Yep...it sure makes for a pretty fire inside a wood burner. Between the fireworks show, and the loud pops you get from it, you can almost forget the fire is in a stove and not a fireplace. That fire was started with nothing but a single half page of newspaper and kindling from the pine. It takes off like a rocket every time. No super cedars or any other sort helper needed. And that wood was from a fully living/standing pine tree less than 2 months before I shot that video. Certainly doesn't need any more seasoning. I am sitting in front of an all pine fire (about 2 weeks after I took the previous video) right now and it's about cooking me out of the room.
I dont burn pine other than some in board form as kindling. I was cutting limbs off huge fallen EWP this past Summer while camping. The trunks were rotting and punky but all the limbs were hard and resinous. Burned like fatwood. Spit like crazy and had to be careful next to it.
I burn all the dead standing i can find, it saves so much hardwood. Wife works from home so she can feed the stove when she needs to. We rarely burn all day anyway, my home is post and beam and the entire thing roof and all is made from 4 inch thick foam panels that hold the heat in ridiculously well. If i was to ever build a house theres no doubt i would do it the same way.
And that is a big part of the reason pine has gotten a bad rap. Don't keep chimney cleaned (especially after burning wet wood) then throw in some pine and that is a terrible mix.
Agreed. Also the fact that it is a softwood and just doesn't have the staying power for long burns that hardwoods have, helps to give it a negative reputation . Here in the NW we don't need the all night burns because the temps are not that low. In fact, in a well insulated house, you are wanting the fire to taper off and be out by bedtime. Softwoods are fine! Hemlock is generally rated a bit below Fir and right there with Pine although the Hemlock is mostly found west of the Cascade mountains and Pine on the east side. Also there seems to be a great variance in the BTU density of softwoods. One Doug Fir or Hemlock may be tight grained and make a dense, quality piece of firewood while another tree from the other side of the hill may cure out very light. I imagine it is the same with the many varieties of Pines. If I needed firewood and the stash of Pine/ Hemlock was free and close and the wood seemed fairly tight grained, I would certainly go for it!
Yep, also more of an issue with pre-EPA stoves that would send the sparks straight up the chimney. The baffles in my stove prevent those sparks from going up the chimney.
just because it burns doesn't mean it is seasoned it just means it burns. Here is why you only burn well seasoned pine (or any evergreen really):
But what does it technically mean to be seasoned? Surely letting a certain time pass for the sake of letting time pass doesn't make something seasoned. To me, if the wood burns easily and hot and get's my secondary combustion going within a few minutes of lighting it, it's seasoned enough for me. For some wood that might be 2 months and for some it might be a few years. But I am not going to wait the recommended number of years because a chart says I should. If try burning it, and it burns easily and hot, I'm all for it. If I had the space and luxory to store 25 cords of wood so that I could let all my wood season for 4 years I would, but as it is, I can store about 5-6 cords which is close to what I burn in a year. I do what I can to make sure the wood I burn close to 1 year seasoned. However, with my experience with pine, it definitely doesn't need a year to burn well. Sure it would be more seasoned after year, but I don't feel the need for it to be more seasoned with how hot it is burning right now.
Ya I think any type of pine, once they got a bunch of woodpecker holes you can count on the bottom of the tree being rotten enough to make falling them very sketchy!
