How long 'til I burn it???

[farmerboybill]

This winter ain't been friendly to my wood stack. I'm nearly through what I expected to burn all winter! So I've cut up a bunch of dead elm and a burr oak that stood dead 5-10 years and some black walnut I cut and pushed in a ditch three years ago to tide me over. This burns fine as-is, the burr oak is actually a li'l bit punky on the outside... I've got more of this, but it's darned hard to get to. So I just split up some pin oak I cut live fall 2012. I wasn't gonna burn it 'til next year, but now it's gonna be my Insurance policy.

I don't generally split anything I can pick up since I don't have an OWB. I threw in an 18" piece and checked on it a couple hours later, only to see water boiling out the center. Anything smaller than 6" burns fine with no boiling. So I split everything bigger'n 8". Any chance I'll have better results 6 weeks from now?

BTW, anyone who tells you that you can burn anything, including green wood, in an OWB is not your friend...

 

[Cheesecutter]

Burn the elm and walnut. I would save the oak for the future and let it dry. I also split anything 8 inch or bigger.

 

[zogger]

Little sticks and thin split dead pinje is your friend now. go get a BUNCH, you know that stuff guys call "brush" and burn in big piles? That stuff. Big handful of crunchy sticks per crappy wet split works fine. Chock fulla hot burning BTUs will boil that sap out of the big stuff fast. Ya, it's tedious but by golly it works. Been there done that, move some place with no wood, have to go out cut and burn like right then. I'm talking half inch to one inch, thin, dry. Crunch snap, that dry, doesn't matter what species, as long as you shoot a good quantity dry handful in first, then your wet split. Just keep doing that, every big split gets it's own handful of sticks.

Burning wet oak just sucks, but if it's all ya got, that works to burn it.

 

[Cheesecutter]

Zogger, No offense and sound advise, but do you realize how much 1/2"-1" brush it would take to fill an OWB? It would work with a stove or fireplace, but an OWB is a different animal. With mine it would literally burn up as fast as you could stuff it in and the flame coming out the door would be intense.

 

[farmerboybill]

I'm pry just gonna go get that hard-to-access stuff. There's still 20 feet of trunk off that last burr oak. I only left it cause it was over 20 inches wide and I didn't have a chain along to drag it down out of the multiflora rose and cut from the other side (or my 36" CS8000). There's three more right next to that one that are even bigger. What pissed me off was I dropped it on my fenceline (on purpose, but I misjudged height), and it snapped off two T-posts. The other three are taller, so they're gonna do more damage. There's no persuading them to fall any other way...

BTW, I mistyped on my first post. I said I don't have an OWB, but I do.

 

[zogger]

Zogger, No offense and sound advise, but do you realize how much 1/2"-1" brush it would take to fill an OWB? It would work with a stove or fireplace, but an OWB is a different animal. With mine it would literally burn up as fast as you could stuff it in and the flame coming out the door would be intense.

Well, shoot, I was thinking regular heater, my bad...

OWB no idea..only contact I ever had with a wood cooker of large size was at a shop I worked at, GE steam turbine generator, they burned the scrap to power the shop. Now THAT thing would suck the wood down, and it for sure would burn green once it got cooking. Beyond green, the logs were steam saturated before turning. They burned hardwood hearts and the bark from the outside of the logs, the hearts were leftovers from running the peeler lathes (my job). I have no idea what sort of temps they got, but had two operators run it at all times.

 

[Bushbow]

Outside boilers will take anything and burn it but even with those dryer is better so anything but the oak is probably your best bet as oak is reluctant to give up the moisture. Even splitting everything in 1/2 will speed up the seasoning significantly as rounds are slow to dry in any species.

Until someone comes up with a way to burn water you are wasting heat boiling it off.

 

[Steve NW WI]

I'm pry just gonna go get that hard-to-access stuff. There's still 20 feet of trunk off that last burr oak. I only left it cause it was over 20 inches wide and I didn't have a chain along to drag it down out of the multiflora rose and cut from the other side (or my 36" CS8000). There's three more right next to that one that are even bigger. What pissed me off was I dropped it on my fenceline (on purpose, but I misjudged height), and it snapped off two T-posts. The other three are taller, so they're gonna do more damage. There's no persuading them to fall any other way...

BTW, I mistyped on my first post. I said I don't have an OWB, but I do.

That main trunk is probably gonna be wetter than the top stuff it sounds like you have been burning.

Any dead elm with the bark falling off is your main target of opportunity right now, slabwood if you've got a sawmill local is another option, and usually pretty cheap.

 

[haveawoody]

If the elm was standing dead it could be just a month or less after splitting to be ready to burn.
Nearer you get to the base of the tree the longer that wood will need to dry properly.
Top 2/3 and all the branch wood will be short term drying.
In the house 1 month or less, stacked outdoors in winter probably 3 months.

Walnut, I guess black walnut.
For me it would go in as a last resort after all the elm was burnt.
Longer walnut dries the better and even dead stuff can still be 6 months to dry properly.
Easy to tell when walnut is ready it takes on a completely different color than green wood when it's dry.

Oak probably little chance of it being ready, not impossible but it would have had to be completely off the ground for a couple years in log format to be getting close.
If it touched the ground then no chance.

That is the best plan of attack IMO and yeppers not good to burn wet wood in an OWB.
Damp wood wastes BTU's and creates dirty everything from the firebox up.

 

[farmerboybill]

Yeah,

Everything was off the ground. The dead burr oaks died 10 years ago. I knocked two of them down last week. They were both over 36" across. The trunk pieces are not burning very fast, but there's no water boiling out of them.

The pic shows the burr oak just cut. Second pic show my too-wet woodpile. The darker stuff is the pin oak cut fall 2012. The lighter stuff is maple cut this spring. I'm not gonna pile next to the stove like this anymore. I've heard of two guys who ended up with a massive bonfire recently. My next plan is to split and pile it out on the point behind my barn and load it in an old manure spreader. Back the spreader to the door and unload it as I load the stove.

 

[farmerboybill]

 

[haveawoody]

farmerboybill,

Looks like silver maple in the bottom pic?
If so it's only around 90 days from split to fully cured.
Hard maple 6 months to 1 year.

Snow isn't going to help any of the wood dry especially with the crazy changes in weather this winter but I bet just under the top layer is much drier stuff.
Might be time to break out the leaf blower and say goodbye to the snow on the stacks before it melts when we are just used to the cold. LOL

Dead standing elm is usually pretty quick to dry, limb wood is usually ready as soon as cut, trunk wood all comes down to location location.
Almost always though the higher up the tree the drier the elm is.

Got to love oak, 10 years in log format and it's still not ready.
Red oak is even worse.
Oak is something I tackle right away, cut split and wait.
If you miss one of those steps it's usually a long wait to dry.
Not to many wood species that sit around for more than a few years in log format when cut and split and a month or two later it's ready.
Oak sure is the one that breaks that rule.

Walnut well not being one of my fave woods mainly because it's a long term drying wood, at 2 years after splitting it's pretty decent and before that it's not great.
At best though it isn't much beyond silver maple that is ready in 90 days, very little BTU difference between them and IMO silver maple is a much nicer firewood to light, burn and even block burn for length fires .

 

[farmerboybill]

Haveawoody -

You were absolutely right about the maple. I threw in some maple last week and it burns just fine. It was cut spring 2013 and split in September. Dunno how it'd do in a fireplace, but the OWB likes it! Funny how the pin oak cut October 2012 doesn't burn as well...

 

[Coldfront]

Little sticks and thin split dead pinje is your friend now. go get a BUNCH, you know that stuff guys call "brush" and burn in big piles? That stuff. Big handful of crunchy sticks per crappy wet split works fine. Chock fulla hot burning BTUs will boil that sap out of the big stuff fast. Ya, it's tedious but by golly it works. Been there done that, move some place with no wood, have to go out cut and burn like right then. I'm talking half inch to one inch, thin, dry. Crunch snap, that dry, doesn't matter what species, as long as you shoot a good quantity dry handful in first, then your wet split. Just keep doing that, every big split gets it's own handful of sticks.

Burning wet oak just sucks, but if it's all ya got, that works to burn it.

I have been doing basically this same thing with very dry pine. I cut some standing dead pine with all the bark fallen off and most of the branches have also fallen off, the stuff is dry. 2 or 3 pieces dry pine to one piece unseasoned oak on top of that. It has been getting me through these minus -20 nights just fine. Maybe it is just my area, but the standing dead pine is fairly plentiful and no one else seems to want it. Of coarse if you have anything better than green oak use that first.

 

[haveawoody]

farmerboybill,

Yeah silver maple is pretty quick dry stuff so I bet your OWB is quite happy to burn it.
One thing I like about silver maple is even cut and left in rounds it's starting to dry so I suspect that since you split yours in Sept it's more than ready.
I burn quite a bit of silver maple in my woodstove and it's a pretty decent heat producer and almost nothing left when it's done.
It will never compete with good dry oak for burn times but you can expect maybe 2/3 with silver maple.

I have enough silver maple to build a small pyramid. LOL
Always getting it delivered or hauling it from a job and can't really sell it as hardwood so it fills a big barn to the rafters.
I burn maybe 1 1/2 full cord each year that gets replaced by 3 or 4 each year, loosing the silver maple war for sure.