In Colorado we have almost zero humidity and tons of sunshine. A green fir tree will be ready to burn in 9 months here.
I am not sure what type of fir you have over there. I burn a lot of Douglas fir and I prefer at least 2 years from green to woodstove. Some guys swear that it will dry in one summer, but they also complain of plugged chimneys. We also have grand fir and subalpine fir. They are not as great for BTUs but they seem to dry a little faster. They are clearly less dense when dry.
Not burning any softwoods as I have plenty of hardwoods at my disposal, I'd say give it at least a year once split and stacked. You could always check the internal moisture content to be sure.
Sounds like humidity, amount of sunshine, and overall weather conditions play a big part in drying time. That is a common theme with seasoning wood.
For us, Douglas Fir is our Premier Firewood. In our area, we get fairly Hot and Dry summers, if it is cut, split and stacked by mid spring, and top covered to keep the rain off it, it will season well over the summer and fall here. We don’t get strong winds too much, but some decent breezes, that really helps with seasoning. We get a lot of White Fir and Hemlock, where we cut, those can season a bit faster, but don’t have the BTU’s of Douglas Fir. your conditions, Temps, Humidity, Breezes, will all make a difference, plus the smaller you split it, the faster it will season. There’s a lot of wood snobs here that turn their noses up at soft woods, overall, Douglas Fir is my Favorite wood, they process SO MUCH easier, get er on the ground, buzz the branches off, and you are bucking telephone poles. Nice straight rounds. As mentioned, in the right conditions it seasons quickly, it smells Nice, burns even Better, and burns CLEAN, with very little ash. Our neighbor had a Large Maple taken down, and doesn’t burn, they gave it to us. That Maple has several orders of magnitude more odd shaped pieces, that don’t stack worth snot, takes longer to season, and produces dayumed near as much ash as wood put into the stove, Black Walnut, fortunately another oddball around here is the only thing that I have burned that creates more ash, my Wife just commented, again, today about the amount of ash from that Maple. Don’t get me wrong, I Appreciated getting the free Maple, just across the street, and it has been heating our home, but if I’m looking at a Doug Fir on the ground, and a Maple right next to it, I will cut the Doug Fir first, and finish out the trailer with the Maple. On the balance, I get a better return for my efforts, with Douglas Fir over Maple. Around here, hardwoods are mostly planted yard trees, with a few out in the forest. There have been more Unicorns in my woodsheds, than Oak, Hickory, etc we burn an average of 8 cords a year, and I will take Doug Fir all day long, when it’s available. Doug
That’s a very good assessment, I completely concur. After having a wood stove for going on nine years now and cutting and processing all my own firewood and experience with many different species I can say Douglass fir is the one my aging body likes best. Didn’t notice it so much at first, but after many of these years have gone by and I’m getting older Douglass fir, like stated above is like bucking telephone poles, (as opposed to the twisting, curved branches of pinion pine here) the delimbing is easy, easy to stack, easy to split, easy to process, dries quick, gives really good heat, smells wonderful, burns relatively clean and leaves probably the least amount of ash from all the woods that are available to me in my area. But to answer the question I give Douglass fir one year or more if it’s green, which I don’t get very often. Nine times out of 10 it’s dead standing and if I cut it early that spring, split it and stack it I can burn it the following winter in about 9 months. But given that you are in England and I’m not sure what type of fir you have and the higher humidity there, longer times may be in order.
We have Rocky Mountain Douglas fir here. It’s extremely dense. I’ve never had a plugged chimney. When I clean out the pipes I rarely have anything more than a small amount of black dust.
I think that a lot of it depends on how you burn it. I have never had anything close to a plugged chimney myself either. The guys that I know have struggled with it are burning wood that was cut within the year and they like to stuff the stove full and then choke it down to a smolder to get a longer burn. I tend to burn more hot fires and have to relight my stove more often. My stove is big for the size of my house and it holds heat for a long time with all of the cast iron and soapstone. Western larch is my favorite, but Doug fir is my bread and butter because it is the most available.
I live in eastern Oregon. Douglas fir is one of my favorite woods to burn. I usually start the stove with pine, then pour the doug fir or Larch on it for the better btus. It doesnt really get cold enough here to burn locust, oak, or hard maple etc. The softwoods keep my little house warm enough.
