Lots of different types of wood being used by hoarders all over. Just thinking it would be nice to hear the characteristics of the wood you use, what you feel is good and bad about it. Alder- Good: very plentiful here. Grows fast and if grown with others nearby usually doesn’t have a lot of limbs. Normally not overly large so rounds easy to handle. Easy to split and seasons fairly quickly. Bad: Burns quickly and if burned before seasoned it plugs up a chimney. Rots quickly if not kept dry. Fir- Good: Burns well and leaves good coals to keep fire going longer between feedings. Lasts longer than Alder before rotting. Had an old timer say he could burn fresh Fir heart wood in a pinch. Bad: Can be hard to split if lots of limbs. Bark is messier than Alder. Pops and sparks when burning. Spruce-Good: Dense wood that burns well. Bad: The only Spruce I’ve dealt with has had a lot of limbs and was hard to split. Maple- Good: Burns similar to Alder and is easy to split if not dry. Bad: Seems to be hard to split if dry. Can be very large making it hard to move rounds without splitting first. Cherry- Good: Burns well it seasoned Bad: Takes long time to season and bark makes it hard to separate splits. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Black Locust is my fave. Pros: dead, down, barkless, off the ground- wonderful. Coals are fantastic for restart. Great upper level BTU heat. Cons: even without ground contact, prone to center rot. Final assessment- I’ll pick it up from your stacks if ya’ don’t want it. All other wood species in our stacks are great too....
Cool thread! I'll list out some of what I know from my neck of the woods. I'm in the hilly part of Berkshire County MA. Sugar Maple - pro: burns hot and long, plentiful around here, seasons faster than oak, sheds bark easily after a year which makes it neat indoors once it dries and the bark pops off, coals well but not excessively. This is our go to for real winter. Con: goes soft fast when touching the ground, often hides sugar taps. Eastern White Pine - pro: seasons in a summer with Sun and wind, bark lets go when splitting if the rounds sit for a year+, quick to light, burns down coals and leaves nothing behind if that's what you need, always plentiful for free and usually that includes delivery! Con: burns fast, btu by volume is pretty low. Red Maple - pro: plentiful, dries fast, good heat for all but the coldest nights, for me it's like the baseball player on the team that can play any position pretty well and won't embarrass himself at the plate. Brock Holt for you Sox game out there. Con: Not suited for the dead of winter overnight if you want both sleep and a warm house in the morning, yard trees get TWISTED and hard to split neatly. Red Oak - pro: when you just have to have a fire that keeps the house warm for eight hours and leaves plenty of coals for the lazy nine am Sunday relight, this is it. Smells great cutting, splitting, and burning - all three phases of the game. Con: hard to find here, seasons slowly, leaves a mountain of coals if it's cold enough to hot-lap it and you don't control the air carefully to burn them down. (See EWP for the solution.) Ash - pro: lots of it about, burns pretty hot, coals well, splits like a champ, neat splits = neat stacks. Con: EAB is making itself known here, so the supply will bubble now and then my kids will have none to burn.
So this list would be kinda typical for the inland Pacific NW, and probably Montana and Wyoming also. Pine- ponderosa not bad wood if it's standing dead with the bark off. Makes a quick hot fire. Lodgepole pine holds heat a bit longer and is much easier to process. Douglas fir- lots of limbs more BTU than pine, lots of pitch. Larch- also called tamarack, highest BTU content of the softwoods, not really good for starting fires and pops alot. Good burn times. Western juniper- hot burning wood leaves good coals. It's hard on saw chain and lots of limbs. We also have white fir, and engleman spruce in the forest, I've never cut any engleman spruce, but white fir is not good firewood. Also got cottonwood and poplar on the farms and ranches.
Washington State, western side. I’m going with Reloader above with the Alder, pros:couple things to add how versatile it is. Very warm in the house but it’s not THROWING heat. Great for SS. Anything below freezing might need help but honestly its such a good wood because it’s so plentiful and easy to dry. Easy to split and stack clean, not sappy. Great for bbq wood. Light when dry. Cons: not a huge btu producer so using in outdoor fires or below freezing alone not advised. Not many cons from POV, but I think it is under-appreciated. Doug Fir: Pros: grows plentiful, often found in large diameters and grows quickly young. Nice decent heat, lasts decently, snap crackle fire, often can be a source of fatwood! Easy to split, light and good to leave in larger halves or splits. Dries fast. Smells good when fresh cut and split. Good for kindling too! Coals well. Cons: can be sappy, fires tend to last longer if splits aren’t small, spits a lot of embers out so caution with open fireplaces/pits. Western Red Cedar: Pros: amazing to split, smells just as good. Great kindling source. Doesn’t rot very easily unless in serious water/ground contact. Grows very large in diameter. Dries very fast. Good for fires outdoors if you keep splits big. Cons: often heavy when first cut, usually cut when storms are coming fall/spring. Roots are shallow and tree often tips over. Sappy, not a good wood to have for long fires unless it’s the only wood available, have to make sure it dries out. Quick fire wood, this is both a pro and con if you needed a starter. Madrona: Pros: Great firewood, burns really well when dried properly, easy to split. Its density speaks of it’s firewood worth, use sparingly in the wood stove. Coals really well, seasons quickly. It’s plentiful but grows in specific spots, mostly near salt water. Cons: burns really hot, potential to over-fire stove if on a full load. Not many cons to this stuff, although it’s limited to the PNW other wood in its family is still available elsewhere. Tree grows slow but this is testament to it’s wonderful use as firewood. Maples(All maples in PNW are virtually similar, not aware of any hard maples here unless they are transplants, mostly silver, big leaf, landscape) Pros: plentiful, fairly easy to split if knots or burls not present, dries out fairly quickly, good to leave in larger pieces for long burns, easy to light. Cons: tends to be knotted, burls, mosses are attracted to it as it tends to hold lots of water and grows well in tree dense areas. Heavy when fresh. Depending on the wood, can be stinky as a smoke producer. There’s more wood and it’s character to put here but knowing about burning a few the most common woods here is enough. Many others here are not native but have become essential mainstays in the area and others just common as seen all over the US. Mostly others will post here. Whatever they are, I’m glad to say having burned some of the most reputable sources of wood, each of these woods we burn have a place on the the list, whether it is highly desirable or not. We incidentally burn these types of wood, some we slam and some we covet. Whatever it is, it provides fuel that allows us to produce the heat source that we call “fire” and that as an entity or a breathing “thing” is only differed as the fuel from which it burns. All fire is essentially the same, just energy wise it burns differently and there’s reasons why some of the best woods burn in the coldest of places.
Red Oak - pro: when you just have to have a fire that keeps the house warm for eight hours and leaves plenty of coals for the lazy nine am Sunday relight, this is it. Smells great cutting, splitting, and burning - all three phases of the game. Con: hard to find here, seasons slowly, leaves a mountain of coals if it's cold enough to hot-lap it and you don't control the air carefully to burn them down. (See EWP for the solution.)[/QUOTE] I’ve had problems in the past with mountains of coals when burning white oak. What is the best way to control the airflow so that it doesn’t happen? What is hot lap?
I'm just about hundred miles east of you, in SNH, but we have lots of red and white oak and not much ash. Out in the hilly woods there is lots of beech in addition to sugar maple, black birch, and paper birch. Here in town there is lots of black locust, which I've read is an opportunistic species, like a weed. Of course white pine everywhere. Paper birch is great kindling. The volatile oils in the bark make it a natural firestarter. In a fireplace, it burns very bright. No real cons, it has its place. Red maple on top of your lively birch kindling fire catches well, and will heat up your stove nicely. It makes a lot of ash. After a few hours, if it's pretty cold, throw some red oak on the red maple coals. If you have to leave the house, you will have plenty of coals when you get home. 3 years to dry takes up a lot of room, but I make the space! It also lasts a long time on the ground before rotting. People toss it for being punky but it will be solid in the center and well worth burning. If the temps are in the teens or lower, add a couple splits of black locust and stand back! I debark mine when I split it, mostly because the thick bark takes up a lot of space in the stacks. But variety keeps the winter interesting! I also burn apple, poplar, mulberry, cherry, elm, sugar maple, beech, black birch, and others I'm sure I've forgotten.
Hello welcome to FHC MFMc. ! Show us your pics of this white oak and other stuff you got, we like seeing it! I’m one state over in WA. I’ve heard of how others put kindling of pine and other softwoods or poplar and cottonwood on top of these coals, and then they open up the air a bit so the fire gets quicker for a few mins. Burns down a lot of the coals and they can fit more burn able wood. I don’t know this hot-lap term in stoves as much but I’m going to take it to mean that it’s wood that has spent it’s usable working heat load and not providing more as coals. If you’re able to find conifers or cedars, even pine will work(just make sure you burn all of the above dry), give your fire a “break” and burn some of this stuff in kindling or small splits, might take 15-20 mins of quality burn time from your oak or other hardwoods. Often this happens in that deep cold so the stove is working hard but gets limited. Midwestern and Easterners have this issue since the wind can blow hard deep January and February. Enjoy your time here!
There's only 3 kinds of wood I'll burn in my stove (I'm sort of a wood snob). 1. Free 2. Easy to get 3. Lots of it
Location is close to the center of the lower peninsula of MI. We get all of our wood from our place or at least we have for many years. This year I was gifted an oak from a neighbor but that won't be burned for many moons. So what we usually burn it: White ash: Our favorite for day or night burning but we're running out of it. Nothing bad to say about it except that since the EAB moved in, they've killed most of it. Oak (red, white and pin): We save this for night time burning in the coldest part of winter. Burns longer, gives good heat and lots of coals. Elm: Excellent wood if handled correctly. We usually wait until the bark has fallen off or at least most of it is off. Then we cut and split it. It could be burned right away if needed, or at least the top half of the tree or maybe the top 2/3 of the tree. It burns nice even for night wood and without the bark there is not much ash to be had. Cherry: It is okay wood. Some say it take a while to dry but in our experience it dries fairly fast and for sure a year is plenty of time to dry. It is good wood for daytime burning but not so good for night as the fire just does not last a long time. It will give some coals but not like the harder woods. Soft maple: Again, one of my favorites but only for daytime burning. It dries super fast. It burns hot and lights off very quick and easy. It does coal but one has to be careful with the coaling because the wood burns so fast and if you keep putting more wood in before burning down the coals, you will soon have half a stove full of coals and not much room for more wood. But if you are careful to burn the coals down it is excellent firewood. We have lots of it on our place so have burned a lot of it over the years. We love it. Of course there are others but the wood listed above are our main types of firewood.
Hi MfMc, in my parlance, hot lapping the stove just indicates that you keep loading it up because it's in the negatives and you need that 650+ stove top temp to stay - no time for letting the coals burn down on their own because you need that constant high temp. When running it hard like this, the coals can pile up awfully fast! In theory, If I really pay attention, I can throttle up the air as the fire dies down and the off-gassing that the cat uses to generate heat has stopped and keep the stove top temp high while burning the coals down further. In practice, I am rarely ever so diligent, so what I do to burn down coal mountain is burn a fair load of pine at an aggressive rate to keep the stove hot and burn coals down at the same time. I get the heat of a fresh load of burning wood, and the coals reduce the whole time. The pine leaves only ash behind, so it doesn't contribute to the coal situation.
Funny how the species vary in such a short distance. We have plentiful beech and black birch in the woods, but most of my wood comes from tree services so I don't get either very often. Love it when I do, though! I have burned little black locust, but have a fair bit for next year that I'm looking forward to trying out when it gets really cold. Not much to speak of in the woods, but enough around in roadsides and old pastures. Hard to get folks to give it up, though. Everybody knows it's great firewood. The oak situation is funny. In my immediate area, there's little red oak and no white. I drove south and east to CT today, and probably saw more oak than anything else! Both varieties, at that. Ash is everywhere here - woods, roadside, high elevation and in the little river valley. I'm a few miles from Lake Ashmere, in fact. So named for obvious reasons by William Cullen Bryant some time back.
Just come across the river, red oak everywhere. I think you get more black birch and sugar maple though. I would trade given we only have 1+ acre and I'm running out of room to store the oak.
