Firewood Discussion

Adirondack case guy

Well-known Member
As I, and many of you on here use firewood as your major heating source of heat. (been heating my house and shop since it was built in 1971)
There has been much discussion about well seasoned firewood verses cut and burn wood.
I prefer wood stacked in a wood shed, under cover, and seasoned for 6 months to a year. Here is why!!
I normally burn Ash, Maple, Oak, Cherry, and some small amounts softwoods such as Basswood and pine, mixed in.
The pic I posted is of a wood pile that I stacked 3yrs ago in my walk-in cellar to fuel my airtight Fireplace with a cad converter. . As you can see the stack has shrunk by at least 6".from the 6'6"ceiling since I stacked it.
Common math says that a cord,128cuft, of wood is now only 114 cu ft. The weight of that now 114 cu ft. of wood is also considerably less than it was when stacked.
Thus comes the question!!!!
Which actually heats better and longer per cord.
I find that my less than one year seasoned wood heats much better.
Loren
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It would seem that seasoned wood would be better. Why should you pour a quart of water in your stove? My dad always burned green wood but I have trouble getting fires started with damp or green wood.
 
When I first bought my farm I was a urbanite. I thought firewood sat stacked outside in the weather......fast forward....my wood is always shedded and aged at least 6 mos, preferably longer. Other reason for aged wood is creosote in the chimney. I have little an it gets to be a tossup in the fall....do I feel like climbing up on the roof and brushing or not. Getting to be not every other year. I prefer oak or hickory. Yard is full of hackberry trees that are ageing, which burns faster and sometimes Ash ditto on that.
 
Do you have any concept of how a steam engine operates. When under load steam was injected into the fire box. Lots of oxygen in steam.
Loren
 
Except for 8 years, I've heated with wood since 1978. When I had the Ashley stove I always cut my wood a year ahead. I thought that I got better heat out of seasoned wood and it seemed easier to keep coals over night. I've had the wood boiler for 8 winters now and I honestly can't tell much difference. I still like the seasoned wood because of the extra smoke from the green wood, especially on warmer days when there is more of a creosote buildup. I'll burn any kind of wood but prefer oak or hickory.
 
We split and stack ours inside the old wire corncribs. This year with all the dead ash we have around 50 Rick stacked outside. I have found in my central boiler it prefers wood that is not completely dry. The dead ash seem to burn great soon as they are cut. The hickory and oak need drying time
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Seasoned wood is easier to light because it is dry and the water has evaporated out. The hotter a fire burns the less residue remains. terpenes and lignin both can pyrolyse, and thus ad to the total heat. Small hot fires with outside air for combustion is by far more efficient and Warm in the house than slow burning partial combustion with big unseasoned wood. Serious emphasis on the external air supply. Jim
 
You have just proven it yourself. A dry cord will have more heat in it. Water doesn't burn but takes a lot of heat to change it to steam.
 
I like wood aged around 6 months but y Outdoor stove does not care. I have some ash and oak in my wood shed that is 3 years old and it burn real hot but does not hold a fire good unless mixed with the 6 month old stuff. Now I have a question What causes a standing tree one maple and one ash been dead for about a year or so to blow up. By blow up I mean turn to splinters from top to bottom. I am have 30 acres of woods cut off and I was talking to the shear operator tonight and he told me about these to in some he cut. I have never seen anything like that.
He started today about noon and by 4 this after noon he had appox 40 cords of wood laying on the ground. Tomorrow they are bring in 2 processers to delimb and start hauling in to the landing. The shear is a big John Deere with a 2 inch thick saw blade between the front wheels and he clamps the tree and the blade shoot out cutting the tree off. I watched him cut some 24 inch maple in about 2 seconds
 
Give me dry wood but not bug infested and 'lightened up' wood.Water is what adds weight to green wood and water won't burn so you'll get more heat from dried out wood.I've weighed wood before and after its dried out amazing how much water there is in green wood.
 
I know what you are saying, but the instructions for using a modern stove with secondary air states that high-moisture wood creates steam that displaces the oxygen necessary for combustion. I know they used steam to induce draft in a steam boiler, but did they really inject it into the firebox?
 
As Richard said, you are correct. The exhaust was blown into what was called the smoke box, and then out the stack. The smoke box is on the front of the boiler, and is not the firebox, but is connected to the firebox via the flues. This created a draft through the fire box. The beauty of this was the harder the locomotive worked, the more exhaust, the more draft on the fire.
 
Outside of the tree is drying & shrinking. Center is still wet. When it froze it expanded & splintered the outside. Around here in mid Mn. the red oaks get a split in green trees. We call it frost cracks.
 
It has not been cold enough here to freeze it up solid. I mean these blew up and made kindling out of the whole tree. The saw operator said he never saw anything like that. I wonder if the bugs that killed them had something to do with it
 
We're with you partner. We've burned wood not completely dried and we get tremendous amount of heat from our furnace, and we heat 1844 sq ft of house. It will keep us about average of 74 to 76 degree temp on the coldest days.Our wood is stacked under the deck and has air flow thru the wood on 3 sides.So it actually dries from Sept till we quit burning, usually April of the following year.Very little creosote build up in the chimney and we use creosote destroyer from Menards. We burn poplar and basswood in the beginning and end of season,but use oak,elm and maple during the coldest part. Right now we are about a third of our wood burned, but our temperatures are coming back up again,which I interpret to being January thaw. I do appreciate your posting of your wood gathering and the machinery that you built.

We're looking forward to getting the elevator fixed to load the truck.
Again many thanks,
LOU
 
I have heated with wood all of my life. And as a kid , our farm house was heated with wood , and my mother cook about half of our food in a wood fired cook stove. So I do indeed know how to burn wood, lol. And I want my wood cut in the fall or winter , stacked to dry , outside in the summer sun , then piled in the wood shed where it can be kept dry. Yes it will shrink, and in my mind that is a good thing , as there is cleaner burning, with less creosote trying to build in pipes , and chimney. Bruce
 
"Water doesn't burn but takes a lot of heat to change it to steam"

Very true - nearly 1000 BTU is required to convert each pound of water in the wood into steam. Once this conversion takes place the steam, along with the energy it absorbed, goes up the chimney and is lost.
 
One study supposedly claims that firewood with 20% moisture content is the most ideal...I don't believe they stated the exact reasons. I heat mostly using Douglas Fir seasoned split and stacked from spring to fall with hot dry summers. This gives an average of 20% moisture content. I find the D.F wood excellent - superb heat as well as the chimney staying so clean with slow fires in the bridge seasons as well hot fires later...no risk of chimney fire. In the onset of fall this year I was burning Aspen wood between 20 & 30% moisture content which worked great until the first real hot fire from Douglas Fir. I got a chimney fire, I couldn't believe it at first...It was so loud... kind of like thunder or the train if there were tracks in the backyard. Thankfully no damage occurred. I got some good education that evening.
 
As Jim explains below, I always get a chuckle out of the fact that we stack and burn a 128 cu ft cord and carry it out in 6-8 buckets when we're done.
 
(quoted from post at 04:25:19 01/17/17) Possibly lightening?

Exactly, I have seen many trees that have been struck by lightning and usually they have a split from top to bottom.
However, My B.I.L. had a very large ash struck by lightning and it blew to "smithereens" producing thousands of slivers some no larger than a toothpick. They were blown as far as 50 feet. I thought it was strange because ash trees have much less water content than most other wood. The only one I ever saw do that!
 
I find letting it set one season it burns the better. A few years ago I got a good buy( I thought) it was 3 cord that had been seasoned for over 3 years in a barn . It burnt good but wouldn't hold a fire over night (burnt to fast).
 
I believe the most heat is derived from seasoned wood.
In the old days before air tight stoves, slightly green wood was sometimes burned, I believe, in order to help control the rate of burn.
Moisture causes creosote which is more of a problem with air tight stoves which are sometimes burned at too low a temperature.
As was stated in a prior post the heavier the wood (when dry) the more BTUs it contains.
ACG, you didn't mention ironwood (hop hornbean) which, according to the NYS Conservation Dept., is second only slightly to hickory as being the best firewood here in NYS.
I did not get quite enough firewood together for this season so I have spent the past couple of days harvesting some dead ironwood around my property. Ironwood which has died and stood for a year is totally seasoned and ready to burn. I burn about 3 full cords of nothing but well seasoned hardwoods in my soapstone stove and have not once had to clean the chimney in over 10 years. That amazes me to no end as I have never had another stove like that in close to 40 years of burning wood.
 
I am no scientist but the old time cooks who used wood for baking used green wood for slower burn times and more even heating. My guess would be that the btu of a piece of wood stays the same weather green or dry but the transfer of that heat to the surroundings changes. Steam creates some of the worst burns because the water vapor carries the heat more than dry air.
 
The idea moisture for burning wood is 20% and if you keep your chimney between 250 and 400 degrees you won't have trouble with creosote and don't worry if chimney spikes at 900 degrees every so often.
 
Unless you're counting the oxygen that's bound o hydrogen to make water, there is no oxygen in steam. In fact, steam is often plumbed to large industrial equipment, dryers and the like, in places that would be difficult to reach with firefighting equipment to act as a fire extinguisher. As others have said, it was piped into the steam engine exhaust to increase draft.

The outdoor boiler guys like half-wet wood because it allows them to hold fire longer and covers up just how inefficient and generally terrible those devices are as heating appliances.
 
Its been years since Ive burned wood. But our wood season started by first cutting the trees what had fallen during the summer, if any. When that was gone, Dad just picked out trees he wanted down, we cut, split and stacked it in the barn, and burned it as we cut it. We hardly ever stockpiled it like you guys do. One year, we were offered all the wood we could cut from a guy who was clearing some land. We must have cut wood every weekend for 3 or 4 months. We had so much wood the next year we didn't cut any, and I couldn't tell any difference between it and the wood we cut before.
 
I think the type of tree/wood plays an important role as well. I've got a small shed that I keep my best wood in,black cherry and oak. Multi year seasoned black cherry stoked a certain way in my stove will provide quite a bit of heat and coals. Higher moisture cherry not as good, and this wood needs a bit more oxygen, so the air intake is open more when I burn it. I load the stove a certain way so the fire is not smothered.

At my fathers place, there's a nice attached shed and there was firewood stacked in there for years that was not used. I started burning it while working on their house one winter and I found it ignites easily and you certainly can control the burn rate by using the damper and air intake very easily. Sure you could over fire it easily just the same, but although that was some very dry hardwood, it sure seemed to burn perfectly and provide a lot of heat. This is an air tight stove.


I typically burn the same kind of wood at one time, that way I know what to expect. There have been times where I mix real dry wood with some higher moisture to balance things in the fire box. Heating with wood is interesting with all the variables.
 

Evaporating the moisture produces no heat, it CONSUMES heat, thus there is less available to heat the space. A frequently overlooked factor, however, is the amount of body heat generated in the course of handling the wood. When you return to your chair after stoking the fire with high moisture wood you will feel warmer, and perhaps decide to reduce the draft a little, compared to when burning 20% moisture wood.
 
I agree with you completly, Bruce. Exactly what we try to do. Most of my wood is well below 20% moisture (with a HF moisture tester!) I cut a lot more than we use so I sell some, and my customers love it.
 
Steam is water only. If you discharge steam and can see it, you are looking at condensation which is steam that has cooled off and mixed with water.
 
Not all of them were dead, as in standing or fallen. We would start on those around the first part of October. Usually there were only like 4 or 5 fallen trees or dead. The rest of the winter is was whatever Dad wanted gone. Sometimes it would be a smaller tree and we would cut it down, cut it up and split it and would burn it next. Now when we cut on that other place, most, if not all was dead wood. By the end of February/first of March, we were done for the winter.
 
Steam is also why a tree struck by lightning can sometimes explode to "smithereens." The lightning instantly boils the water in the cells, which expands instantly, ripping the tree apart.

Now, did the cutter FIND the trees blown to kindling, or did they explode when he cut them?

If he found them like that, it was ligntning. If they exploded when they hit the ground, that's insect damage.
 
This is true, various species of wood naturally have different moisture content. Some are dry enough to burn without seasoning in a pinch.
 
I find that if I get the stuff cut by the end of August-early September it has time enough to season well enough to burn and heat well. If it's later than that, the weather is cool enough it doesn't have time to dry down very well. When I burn wood two years old or older, I find it heats well but doesn't last as long as wood that is a year or a bit less old.

The big exception to this is pine. That stuff should be at least a year old before burning it unless you are only throwing in a piece or two mixed with hardwood. I agree with the 20% moisture part as stated below.

You also can get away with a lot more with a SS chimney than the tile chimney. I've had both and believe me the SS is worth every penny.
 
Moisture is not the main cause of creosote build up in a chimney. A chimney has to run about 250-400 degrees to stay clean. I had no
problems with chimney until I got the brite idea of putting a magic heat unit in pipe to take the heat out of pipe going to chimney. Bad
idea; had to have chimney cleaned at least once a season . Chimney man told me to get rid of magic heat unit that it was taking to much
heat out of pipe making chimney run to cold. I removed it and chimney gets cleaned every 5 years and inspected every year to make sure
chimney swifts haven't built nest in chimney.
 

I too have found that wood that is around 8 or 9 months cut seems to work better for me.
All of my wood is on wagons not under roof, open air & just the top tarped. Wood that is cut a full
year or longer I burn first but the last two winters have been somewhat mild when it's too dry it burns
too fast without much coal base for heat, unless it's shagbark hickory. I burn ash, cherry, beach
iron wood & pig & shagbark hickory. Very little maple
 

Well, really its a combination of condensing moisture and a lack of sufficient heat to prevent the condensation.
The wetter the wood, the more moisture in the smoke to condense on the pipe and chimney walls.
 
The exhaust of the steam tractor or locomotive is not blown into the smoke box, but is piped thru the smoke box and exits just below the base of the smoke stack. This high velocity exhaust causes the smoke box, flues, fire box, and ash pit area all to run in a vacuum, thus, combustion air is sucked into the fire, rather than being blown into it to turbo-charge the fire. Steam itself does nothing to enhance the fire, but the result of its force is what creates the draft.

Less than dry wood burns longer because it takes time to boil off the moisture before it burns, but unless you have a really hot fire and hot surfaces of your stove to keep those gases hot till they exhaust the system, the moisture will condense, leaving unburned products (creosote) behind.

I own & operate a steam tractor. By the end of the day, 1/16 to 1/8" of soot (not creosote) has built up on my flues and needs to be cleaned each morning, else performance the next day is noteably reduced. I have seen these outside boilers with several inches of soot & creosote built up on the inside surfaces. Very little heat transfer is occurring with this insulating barrier on your boiler.

Pete
 
Yes, I have noticed black cherry will dry down nicely just bucked, but not split. In the winter time! Stacked and the top covered though. I prefer neat stacks, it just lets the air flow better. I have split green or lets say recently dead elm in September, that was ready to burn in December, single stacks and being on a hill, the wind does help. From there it improved quickly, bring in enough to dry further inside, near the stove, no sizzle. This wood was wet when split.

I split a single stack of white birch in January of last year, 2/3 of a cord worth. I could burn it in March. Not all was split, surprisingly it burned well and this species burns like gasoline, lots of black soot though. This will overfire easily, but also controlled just as easily from my experience with it. There is a lot of it to harvest here, several of our crop fields were left to re-forest itself and although I like the fields,the firewood we now have is abundant.
 
(quoted from post at 21:14:30 01/17/17) Yes, I have noticed black cherry will dry down nicely just bucked, but not split. In the winter time! Stacked and the top covered though. I prefer neat stacks, it just lets the air flow better. I have split green or lets say recently dead elm in September, that was ready to burn in December, single stacks and being on a hill, the wind does help. From there it improved quickly, bring in enough to dry further inside, near the stove, no sizzle. This wood was wet when split.

I split a single stack of white birch in January of last year, 2/3 of a cord worth. I could burn it in March. Not all was split, surprisingly it burned well and this species burns like gasoline, lots of black soot though. This will overfire easily, but also controlled just as easily from my experience with it. There is a lot of it to harvest here, several of our crop fields were left to re-forest itself and although I like the fields,the firewood we now have is abundant.

Frozen wood WILL dry some, just as food exposed to air in your freezer will dry out/freezer burn. It's just a slower process than a nice breezy, hot summer.
 
(quoted from post at 12:42:02 01/17/17) I find that if I get the stuff cut by the end of August-early September it has time enough to season well enough to burn and heat well. If it's later than that, the weather is cool enough it doesn't have time to dry down very well. When I burn wood two years old or older, I find it heats well but doesn't last as long as wood that is a year or a bit less old.

The big exception to this is pine. That stuff should be at least a year old before burning it unless you are only throwing in a piece or two mixed with hardwood. I agree with the 20% moisture part as stated below.

You also can get away with a lot more with a SS chimney than the tile chimney. I've had both and believe me the SS is worth every penny.

We have a few people around me that burn pine slab wood. You're right about having to let it dry down! You;d think pine would dry out fast being a fairly light wood, but pine ends to hold it's moisture. Another tricky one is birch with any size to it. I've seen a great deal of birch over 6" rot right in the bark. Leave it in log length and it'll be punky by the end of summer if cut in spring. Split a 2 foot chunk in half and it'll dry nicely.
 
(quoted from post at 15:59:15 01/17/17) The exhaust of the steam tractor or locomotive is not blown into the smoke box, but is piped thru the smoke box and exits just below the base of the smoke stack. This high velocity exhaust causes the smoke box, flues, fire box, and ash pit area all to run in a vacuum, thus, combustion air is sucked into the fire, rather than being blown into it to turbo-charge the fire. Steam itself does nothing to enhance the fire, but the result of its force is what creates the draft.

Less than dry wood burns longer because it takes time to boil off the moisture before it burns, but unless you have a really hot fire and hot surfaces of your stove to keep those gases hot till they exhaust the system, the moisture will condense, leaving unburned products (creosote) behind.

I own & operate a steam tractor. By the end of the day, 1/16 to 1/8" of soot (not creosote) has built up on my flues and needs to be cleaned each morning, else performance the next day is noteably reduced. I have seen these outside boilers with several inches of soot & creosote built up on the inside surfaces. Very little heat transfer is occurring with this insulating barrier on your boiler.

Pete

Pete, after watching steamers run at rough and tumble, in particular one that "got away" from the owner's son while on the baker's fan, I have checked out the pipe for running the steam into the stack on everyone that I come across, and they seem to run along the top from a valve at the operator's station and into the stack.
 

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