Passed this the other day being taken down. Next to the convenience store i sell wood bundles to. (look carefully and you can see them) Logs still sitting there. I didnt take any nor do i want it.
That wood be great for a GTG. No obvious signs of metal, just need a detector and you could have a nice set-up.
Dries fast, burns faster. Not bad if you're home and don't mind reloading the stove often. I only scrounged one log of it 2 summers ago, but didn't think it was horrible. Not something I would go out of my way for though.
Nothing really...if you are short on supply this stuff will keep you from freezing...it dries fast too so that works good for new burners (or the shortsighted among us) to build (or extend) their wood supply It burns hot and clean and doesn't build heavy coals...which works great for mild spring and fall temps where you only need a lil heat, and when its really cold out and maybe your stove is a bit smaller than you'd like, so you are really pushing it...rake coals forward, load up some wood like this and open the air up...it will give you some heat while the coals burn down. If a person had a situation where say, you had to deal with a late season extreme cold snap, where you need to push your stove to maintain house temp, and were almost out of wood, I'd rather have a pile of cottonwood than a pile of locust. Ima gohead and make what might be a controversial statement here, but don't knock it until you've tried it...as long as someone is home to load, you can coax more BTU's from your stove with this "gopherwood" (load stove, then gopher more wood) than the classic heavy hitters, due to having to wait on coals to burn down when running hard (this is more of an issue with modern stoves than old school burners) when burning species like oak and locust, most of the classic "premium" firewoods...
Sounds like the wood I’m picking up on my way home. Buddy scrounged what he thought was oak. Brought it home cut and split it only to find out it’s poplar. Now he says he doesn’t want it sure I go right by daily I’ll throw it in the truck no prob.
I've never burned cottonwood but I've processed and burned lots of tulip poplar. How do the 2 compare?
Cottonwood is lower BTU on the charts...I have some tulip in the stacks, haven't burnt a ton of it yet though.
Ain't nothin' quite like the smell of cottonwood.....cept maybe . I used to live on the Gray's river in Washington state about 10 miles from the Pacific, I'd catch monster size cottonwood's as they drifted past, I'd pull 'em out and make firewood, we always stacked it down-wind from the house cause it was very stinky when it was wet, it dried out in 2 months all the way down to 10% moisture content.... it burned clean and hot, so I didn't have any complaints....it's not very cold there so all night burns weren't important. I think the west coast cottonwood is even worser as firewood than the eastern stuff, but not sure.
Split it bigger than you normally would and it's pretty good. Burns hot, clean, little ash and goes completely out with no coals. I put one piece of coaling wood on the bottom and pile cottonwood on top. This gives you a bit of coals to rake.
I know the variety you’re talking about… black cottonwood. The native range runs as far north as parts of coastal Alaska.
One year I had almost nothing but Tulip to burn. Found the same thing. Push come to shove I can push out more heat with Tulip than oak. Just be home to fill the stove
I had a massive score at one property a few years ago, land owner had 3 huge ones and a couple smaller taken down. I c/s/s 6 cords of it for my parents. They burned it all up in one winter. Made some cants for a gtg too. Like said, it burns hot and clean, just doesn’t last very long in the firebox.
I have the PH soapstone. Cat probably helps slow it down a bit. One problem with the stone is it holds the heat long enough that if your not careful the coals are gone before you want to reload. If it’s COLD out that’s normally not a problem.
Very heavy when green, dries to balsa wood weight. One of the lowest btu hardwoods around. I have some in the stacks that will go for SS either Fall or Spring. If i had nothing to scrounge, id take some of it, but plenty of primo wood here for me to put my efforts into.
I live out west in Kansas and we're not loaded with trees, except in towns and along creeks, or "rivers". Along those creeks we have mostly cottonwood. When I started out, it's all I burned because it's all I had access to. It does good enough and is cheaper than paying the power company for heat. The only downsides I see is, it does burn quick, but at the same time I don't have to wait for coals to burn down if running it hard (another member mentioned this already and I concur), and it creates a crazy amount of ash. I have to clean ashes out more often and end up with about 3 to 4 times as much ash than with honey locust. That said, I actually prefer it on those buffer days, when one burn in the stove is enough to do the job all day. Too chilly for no heat, not cold enough to run the stove hard.
