Monday, February 10, 2014

Mixing Your Firewood





I have to laugh at the wife every once in a  while because for some reason feeding the wood furnace becomes some symbolic task of gender politics, and no matter what she is going to prove to herself, me and the rest of the world that she can do it as well as I can.

By golly she don't need no man :)

Until her whole plan falls apart that is.

What I find funny about the entire thing is that her failure has nothing to do with any gender differences whatsoever but comes down to the fact that she (and many other people out there Men and Women) do not understand how different wood types, dryness and densities can effect the overall fire. I've tried explaining it to her but after about the second sentence her eye's glaze over and she runs for her computer to watch a sitcom or some other fluff.

Ah well I certainly don't keep her around for her fire tending abilities.

The Mrs. likes to declare on these really cold mornings after she wakes up that she will keep the fire going while I sleep. It works out well since she likes to wake up long before the sun even thinks about coming around for morning but more often than not she will rouse me up earlier than expected because the fire has died.

This is another downside to running a wood furnace over an inside stove. It isn't nearly as easy, nor comfortable to open up the thing and see what's going on. You have to put on your boots and then stand outside in the cold with the door open and stay there. It's pretty unforgiving if you put the wrong mix in and you can't just let it burn open for a bit allowing the air to do it's work unless you are going to stand out in the cold air, snow, mud and/or rain.

What I usually find when I get out there to correct the problem is that my darling wife has stuffed the fire too full of dense heartwood logs that have been split out of much larger trunk pieces. Almost always White Oak or Locust. Even dried and cured for years these log sections will usually burn so slowly that the coals will go out and leave the split logs only partially consumed and nothing short of a full open fire will allow them to burn fast enough.

Another common problem is I will find she has reached into my small pile of live wood. I try to keep that section a bit apart and tell her to stay away from it but she never listens. I use the live wood to keep coals going for those periods when I am away or when the temps are high enough I can attempt an all night burn. The flue is short enough on the furnace that build up isn't much of an issue and a little bit of green wood can keep a fire going for hours longer than burning all cured and dried stuff.

My normal goal around here is to shoot for Locust as my primary heat producer mixed with Elm for flame. The two together in proper amounts seem to produce just the exact burn time and temperature combination for maximum efficiency but there are of course many substitutes and combinations to achieve the same effect. Also there is timing. Many times I will go out just to throw another piece or two of Elm in to keep the Oak or Locust burning.

Walnut works well to sub in for Elm. Oak can always sub in for Locust or even burn by itself in smaller sections without a lot of heartwood or if the outter fleshwood is beginning to dry rot. Hickory is another hardwood that can be used in place of Locust or Oak. Wild Cherry is an excellent mid-ranged wood, especially when it's a large specimen while Maples and Box Elders can sometimes be burned almost green depending on age and produce some nice results when mixed with other woods. Often however even a few months of drying can reduce Maples and Box Elders to nothing more than quick burning starter fuels.

I suppose I could by pass a lot of this and just go out and begin harvesting trees in anticipation of using them a year, two years or more down the road. I have done this occasionally when a tree needs to be removed but I prefer to manage my woodlots in a  more naturally sustainable way. This may not be possible depending on where you live but around here I find I am able to keep myself supplied just by cutting those trees that have already died.

Many landowners around me will actually ask me to come in and harvest some trees they do not want. It is not uncommon to find someone who refuses to burn anything but Oak and will just let Elms, Locust and other trees rot.

What a waste, but their preference is my gain so to speak.

I prefer to use any and all wood I can get leaving the healthy trees to grow to their full potential. That means each season starts off with a lot of scouting and selecting just which trees to harvest in what order and also knowing how long each tree has been dead and drying.  It also means harvesting a number of dead limbs and such as well. It also does require some cutting of live trees to thin them out and prevent over crowding.

Another side effect of allowing the trees to dry while standing is that the topmost sections will usually become dry enough to harvest long before the main trunk sections do. Often I will top out a tree to mix in the smaller stuff while allowing the trunk to lay then come back at the end of the season to harvest the trunk for next year. Sometimes I will even just let em lay a year or more.

Missouri is wonderful in that we have such a variety of trees to manage and use. With a  bit of luck and future sense planning one can continuously harvest from a woodlot and maintain the proper level of tall mast and understory trees. Even those varieties with a lower BTU output have a use in the furnace or stove but I know it does become confusing at times.

Keep Prepping Everyone!!!




15 comments:

  1. Whew....me, throw a few pieces of fat pine in the fireplace, lite match, sit back and watch the live oak burn. You know, a few lashes with a cat-of-nine-tails and she'd toe the line. Not that this is a recommendation of such outright meanness. Just saying...

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    1. Stephen - Pine works well to replace Elm and such but I burn so little of it I didn't mention it. Two years ago I had someone with a huge Pine tree ask me to haul it off for them and burned quite a bit of it and I must say if you want flames it's a damned fine wood to burn. Of course it was like a teenage boy at a bordello. Done and gone in about 15 minutes.

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    2. I was going to ask about the pine. You get a lot of warnings about pine, but they don't seem very consistent.

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  2. I'd say we have 70% oak, 20% hickory & the rest cedars (with the occasionaly redbud, dogwood, sassafrass, plum, cherry & elm thrown in for good measure). Right now we don't "need" to be selective because Paul's dozing for pasture, so we save the firewood-worthy trees and put the others in the brush pile. But even if it weren't for the massive tree-felling for the pasture, we have enough dead or soon-to-be-dead trees around here the we probably wouldn't ever have to take a healthy, live tree down unless it posed a risk to building/life/limb. And it's good to know that like you, we can be pretty selective with our tree-chopping because overall, it will help the entire forest with careful tree management.

    I'm the fire-starter in the house, and although we don't have anything other than oak & hickory, through the years I've been able to determine what "kind" (i.e., size, moisture content, density) of logs to use depending on what time it is or if we'll be out for the day.

    We had been seriously considering purchasing an outdoor wood furnace, but hearing your wood / furnace reports, I think I may like having an indoor wood stove better. Yeah, I can't chuck as much in there as an outdoor stove, and it's messier, but I can keep an eye on it. That, and I can load it up in my skivvies.

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    1. Carolyn - You are correct recognizing the moisture, density etc. is justa s important as the type of wood and can be used in much the same way. I tried to teach type first with the wife hoping that would interest her more.

      I failed :(

      I also burn a bit of Cedar and it acts alot like Elm when dry except that Cedar will pop and throw sparks all over the place so most fireplace people don't burn it.

      Why I say a wood furnace is completely unsustainable in a grid down situation there are times when it is more efficient and nice. But yep you have to go outside to tend it and that is almost as big a drawback as feeding the thing constantly when it is this cold.

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  3. It's an art as well as a science. Every stove burns differently. My wife still hasn't quite gotten the concept of laying the wood in such a way that just the right amount of air gets between the wood. Too much, or too little and it either burns up too fast, or doesn't burn at all. I burn mostly oak with some maple. My basement furnace is at least 100 years old, which makes it a little harder to keep it at a constant rate of consumption. I have some elm, but it makes too much ash & I want to keep the fire going, not empty it out. I'm too lazy.

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    1. MV - LOL. I like my Elm. I think mostly because so much Elm dies around here it is a constant source. I also like wood ashes too though. I look at my ash emptying times (which is everyday right now, In fact I just came in from doing that) as more food.

      I like Maple but I don;t get a lot of it around here. When I do though it comes in tons. Two years ago I removed a Maple as big as a house off a friends pole barn. I think I still have chunks of it I come across in my various piles today.

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  4. I keep several wheelbarrows of different grades of wood at the furnace and since I started mixing wood and using different grades for different times of the day, I have used less wood. My wife just puts in the smallest piece or two of wood and shuts the door in hopes that it will start burning. Sometimes it works then other times the wood just lays there and smokes. Anyway it just takes time to figure out and I wouldn't even start trying to write instructions for it.

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    1. Sf - Ya there are so many variables no one could ever cover them all. That's why I wrote about it today and to see the informative comments from you guys.

      My wife also has a bad habit of grabbing small little pieces and then wondering why the fire goes out so quick.

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  5. You sound like a chef talking about a recipe. I thought wood was just wood. I am wrong. evil grin.

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    1. Rob - So much of it is kinda like a recipe really. Although you can do with different levels of cured wood that is all the same as well.

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  6. You must have read that book "Wood furnaces for beginners" or something related. I never knew all that. I just cut oak, maple, or poplar (no pine) to the right length, stuff it in the wood stove, and adjust the air damper. I have a feeling if I knew as much as you did about it I would not have had that chimney fire in the basement wood stove a year ago.

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    1. Harry - Well I just have the luxury of being around such a huge selection of hardwoods I can kinda pick and choose what works for me. Flue fires can be scary and dangerous. One thing I like about the outdoor furnace is I can burn the short flue out occasionally without risking and damage to the house. When I used my indoor stove I couldn't burn green wood at all because of the risk. The one good thing about my indoor stove is the flue pipe is a straight run so it's easy for me to clean it out myself.

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  7. Pioneer, My little wood stove is doing great since I started mixing in some Fruit woods (Apple/Cherry) with the mill ends (mostly pine I think). I have learned a lot about the woodstove and your advice really helped out. The millends are dry and thank goodness I stored the wood under cover as the millends soak up water like a sponge when the get wet.

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  8. Haven't burned anything inside but black jack oak limbs inside in quite a while. Just walk the wood lot after an ice storm, pull out the downed limbs and cut em to length. Anything other than oak, or anything that would need to be split goes on the fire pit outside in the spring or fall.

    About the only thing I've cut down in a while is eastern red cedar, which is basically a weed, and a couple of widow makers that needed to come down for safety. I may try to make some furniture out of eastern red cedar. Google aromatic cedar furniture, it has striking looks. I'll probably just burn most of it in the fire pit, there is no way I would burn it indoors.

    I'm sure the easy wood won't last forever but it's working pretty good now, and we had an ice storm. earlier this year so maybe I'll get another year of it. Need to walk the wood lot and check.

    Best,
    Dan

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