Any tips on burning pine in wood stove?

nrowles

Member
First I would like to say that I am new to burning wood and I am getting ready to buy a wood stove. I have been around it all my life but never done it myself. I recently bought some property and built a home and 30x40 detached garage with 10' walls. I want to put the wood stove in my detached garage that is insulated very well. The property I bought is almost entirely jack pines that I am getting ready to start cutting/clearing.

So my online research has led me to the conclusion that the old saying not to burn pine because it is dangerous and causes fires is not entirely true. My understanding is that if it has been cut and dried for at least a year, it is no more harmful to burn than any other wood. I am extremely busy with work over the winter months and I doubt I would use the stove any more than 100-150 hours per year.

So I would like to know if you have any tips for burning pine. Is there a wood stove that would be better than another for the way pine burns (hotter/faster)? For example, I noticed some have fire brick and some don't. Should I let the pine in larger chunks so it doesn't burn so hot and fast? Most of it will be between 6-12" so do I even need to split it? Should I clean the pipe annually? Pipe diameter 6"? Damper setting? Double wall stove pipe? Etc.
 
Use a wood stove with a catylitic combuster on the flue and you will have little if any issue with chimney soot, and you will get the heat out of the pitch that
would foul the chimney. The chimney should be tripple wakk so it gets hot in use (prevents cokeing of unburnt pitch) Mix hardwood into the combustion to
increase temperatures. Use an external air supply to avoid putting room air into the stove. Never bank the fire to a smolder, that makes the most soot of all
and is way inefficient. Jim
 
Been burning wood most of my life. I am 64. Have seen what burning pine will do. I would not burn it in anything other than an outside wood furnace.
Richard in NW SC
 
The smaller you split it, the faster and
hotter it will burn. Leave it in big chunks
if you can. But yes, you should let it dry
at least a year, and if you split it, it
will dry faster. But, you WILL be burning a
lot of it, as pine doesn't last long for a
fire. We have a bunch of dead pines around
24" that we cut and burn for shop wood. No
reason to waste them, and no reason to waste
the good wood that could be used in the
house, in the shop. Most insurance places
don't like woodstoves, so shop around a bit.
 
It will take a little extra maintenance with pine but you won't have a problem. You will need to get a chimney brush and brush out the pipe from time to time to keep from building up creosote on the inside of the pipe. Really the danger is in old fashion brick chimneys. Sometimes the mortar would come out of an old chimney and allow the fire to pass though it to the wood framing of the house. With a triple insulated metal pipe for a wood stove there isn't much chance for the fire to escape. More than likely if you had a chimney fire the flames would just come out the vent on the roof not causing any danger at all. I have had that happen before and went to the attic to inspect the pipe and house and the stove pipe was cool enough I could put my hand on it. With a stove I worry more about an accumulation of leaves on the roof. In the fall I blow them off frequently.
 
As a former insurance inspector, I assume you are not planning on insuring the building. When it comes to wood stoves, insurance companies can be very picky. In fact, one of those kits that uses two 55 gallon drums will almost automatically cancel a policy.

If I were in your place, I'd talk to my insurance agent before I did anything. Companies vary. When I was doing the inspections, with some companies if I encountered a wood stove I had to fill out a separate two page report on the stove. Other companies just wanted to know yes or no if a wood stove was present.
 
I burn pallets for majority mostly pine/oak. Used scrap lumber, Got big pile of afganistan pine that fixin to split up. Mesquite is the other I burn a lot of. When kid we burned hedge scraps from cutting posts.
 

RBoots and Stephen Newell have it right. But I will add what our town's thirty year fire chief always told people. Have an intentional "friendly" chimney fire every day. Most people don't know that the problem with wood stoves and chimneys is the creosote that forms inside the pipe or flue when the gases of incomplete combustion condense on the inside up where the pipe is cooler. If you burn it hot enough you will never get creosote, but most likely you will make a little from time to time, and it will slowly build up and catch fire. If you open up the draft, and get it going hot enough to carry up the flue for just 3-4 minutes every morning, you will get that little bit of creosote burning and clean the flue out. The fire will be so slight that you will have no indication that it is even happening.
 
M<y folks had a airtight stove in their family room, first floor single story. Metalbestos pipe flue. Every morning my dad would shove a wad of news paper up and let the pipe burn off. Burned anything he could find including lots of pine lumber scraps. No issues if you don't let it build up.
 
We burn much more pine than any other type of wood and have done it most of our
lives.Instructions from a chimney sweep many years ago confirmed what we already
knew. Any wood needs to be dry. The fire has to be hot enough to keep the pipes and
chimney clean. If I cleaned my chimney now I would get less than 2 gallons of powdery
soot and very little creosote out of it. We clean it every two years.

We heat almost totally by wood. The sweep.suggested putting a thermometer on the
stove top or pipe between the stove and chimney to help determine how hot the fire is.
He said it was best to keep the temp at 300 degrees or higher.
 
I know as a kid to have the wood stove in
the barn and be insurable they made us bolt
a 6x4 x feet in front of wood stove. Abit of
a joke considering farm tractors with 40
inch high tires ruffly live in the barn

Clean the chimney good maybe twice a heating
season but be careful
 
It will burn just fine if it's dry, creosote is caused by high moisture and running a stove too cold, not by the specie. It should
be cut and split immediately and piled under a roof that has ventilated sidewalls, and it should be up off the ground. I put
pallets under mine. A pile of wood on the ground and completely covered with a tarp will never dry.
 
I had this picture on a different computer, I built this a couple of years ago, and I'm thinking about building another. Both ends should be open, so
the first wood in is the first wood out.
a240594.jpg
 
so would it actually be safer to burn smaller pieces of pine wood so the fire is hotter and keeps everything cleaner? I understand the offset would be feeding the fire more often.
 
creosote buildup occurs mainly in the chimney---I don't use metal pipe----I built my chimneys with flue tile surrounded by concrete block and always try to keep its location inside the outside wall
 
I was taught that all wood has the same number of btus per pound of wood. Pine just takes more volume to make a pound.
 
Don't know what kind of pine you have but if it's anything like what we have here it will be rotted away years before that sap dries. I've seen flames twenty feet above a
chimney and the mortar blown out of the joints charring the rafters from chimney fires. I think too much of my family to ever burn pine in the house. JMO
 
Good timing - I cut about 3-4 chords of pine early this year. I wasn't sure if I was going to burn it or not. I have down draft stove which exhaust
through the coals, maybe I'll give it a try.
 
Heated my house for years with all types of wood. Creosote is the chemical found in wood, drying it doesn't remove this chemical. The creosote builds up in the chimney when it has a chance to cool & condensate out of the smoke. I have cut live oak trees, and burned them that night, same with hickory, keep enough air going into the fire box & control the damper, a good stove can burn it without problems. Worst thing to do is shut the draft and damper down and let it smolder. I used a temp gauge on my stove pipe also
 
It burns well, don't split it fine, don't pack the firebox. Enjoy
the heat. If you have too much surface area (fine splitting or
too much wood) it burns too fast and you will damper the
stove down causing huge amounts of unburnt tars etc to go
up the chimney and get deposited in there on the way out.

Limit the amount of wood to what can free burn without
getting too agressive with the damper and it will burn pretty
clean.
 
I had a really good chimney fire last year. I had been burning kiln dried pine and spruce cut offs from a truss plant. With pine you will
have to keep your draft so far closed that even a hot fire will cause creosote buildup in the chimney.
 
ive burned pine in wood stoves for 30 years, the thing that works for me, is know the wood, when i burn it, my wood is 3 to 4 years old, so its dried out, never had any problems, i cut it myself, too many around here try to make a buck selling "seasoned pine" the problem is they cut it in late summer, and there selling it in november,. and while it will burn, it will burn your house down too ! also i clean my chimney once a year, just to make sure i have no build up in there, all the "good wood" ceader, oak, juniper ect is long cut and gone in this area, unless you want to make a 2 day trip to get it, i dont, the main thing with pine besides it burns quicker than hardwoods, is that it be bone dry
 
I've burned many chords of pine in my wood furnace. The worst time for chimney problem is spring and fall when you don't need a lot of heat and the fire smolders. I had a small heat pump installed for that time of the year. I have a truck chain tied to a rope that I run up and down that chimney a couple of times a year to clean it out. I have had a chimney fire and didn't like it. I have a couple of boxes of salt on hand to dump down the chimney if a fire starts. It works very well. My insurance company checked my furnace for CSA/UL to qualify for insurance. When I put wood heat in the shop, I am going to build a concrete block building away from the shop and duct the heat in.
Dave
 
Hi, We burn a lot of pine here, mostly bull pine also
called ponderosa. Way less ash than burning fruit
wood. I totally agree with Mcfarlane. I also buy a
granular flue cleaner from home Depot. It works
incredibly well, use it 2 x week, 2 tbs each time. I
clean the chimney 2 /yr. No creosote buildup. I had
to get a WETT inspection for ins. Co. Ed Will Oliver
BC wine capital
 

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