A good old fashioned stump-burning

I had these two stupid scraggly little trees, really bushes, that produced some weird nut that the squirrels loved. They died, so I cut them down.

Been mowing around the stumps over a year. One of them's gonna have to be dug out by hand because it's too close to the building, but I've been fascinated with the phenomenon of burning stumps.

Figure I'll just throw an old truck rim over it, toss in some kindling, light the sucker, and see what happens.

What are the chances of this thing burning along an underground root for 30' and coming up in my barn?

Any advice?

That hasn't happened to me.

I've been burning stumps on a regular basis here lately. I've been piling some of the timber on them as I cut down whatever it was that was growing there and letting it dry for a while.

I've noticed that if I tend to the fire, raking away coals and letting the stump breath and then raking the coals back and maybe adding more wood on top to make more coals, I get a better results. Keep in mind, I'm clearing land by hand and most of these stumps are green. I'll even rake the coals off the top and give it a few whacks with the ax here and there to get air down to the lower parts of the stump if it's not burning good.

Be careful though. At the end of the day you may end up sitting on a tailgate and holding a cold beer by that stump. As a matter of fact, I'm starting to think "Stump Burnin'" is a state of mind. :wink:

Burned a few here ,, Requires Beer on a nice evening with friends ,,. the fire can follow the roots for more than 30 ft. Hope you dont have hay stackedon the roots in the barn , With a New BassBoat , Tractor , Antique Car Or gasoline

> What are the chances of this thing burning along an underground root for 30' and coming up in my barn?

0% chance. Burning a stump is a slow process because as the stump burns down it smothers itself with its own ashes. Once the air supply is cut off to almost nothing, it starts turning the wood into charcoal and eventually runs out of enough air to do even that.

I burned a large American Elm stump by my house once that took weeks, smoking the whole time. Nothing burned any further than about a foot away from the stump (and those were buttress roots). If there's not a path for air to get down to the fire, it won't burn, just like throwing dirt on any fire, it gets smothered.

Rent a stump grinder ?

I saw a fellow burn a stump and he had a blower with a pipe extension or rain downspout ? to direct the air to keep it burning good.

About the possibility of fire following a root and coming up a distance from the stump: It can happen! I suppose it depends somewhat on the type of wood/roots involved and also probably on how wet the ground stays.

About 50 years ago, my Dad did some clearing and burned a bunch of brush and slash piles in the late Fall of the year. Under a couple of those piles were pine stumps. The piles burned just fine and the stumps seemed to burn away pretty well too and it appeared that the fires were out. Winter came and there was the usual snow cover for several months and finally Spring came and the snow melted. After it dried out a bit we found a number of small fires that had started in the drying forest duff. These fires were at least 50 feet from where the burn piles had been. It was still too wet for the duff to really get going, but we spent most of a day digging out the small fires. It was obvious that fire had followed pine roots underground all Winter. The tunnels the burned roots left in the ground were like baked bricks in our clay soil.

After that, we were very careful to never make burn piles over stumps. If we had not noticed the many small fires when we did, or if it had been dryer with a bunch of wind, we could have had a real forest fire in what was probably April or early May. We seldom have any worries about forest fires except in July through early October.

If stumps are in my way, I usually dig under them, cut some roots and pull them out with the tractor. Generally, it isn"t that much of a job. But I am generally dealing with pine stumps...maybe it would be OK to burn stumps from other kinds of trees. Good luck!

Was burning out one of two stumps about 15 feet apart - old maple trees - the first stump got it going good one night, let die down to embers and went to bed - wife asked what stump I was burning - because the second one was smoking real good and had flames. Fire followed the roots underground to the second stump. I went and hosed down the entire area real good as it was 20 feet from the house and let the lawn sprinkler run all day in the area. Use caution

Every possibility, set a fire one time long way from old dry tree,One night noticed this big glow, yes, the old tree was on fire. The Bees in their hive didn't like it either. Took about 3 days for the fire to reach it through the roots.

It depends a lot on the type of soil you have. If
you have loamy soil with peat moss, it could burn
underground for years and destroy a huge area. Had a
pretty big forest fire go through my property a
couple years ago and they spent a lot of money
digging up and thoroughly soaking hot spots that
were underground. They figured they used about
80,000 feet of fire hose to get at all the hot
spots.

After all that I think I'll rent a stump grinder from Home Depot.