hay in woodstove

i have a 180,000 btu wood furnace in my shop,i burn wood only,my nextdoor neighbor offered me over 100 old 5ft round bales if I could use them,anyone ever cut them up and burn them in a furnace,i have saved all his corn cobs and they burn very well,but very quick and produce a lot of heat,so are the hay bales useable for this,my furnace door is 14 in by 14 in,fire box is 20 in by 31 in...???.

Provided bales were dry it would work. As to how well...... It would work better if you had a hot bed of (wood) coals. All in all seems like alot of work for the amount of heat output. Not to mention you would be stoking it constantly.

I have burned small squares in my wood burner. They do make heat but the amount of ash left after burning them is far greater than with wood.

Hay will burn, very hot, lots of BTU's. But it will be a "flash fire" type of deal, and you'll be standing by the stove door, feeding it constantly, and won't be able to get anything done in the shop. Now if you could make a stove big enough to take a whole round bale, that would be a different story. Seems like I saw something like that on Farm Show a few years ago.

You better have a good screen on your stack, that can also be easily cleaned.
Personally, I think if you try it, you will be disgusted with the whole idea by the end of the first day.
Maybe build a mini baler and make bales that will fit in whole, HeHe. or buy a pellet maker.
Loren

Have been wanting to ask the same question. Years ago I read in farm show mag I think it was, a guy built a stove using a rail tank car. fed it with round bales. I have an outdoor burner that I never hooked up yet. 16 by 20 door. fire box is 36 deep. Seems to always be junk hay around. Would have to be dry, I'm sure. Even then not sure how it would work. I'm tempted to hook it up and try it. Will read the replies for sure.

"Provided bales were dry it would work."

People might think you just elected a Pope.

grins

I doubt that those old bales will work well for you. If they've been stored outdoors, then some amount of the outer layers will be high in moisture, which will cause lots of thick smoke and steam, plus the steam actually having a cooling effect on your fire. You'll also have lots of ash, so lots more cleaning out the stove. And lots and lots of tiny sparks going up your chimney. You may have that already with wood, but will likely be worse using straw.

In order to make it work well in your current stove, you'd pretty much need to break down the 5' bales, then re-bale them into something more suitable for your stove (very tight mini-bales). If the hay goes in loose, it'll burn fast. If it's tightly bound, that "might" help, but hard to say. Those large bales somehow have a knack of wanting to stay tight even after the baling twine is gone.

[b:08011ddb54]rustyplow[/b:08011ddb54] -- Same thing with your outdoor boiler. If you have small, tight bales to fit in your boiler, I'd say try it. But if you're cutting up larger bales and throwing the pieces or batts in, then it might well be more hassle than its worth. Your outdoor boiler would have an advantage over the indoor stove as there would be less soot buildup to worry about, due to the design of those units.

I just don't have a good feeling at all about using loose hay in a small indoor stove. Outdoor boiler....might be worth the experiment. Just, try it when there's no wind and with a garden hose handy.

It took a minute.

Then it hit. Now that is FUNNY!!

I think if some sort of feeder were available it may work. Then there is a good chance for a fire. More heat than you want then. Probably a lot of cattle ranchers out west would like to have someone give them 100 bales of hay. Stan

At one time I toyed with the idea of acquiring an Allis-Chalmers Roto Baler and finding a outside furnace. My dad had one and had some bales catch fire so I have an idea of how long they would burn,

I remember a article in a farm paper were a guy in Saskatchewan, built a outdoor boiler. And he could put a 5x4 round bale in into it in one piece, just the way it came out of the baler. Baled up slough grass, and straw. Heated a big shop with the boiler.

I think hay would work like newspaper, generate more smoke than heat. Then if it was smoldering and you opened the door it's likely to go boom. I've had that happen burning wood chips.

It?s taken me lots of minutes and it still hasn?t hit.

I saw something years ago about burning bales in Denmark. They were big square bales stacked on a conveyer that fed them into a burner designed for them. They may have used them to heat a large tank of water to store the heat for extended use.

google heating with hay bunches of stories bout the subject

This company must think it is plausible.
Farm 2000

When a new pope is elected or how ever he is chosen there is white smoke to signal that it has happened. Sorry I am Lutheran not catholic so best answer I can give.

I tried burning hay bales in my Aqua therm several years ago. Not a lot of heat and too much monkey business to bother with. and for me that's saying a lot cause I will burn anything I can lift and shove through the door.