Thread: Pine for firewood

Has anyone burned lodgepole or pondersa pine for firewood?

Im looking to move from the lower elevations from the juniper trees and get into some pine and douglas fir.


How do the two pine varieties burn?

I tried to google up some answers, but only got some numbers... and a vauge chart that rated Cottonwood easy to split and juniper as difficult to split

I haven't burned any Lodgepole, but Ponderosa is our main firewood here.
I prefer Douglas Fir, but I burn a lot of Ponderosa. Plan on burning more wood than you're used to, and let the Pine season well and you'll be fine. You will miss the Juniper though.

Andy

Pound per pound, Douglas Fir has more BTU's then a lot of hard woods.
It can even form a charcoal , the USFS pegs Douglas Fir as the better choice over Lodgepole and Yellow Pine (Ponderosa).

Edit: It is hard to tell the difference between Lodgepole and Ponderosa pine for heat and burn characteristics.

Cool, thanks for the tips.


My biggest regret/hang up about Juniper is that 90% of the trees availible to cut are pushed up for roads around here, so they are loaded with dirt and rocks. Makes for some hard life on chains. I will probably keep the Doug Fir (if I can find it ) and juniper for the colder months.

Ponderosa burns hotter than Satan's laird and when knotty is a SOB to split, unless it's some nice clear stuff. I have burned it, but Doug Fir is the cream for sure. Pine is not worth throwing away though. If all I had was pine, I would stay warm and be happy.

Plenty of sites give info on BTU values of woods and weights. Try HearthNet.com for example and many university web sites in a Google search.
No, Doug Fir does not have the heat value/ pound as many hardwoods except Aspen/Cottonwoods.
So, burn what you got. In northern Downeast Maine we have to use "soft" hardwoods such as Red Maple and Paper Birch. It takes the same work to fell, buck, split spruce or fir as other woods. If we had more oak or hickory, we'd burn it.
To avoid the skidding dirt, buck and load the wood in place where it falls.

Originally Posted by ShoerFast

Pound per pound, Douglas Fir has more BTU's then a lot of hard woods.
It can even form a charcoal , the USFS pegs Douglas Fir as the better choice over Lodgepole and Yellow Pine (Ponderosa).

Edit: It is hard to tell the difference between Lodgepole and Ponderosa pine for heat and burn characteristics.

Pound for pound all wood has approximately the same BTU. It is in the volume where the difference lies. Of course there is a difference in burning qualities, i.e., one might coal where another doesn't, one burn hot and fast, the other cool and slow.

Harry K

I burn mostly lodgepole pine as it is close to me I find it a fast burning wood, not so good for overnight heating. But if you split it in larger pieces it does okay. If I had my choice I would burn fir but 80 % of my wood is pine and to be honest I will take what I can get!I used to cut a lot of black spruce but found it was much to hard to split compared to pine.

All is burn is lodgepole and sub-alpine fir. In my opinion, it burns hot, and it burns fast. If I forget about adding wood to the fire for more than an hour or so, there's not much left to get a fire going again, and I have to start all over. There's more popping with the sub-alpine fir than in a bowl of Rice Crispies. Don't know if all firs are that way. Both are super easy to split, and neither have much in the way of knots. I think you'll like the logepole, if you like going through a lot of wood. I know I do.