Three year old, well seasoned wood is best..... right?

So I am out of well seasoned oak and have two choices, neither one of which is great: three year old silver maple, which is more like a soft wood than a hardwood, or one year old hardwood, mostly oak but mixed species. Now the one- year old stuff is not even a full year old but it is showing a lot of cracking, the bark is falling off and so forth so it is somewhat seasoned but not ideal. I do have an moisture meter and will check some splits but have not yet so far.

But what I have been doing is loading the stove with about 75% of the dry (and lousy) silver maple, and a few good- size splits of hardwood that is a bit on the 'not quite ready side' with really great results. Now I know that it ain't right, and some of you (Dennis! ) are throwing electronic rocks at me but.... it really does seem to work well. The hardwood slows down the entire burn but there is not enough of it in there to create a wet, creosotey (is that a word), black, mess but burns cleanly, burns long and leaves a fair amount of coals.

It is in the 30's here so I do not need a huge amount of heat but I do need fairly long burns and this combination is working surprisingly well. All maple just burns up, leaves no coals and does not provide much heat overall (an entire stove load of the stuff is probably only 35 lbs.). I have not even bothered to try a full load of the [too wet] hardwood 'cause I know how that is going to burn- it will resist, making me crank up the air, waste a lot of heat up the stack, and use up a lot of heat driving the water out of the wood before it burns. But three splits, mixed in with the really dry maple does seem like a nice combo.

Brian

 

I have some silver maple. I've got it set aside for shoulder seasons. Planned on mixing it in with oak and elm to tame the heat for this time of year. I burn plenty of boxelder also which is pretty similar. The nice thing about having the cat stove is being able to adjust the air down to keep it from disappearing so fast.
I seem to get respectable heat from both. When I was in the same situation just starting out burning all the dead standing red oak and elm, boxelder was my steady mix in to get everything cooking.

 

Eric VW Hah! I finally got into my 3 y.o. oak this winter. I'll still be C/S/S poplar because it's readily available, but night and day from oak.

BDF If your "mixture" is performing for you, then go for it for the rest of shoulder season. Just make sure you clean your chimney at the end of the season. I'd be worried about the possibility of accelerated creosote build up with 1 y.o. oak. Definitely do the moisture meter. Some really fine wood may dry in a year or so, e.g. black birch. Maybe you could cherry pick the faster drying species to burn. Anyways, Spring is coming soon.

 

I'm with Mike in that burning 1 year seasoned oak is probably not the best for creosote production.

3 yr seasoned silver maple should be really nice burning stuff. I'd still get that MM out and check where that oak sits now though. That would either confirm or give you pause about burning the oak this year. It's possible it's totally dry. It's also possible it could be 25 or 30% moisture content.

 

The regulars here are probably sick of hearing me say it, but I love Silver Maple! And I love to mix it in with "the good stuff"...I have had excellent results with that...I need to get more SM this summer...

 

The cat on my IS loves the soft maples. I can turn the air even lower because it off gasses so much. It's great shoulder season wood.

 

It seems that everyone missed my point so I must have written it poorly.

I am out of fully seasoned hardwood and so now am on to 'Plan B', which is mostly very dry maple mixed in with some [not quite ready but not sticky- wet oak] and am finding it working out far better than I expected. And that was my point, not that what I am doing is ideal or even good, just that it is working much, much better than I expected.

In the past, I have burned a fair amount of oak that was not properly seasoned and some that was close to green. The results were a lot of creosote, very difficult to start stove loads, a tremendous amount of draft to get even a fresh half- load of wood engaged, and a huge amount of lost heat both boiling off the water as well as just going up the chimney due to forcing so much air through the stove just to get the stuff to burn.

So I am not suggesting what I am doing is great or even desirable, merely stating that mixing some one- year old oak in with some tinder- dry silver maple is working much better than burning either wood alone. Of course the maple burns properly but it just does not have the heat value anywhere near oak so a stove- full of that stuff just will not go overnight and produce useful heat by the morning. But mixing three splits of oak and the stove puts out more heat, much more even heat, and leaves a full bed of coals to load the stove the next day.

As to the creosote output, it is not all that bad, though more than using properly seasoned wood, and the catalyst keeps everything after it pretty clean. There is no build up in the thimble at all, and of course I will not be burning much of this mixture of wood anyway because it is well into shoulder season.

Brian

 

I got that out of your first post. I've done that too, with dry dead standing elm mixed with not seasoned long enough sugar maple. It worked well.

 

Yes, unfortunately I'll be dealing with a lot of dead/dying ash for firewood. I pretty much have no need to be cutting any live/ healthy trees for years.

 

Of course no offense was taken- this is, by far, the friendliest forum I have ever found and there is no malice here, at least none that I have found. So all is well in my little part of the wood burning community!

I was merely conversing with youse guize about alternative things that work better than expected, and I took all of your responses as conversational as well.

Brian

 

Yup, I understood too...I've told new burners with very little dry firewood to mix some really dry stuff into every load for years now...often time I tell them to find some kiln dried construction lumber cut offs to mix in...or tear apart some old pallets.
I think the MC of the load kinda "averages" out somewhat...plus the really dry stuff get things hot enough for proper combustion to happen...probably lose a little efficiency doing this, but it does work pretty well when you have limited options

 

Burned my three year oak for the first time this year. Yes, it has to be seasoned three years or it sizzles like bacon. None of that with this wood. Glass stays cleaner too.

I’ve burned young wood by adding well seasoned to it, and also added those super dry bricks that you can pick up at Tractor Supply and the like. They balance out the moisture averag for what you stuff in the stove and really work well. I still had a clean chimney after the season was over. Did that for two years.

 

Sometimes when people comment positively on silver maple, I wonder if that is the type of maple I really have. ?? I cannot tell my wood apart (Easy Boys! and yes, seriously) but this stuff is about as close to pine as any tree that drops its leaves can get I think. It turns full- gray when seasoned, weighs little and overall burns well enough but does not provide much heat and not much in the way of coals. Being in the northeast, we just do not burn soft wood for inside heat around here so oak is really just kinda' 'medium- grade' wood and this maple I have is just lousy by comparison.

Add to that the fact that it is considered a 'pest tree' here and there you have my whole opinion of the stuff. 'Pest tree' because they grow everywhere, they are top feeders, meaning they kill at least any nearby grass, usually have large roots at and above ground, and with no tap root, are the first ones to go over in the next storm. Oh year, and they make about one- gazillion leaves every year that are not even pretty for a day, they just lay on the ground and mark the spot the tree will eventually fall over onto. :-(

Brian