I'm betting that depends very much on the stove in question. No matter the species of wood, when I'm downwind outside all I get is a slight fragrance of hot-wood-fire. Very slight difference between cherry/hickory/black locust/oak/maple. You can guess which smell better. Smoke visible? Nope. Ever.
all I can tell you is, oak maple ash doesn't smell very good outside, and it doesn't matter if you're making visible smoke or not
I've burn one round of that stuff. I hated it from the stand point, there was hardly a straight split in that thing. It was a twisted tree I guess. However, it dried farely quick and very light, but it caught fire fast. So it was a good combo with some harder woods.
NOT my point. Point was- in a stove that's being run cleanly, smell is very subtle. Smoke or the absence thereof can be an indicator. Simplest I can put it. You neglect important variables., but I didn't want to be accusatory.
Sorry but, what stove you are using and how clean you are burning it has nothing to do with the smell, the smell has to do with where ever you are standing, the wind the barometric pressure excetra excetra this is just my opinion but then again I pass gas under the covers
I am on my 3rd year burning and my first 2 years and much of this year has been boxelder as it is easy to scrounge and many pass on it. Now most of this is seasoned 2+ years and even last year I had no smell issues. For sure I am noticing a big difference in the 2+ year seasoned wood. Now I am close to 4 years ahead.
I will put the elder to the side for now and give it a chance to dry out more. One thing is for sure, it burns hell-uva quick, anyway! That has early/late season written all over it!
Wow HD, there must be something wrong with your smeller! I've heard of many who don't like the smell of oak, but ash? Maple? Oh boy, you are missing a treat.
When I lived at the farm I burned a crap load of Box Elder and hated every minute of it. Is it better than not having anything to burn...barely, IMO. The problems I ran into were worse than the smell. It burns quickly when properly seasoned, like nearly as quick as crumpled newspaper, and it left behind bookoo ashes. Besides that if it isn't seasoned under cover or too near the ground it'll rot in-place, much like soft maple. I'll keep passing it up until I run out of everything else, well maybe right before willow.
Ditto what Sam just said. It just burns too quickly. My buddy burns it early and late in the heating season.
The boxelder I am burning this year has been fine for overnight burns down to about 15-20°f. This is however in huge splits. Some of the 18-20" rounds I only split once and those seem to hold most of the night with the air shut down when the temps only go down to 20°ish. Last night at -14° and wind chill down to -30° burning 2 year seasoned ash the same size wide open on the stove I still had to reload twice.
Have only burned a few small limbs in late 2013 (3"-5" max) that I pruned off neighbors Box Elder,didnt notice anything smelling bad.They were mixed in with other stuff though. No Sugar Maple around here unless its older shade trees planted,just burned a p/u load of Norway from the other neighbor in 2012/13 & Silver Maple is quite plentiful & can be found in large sizes all the time,I normally get some every year. But all the regular Maple I've burned smells wonderful,just like warm maple syrup to a varying degree.Even sawing/splitting the stuff or drying in a stack its aroma is faint & quite pleasant.
I'm talking about the smell from the chimney burning the wood, maple smells good by itself and oak is ok but Ash burning doesn't smell very good in my opinion
Some got mixed in one of my stacks, I put a split of it on the bottom front, does magic for getting a quick light off of the cat. After last winter and the way this one is shaping up, burn it if you got it!
Chris, most stoves if you leave the draft wide open you will lose tons of heat right up the chimney. I'd try to get it down to at least 3/4 draft but it would seem that 1/2 draft would do so much better to keep the heat indoors. Of course full draft is good when you first put the wood in but then you need to dial that draft down; usually down to 25% or less. One example is on our stove where the draft is numbered 0-4. We have it on 4 on reloads but quickly turn it down to around 1 for a few minutes then our normal setting for the remainer of the burn is about .75, so less than 1 on the draft number. It works. Even when we are starting with a cold stove, we don't leave the draft full open for very long and find if we drop it to 50% draft, the stove heats up much quicker so it takes less wood too.
BE is an overgrown weed. The half dozen trees I've cut didn't really smell at all. It's kind of annoying to have to cut all of the little shoots off the main trunk but not terrible firewood. Nothing compared to the baby crap stench of seedless cottonwood.
I'll probably have a face cord or maybe a half cord if box elder in my stacks for 2015/16, unless I can get enough other stuff to make that BE for 2016/17. I burned a few pieces of it this winter. Its ok. I'll mix it on for shoulder season, whenever I use it.
I've burned some Boxelder over the years, good shoulder season wood IMO. Splits easy, dries fast and I've never noticed a bad odor. If I were needing wood, I'd grab all I could.
I've never had any Box Elder. The worst I've run into was Ailanthus - aka Chinese/Stinking Sumac. If you want your entire yard to smell worse than a dairy farm, get you some of that. I personally love the way that ash and maple smell when burning.
