Yes, the pine will be set aside for a while and the beech and gooder stuff will be put in the stove. It's going to get cold.
Large chunks of Pine in the Wood Gun. Should be able to burn up a good bit of Pine while on vacation. Between my wife and I we will be able to reload often during the awake hours. Hardwood at night.
Looks like for our area the colder temperatures are here to stay. For the couple weeks at least. And, for some reason, I don’t think it’s going to warm up much in January and February.
46 to 53 today with rain rolling in. Big cool down (mid teens to mid 20's) with rain turning to snow over the weekend. Burning some ash. Yesterday I found my way to the river bottoms and cut a load of swamp maple, cottonwood and sycamore, the kinda' junk I can burn when I'm close to the house. It was cut and piled 3 years ago by harvesters.
Yesterdays daytime high 33.6 °F Last nights low 10.6 °F Arizona White Oak and Locust mix warming the house up.
I might try to help out the Mrs to dig out some oak as it appears we will be needing it next week. Cold supposed to arrive on Christmas day.
Currently sitting at -14 C feels -22 C, or 7 F feels -8 F. There was some kind of weather warning/statement that has been cancelled as of this morning to do with polar vortex and nasty winds. It's still going to get cold for the next 10 days, but not -45 or -50 C cold.
We are going to get a few days of -14F this coming week, or around-25C. I’m wondering if we will get any of those temps like we had a few winters ago where we had some -28F.
Restarted stove at 62°F, hemlock squares below a large alder split with a medium cherry split in way back. Cold and rainy. Likely to ice up this weekend.
How do you like hemlock, and how long do you dry it? I picked up some nice logs at the dump the last couple of days- got one load and went back for more.
currently 16 degrees and snow accumulating at an inch or so an hour. burning paper birch and pine, just to push some coals down.. looks like the IS is going to a 3 a day feeding schedule, as next week lows are all negative and some predicted highs have that funny - in front of the numbers. The good news I haven't seen a mosquito or tick in weeks!
Well these hemlock boards were part of pallets and other dunnage. So they were pretty good and dry to begin with. I just cut them with a chop saw for stove lengths and help the fire breathe well. I put it around Alder here which isn’t super high heat but with my stove, it brings the house temp to nearly 80 or above. Can’t complain at all! However I did get some hemlock in giant splits. Some are also cubicle, likely going to just noodle and see how they come out for mc. I wasn’t rushed on them anyways. Splitting hemlock is a crazy thing. You’re not gonna get a straight thing ever. Grain is odd, but its not confounding like gum or elm to some...
I did a trailer load of hemlock this past winter and found that it splits well for me where there are no limbs. Got some nice square splits out of it. My dryness needs are lower than most with the owb, but I'd be very surprised if it wasn't dry enough to burn well by next year if you have it css already. I ran through a bunch in November and early December (after about ten months in the stack) and found it dry enough for my use, that is to say it made good heat, and burned hot and clean enough to not be smoky. One of my rudimentary "moisture meters" is whether I can see smoke when the owb has a rolling fire in it.
Next winter works for me. I'm planning a shoulder season stack for the first time. It'll be white pine, spruce, poplar, ailanthus, catalpa, hemlock, and golden raintree. For nippy days in October and November. Up till now, I've just filled the woodshed at random.
Sitting at 51 out and 39 overnight....have a small elm and walnut fire going this evening. It is expected to keep dropping and right now we have 80% chance of snow for Christmas eve. Teens and single digits next week.....premium hardwood weather, this is when the stoves really shine......Ho,Ho,Ho