Looks like the one split that's turned up is a it punky, which could be part of the reason your ash is burning quickly. It looks like white ash. Also there a bunch of different varieties of ash and not all burn as well as white ash. Blue ash and black ash are the easiest to distinguish among all the most common varieties of ash. Blue ash as a more scaly or flakey bark and black ash has kind of a corky gray brown look to it. About the only way to tell the difference between green and white ash is by the buds and leavers. I use to have a BTU chart that had the BTU content of each type of ash but I can't find it, however, there is a big difference in some of the ash. I believe black may be the highest. Black doesn't grow in my area so I have no experience burning it but, thanks to the little green monster, I have cords of white and blue ash. And no, ash isn't as hot or long burning as oak, but close, at least in my experience.
FWIW, i have been told the ash i have is green flavor. sweeps shows it the same btus as white, while black is lower. although i dont agree with everything on that chart. other charts have white being up to 25% more btus than green. just burn it, burn it all!
Oh I'll burn it with no problem. I'd actually put it in with about the same category as Hackberry and walnut, from what I'm seeing.
Sorry, I was trying to go by memory. For some reason I thought black was highest. I'd say Chvymn99 is tty close with hackberry but I'm not sure I go along with walnut. But then I've not burned much walnut, that comes next year. As for the charts, they are a reference point, seems there are as many BTU ratings for a given piece of wood as there are BTU charts. I have a load of hackberry in now that I loaded a bit after 7am and I don't plan to reload until 6 or 7 pm this evening. I loaded hackberry last night at 8:30; 73 in the house this morning and plenty left on which to reload. Granted it was only 29 outside, not brutally cold but cold enough.
Yep, good stuff but ya gots to get it split and off da ground quick or else it be junk quick as a flash! Split and off the ground it will last.
Ash is good firewood no doubt, but tends to be overhyped. I think 50% of Oak is low but 60-70% is more likely. Doesn't coal as well as oak either. Its plenty good though!
Ha, Ash is my cold season wood! Silver Maple for shoulder. It coals much better than SM, and I get all nighters from it split small in a cat. Got some BL in this years stack, so it won't get burned for 1-3 more yrs, and I have never had any or oak for that matter. EAB is keeping me loaded in Ash, sitting on 8 cord CSS, and probably 6 more in the rounds.
Well, this is very interesting. I've burned wood for over 50 years now and ash is one of my favorites. In addition, for the last 10 years or so at least 90-95% of the wood we burn has been white ash. It is also very interesting to hear it is so bad vs oak. Maybe the soil; maybe it had set in water or just kept relatively wet or maybe something else all together. As for comparing it with oak, we find it very, very close. About the only difference is that oak will coal a bit better. That is not to say ash will not coal because it does. We can get a 12 hour burn using only white ash but determining the burn time is difficult because it will matter in what condition the bed is. For example, one may have just cleaned the ashes and there is little in the stove. Others might have a 5" ash bed and another 3" coal bed on top of that. But, if the outdoor temperature is not lower than 15-20 degrees, most times we have no problem filling the stove, going to bed and then the next morning put more wood in the stove a full 12 hours since the last fill. Sometimes we go longer and there are still hot coals in the stove. With this comparison, it is really puzzling to hear someone not getting good burns with ash wood. Puzzles me for sure.
Different set ups, splits sizes , seasoning, stoves, environments throw multiple variables into the formula. Difficult to get an accurate comparison without the same wood in the same stove in same weather , operated by the same person.. But by the charts, ash & oak should be fairly close to the same burn rates & BTU output.
I'm just thinking how nice it would be to get those burn times with anything..lol.. My stove is really small and 6 to 8 hours is about the max no matter what I have in there. I've burnt quite a bit of ash this year and I definitely like it. I'm not sure what I'm comparing it to though since most of this years stack is mystery wood. I can identify the ash and oak in the stack but there's a lot of something else that I have no idea the species.
i can elimanate several variables with my boiler. i can measure the BTU increase in the storage tanks. i would have to start the fire when the boiler is at the same temperature for each run. the only thing would be to load it by weight or volume. while i didnt record any metrics when i had ash, it just didnt perform near as well as my other woods (again, on par with soft maple). full load burn would be about 2.5 hours with ash vs. 3.5 with oak/birch/locust. it burnt so fast that i dont have any more right now. anybody wanna donate so i can perform some testing?
We have White Ash around here so I'm not familiar with Green but looking at "The Guide," it appears Chvymn may have Green there. I don't use the Chimney Sweep chart...some wack numbers on there. The charts I look at have White Ash 23.6, Red Oak 24.0, and in my experience that seems about right. They have Green about like Black Cherry or American Elm, Black a little lower, about like soft Maple.
That definitely looks like white ash. I would agree with the other guys - white ash is not as good as oak, but I always get good burn times. Definitely not half. It is a great "mixer" wood, I think. But I can get an 8 hour burn on a load of white ash.
