll get them this winter, CSS by April and they're ready by next season. Not sure about cutting live trees though.
