Slash fire methods

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Skidder tires will keep it going for a while but are a little smokey. Have a bunch of leftovers to bury later as well..

Yeah I'd bet. At nearly $4k each it's not something we replace. The 648D wold need 2, but with chains it still pulls good.
 
Fun thread being in PNW and 'Pungnet' sound area also.

Just about anything except 1 wadded newspaper to start -- everything else technically illegal here. 3 ft dia fires in residential areas and ya gotta be sitting within 20 feet with a hot dog on a stick !
The housing developers around me have not been able to burn slash in this area of King Co for over 20 years, chpped and hauled away, usually in tub grinders.

In these here 'green days', have used crushed HDPE milk jugs for fire starters down by Mossyrock, smokeless and lots of BTUs. Save all my milk jugs for various uses anyway.

Did use some tires in the past in the early 70's, nothing beats old tires with some diesel inside the for starters. Old car seat foam worked pretty good back then also.

Comment on 'flash' ; Back in the 60's, a cousin in ND filled an old tractor inner tube with oxy acet to re-start a slash pile.
Dragged the tube into the smouldering remains*, when it ignited it blew the pile apart!
*with a 50 ft rope, cousin was not THAT dumb. -
 
This pile I'm working on currently is in the middle of a "nice" lake neighborhood, bunch of 1/2 acre lots in the middle of nowhere on a lake with an algae problem.

Using the weed burner is technically illegal but the fire dept looked the other way on that, their concern was the size of the pile, and assholes complaining about the smoke.

So the first day they where called roughly 20 minutes into starting it, still had the weed burner and some unburnt straw everywhere, later that day, they came out again and asked me to make the pile smaller (it was probably 20' and burnin real good)

The second day... got it burning quick and easy, already had a hot bed to work with, they probably would have left if the wind hadn't picked up a bit. Because of the wind they made me put it out, which was mostly fine since I was planning on letting it burn mostly out anyway after the last wad of stuff I'd just stacked on, since I had to go back to the day job fer 3 days anyway.

Torched it again on Tues, and it stared up real nice, 2-3 minutes with the weed burner and 10 minutes or so with the leave blower and it was back where I'd left off on thursday... of course then the wind picked up, so I didn't stack much more then what was immediately around the pile, and that mostly by hand.

I figure next week, I'll get er going good again, I think the neighbors mostly work during the day, so I'll burn hot in the morning and slow it down in the evenings.

Do what I can to get the pile burned, anything left will have to be hauled off, at $50 a ton plus trucking, so like $600 per 60 yd end dump. Or if I can get most of the brush burned up I'll use my little dumper truck, take a lot more trips, but then I'm not paying for a driver and his maintenance. And if I'm down to just stumps it won't be all that bad.
 
Matt, that seems bass ackwards. I try to burn HOT if neighbors are around. A hot fire doesn't smoulder and the smoke is a bit thinner. In the words of our late fuels guy, You Got To Get That Column Built. He was the first fuels guy I ever worked for who actually tried not to smoke out the crew holding line. So, I'd (more of his words) Pour the heat in it and get it hot. But you know the temperament of the neighborhood so just tell me to .....off. :D
 
You don't want flashy fuels in a slash pile. You want something that will stick and burn awhile. When we mess with ratios, it's because the standards didn't work. Nobody who's been the business awhile will jump right to a hot mix. We all love our eyebrows too much for that.
I get what you're saying, I was kinda being a smart a** with the methanol comment. I can see the reason for oily fuels
 
big and hot=clean and fast.

Its just nosy people with nothing better to do then ***** about their neighbors, so the fire is going to take 3 times as long, and be 6 times as smokey.

PSCAA is the big problem here, can't burn without a permit, DNR won't give a permit for LDA's, so I have to go through the Fire Dept, so the fire has to be small.

Meanwhile 5 miles away, where the brush would get hauled to, folks complain about the smell... of decomposing woody debris, which is releasing exactly the same amount of co2 as my fire is, but my fire arguably smells better, until some one makes me put it out... then its a little stinky...

Granted the fire releases more particulate, but its not harmful particulate, mostly silica some potassium chloride (lye), carbon, etc.

The ologists at PSCAA have deemed slash piles bad so burning is verboten.
 
Get a five gallon bucket, gear & bar oil buckets work good, if there's a little left over that's great. Add 4 gallons of gas, mixed gas takes down the poofyness, diesel works best but is tougher to light up. Run a couple bars of ivory soap through a cheese grater. Dump soap shavings into bucket of gas and stir. Add a couple sleeves of styro coffee cups. Let it thicken up a bit then slop some of it around with a good puddle in the middle. Torch it off right at daylight. It'll get everything going before the neighbors are up and moving for the day if you need to burn when they are going to be home. If there's any dark smoke it will be minimal and mixed in with the heavy starting smoke and steam. Don't burn the bucket.

Started up two green piles with this mix Monday. It worked and smoke was normal, we figured on a big cloud of blackness that didn't happen. If you use a lot it will send up black smoke. The big pile that got 3 full buckets, sent up some black. It's our new go to for burning, should be great on a seasoned pile.

If the neighbors complain, toss in a couple dollar store bags of potpourri.


Owl
 
You were called on in this weather? I have heard about the newer fire requirements in WA. In OR, we have to burn slash by law, and they generally leave us alone to do that here. I have torched off hundreds of slash burns, some with piles the size of my house, and I never had a fire official show up here, ever. No calls or harassment from the DEQ either.

I started out using kerosene, but that burns too slow and it is way too expensive. So I flipped to using gasoline, and that worked well, but it burns too fast. Both are not 'legal' though. I switched to using cardboard as an accelerant and less gas as an ignition source, which works well and what I still use at times. I also burn ground wasp nests with gas at night, because I have tried everything else, and that is the only thing that works. I bought a propane burner for burning weeds and I got the idea to use it for starting slash fires, and that is what I use the most now. I also add cardboard for that extended hot burn start, similar to what you use with straw. I never tried straw or hay bales. I heard that using pallets to start slash pile fires works well too, but I do not like leaving nails around.

Here is my ex in a silhouette in a night slash burn in Southern Oregon. We had hundreds of these there, because the former owners did not clean up after their logging operation there, and we were liable for burning the slash by law.

View attachment 537743
did you burn her at the stake?
 
That gives me an idea. Make a religious ceremony out of it and it'll be OK. Burning the pile that is, not people. When is Guy Fawkes day? Or have a St. Lucia festival on the 21 next month and torch it off. Lots of ceremonial (religious) possibilities out there.
 
Get a five gallon bucket, gear & bar oil buckets work good, if there's a little left over that's great. Add 4 gallons of gas, mixed gas takes down the poofyness, diesel works best but is tougher to light up. Run a couple bars of ivory soap through a cheese grater. Dump soap shavings into bucket of gas and stir. Add a couple sleeves of styro coffee cups. Let it thicken up a bit then slop some of it around with a good puddle in the middle. Torch it off right at daylight. It'll get everything going before the neighbors are up and moving for the day if you need to burn when they are going to be home. If there's any dark smoke it will be minimal and mixed in with the heavy starting smoke and steam. Don't burn the bucket.

Started up two green piles with this mix Monday. It worked and smoke was normal, we figured on a big cloud of blackness that didn't happen. If you use a lot it will send up black smoke. The big pile that got 3 full buckets, sent up some black. It's our new go to for burning, should be great on a seasoned pile.

If the neighbors complain, toss in a couple dollar store bags of potpourri.


Owl


What is the soap for?
 
Howdy, Owl!

Howdy.

What is the soap for?

No idea. That's just what we mixed up. He brought the stuff. I think it's a thickening agent, but I also thought that was what the styro was for too. All I know is it works great, but don't get any on yourself, it sticks like glue and burns for quite a while. Mixing with diesel seemed to burn hottest, but it was a bit of a bugger to get started.



Owl
 
What is the soap for?

old napalm trick, makes the fuel sticky and thick.

Used to be old formula Tide+naphtha+jet fuel/kerosene/diesel

enough tide to thicken the fuel, enough naphtha to ensure a good start.

This is definitely not a mix I would suggest using for starting brush fires. Way more woosh then slow burn.

On the topic of liquid fire starters, Hydraulic fluid, automatic trans fluid, tractor trans, all burn real good, and hot fairly easy to light too, just a bit of paper, takes off better then diesel, and burns longer too.
 
So the fire captain showed up yesterday and shut me down... on account of "wind" and a neighbor called his boss... as well as 911 multiple times.


So I will try again monday.

Yes tires work good, but tires get folks down here in trouble, lots of black smoke.

911? Man, that is forked up. Wind? Like anything is going to burn after several ~feet~ of rain this and last month? I sold some saws to two fallers in southern Washington a couple of years ago, and they talked about all the problems they have burning slash up there. We can burn out here in the Oregon Cascades if we are residents (not absentee) without a permit during non-fire restrictions. Burning slash, loggers in Oregon can pretty much burn whenever they want during the non fire season. Again, they have to do that by law.

Sounds like you need a permit to burn flaming liberals.
 
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