This question is for the folks out west and up in the north. Just wondering how long you let the pine/fir/spruce dry before burning. Nobody here in WV would ever burn evergreens, but I realize it is all you have in some areas. Much trouble with creosote?
Burning conifers
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Sierra_rider
Piss revver
I'll let the pine sit for a year or so before burning. No issues with creosote, that has more to do with the temperature of the fire than anything IMO. I run a brush through my chimney every year just to make sure it's good, but there is never much in the way of build up.
Creosote isn't caused by conifer's "pitch". It is caused by incomplete combustion products condensing into a cold chimney. Extra moisture in the wood, be it conifer or deciduous firewood, will take heat from the fire and condense quicker in the chimney.
I haven't read up too much on this statement, but I think the extra volatile compounds in the conifers make them easier to light in a stove, and slightly quicker to condense in a cold chimney. DRY conifer firewood, I believe, will have less tendency to form creosote than other firewood, on account of how easy it is to get burning hot inside the stove.
Jakers
Owner - Arbor Jake's Tree Service, LLC
To preface this reply, I live in West Central Minnesota. We have plenty of hardwood variety of trees to choose from. I own a tree service and often end up with less desirable types of wood to burn myself. I often choose the softwood species for their quick drying and fast, easy lighting.
I personally burn literal tons of evergreen varieties every year. If I cut the trees live and let them sit in log form for a few months to a year, the wood will be close to dry when split. If I cut and split green in the summer, I could safely burn it in the late fall depending on weather and stacking/coverage. I usually try to stay a full year ahead on split wood supply but that can be rather difficult as I burn 12-15 cord a year in two indoor stoves.
As pdqdl stated above, the creosote is caused by incomplete combustion and condensation in the pipe far more than the pitch (sap, tar, resin....) in the evergreen wood. If your wood is dry, it all burns clean. The worst creosote problems I've ever experienced was from wet Red Oak or Bur Oak. On the wet Red Oak problem, I completely plugged the 6" chimney with black junk.
I personally burn literal tons of evergreen varieties every year. If I cut the trees live and let them sit in log form for a few months to a year, the wood will be close to dry when split. If I cut and split green in the summer, I could safely burn it in the late fall depending on weather and stacking/coverage. I usually try to stay a full year ahead on split wood supply but that can be rather difficult as I burn 12-15 cord a year in two indoor stoves.
As pdqdl stated above, the creosote is caused by incomplete combustion and condensation in the pipe far more than the pitch (sap, tar, resin....) in the evergreen wood. If your wood is dry, it all burns clean. The worst creosote problems I've ever experienced was from wet Red Oak or Bur Oak. On the wet Red Oak problem, I completely plugged the 6" chimney with black junk.
I owned a tree service in Ohio for 20 years and sold and heated with wood there. I now live in North Idaho and heat with wood here. Just as is the case with hardwoods, softwoods are most definitely not all created equal. For example, the difference between Douglas fir (usually called red fir around here and I am aware that it's not a true fir) and Grand fir (usually called white fir here) is similar to the difference between silver and sugar maple. I never bothered trying to heat with silver maple and I won't use white fir here. The best firewood available locally is western larch (usually called tamarack here). I would rate it as similar to beech or red oak, except it's much easier to light. As far as drying time, in general (and this is a huge generalization) conifers dry faster than hardwoods. Most of the time, folks here are burning wood that was dead standing for anywhere from a year to 100+ years (that's not a misprint. There are still dead snags standing from the 1910 fires in some places), so a lot of the time, it's ready to burn immediately. For green Doug fir or tamarack, I would try to let it season (cut to length) for a year before burning. Creosote is no more of any issue with dry, quality wood here (meaning Doug fir, Tamarack, Lodgepole pine) than it is with dry, quality eastern hardwoods (red & white oak, beech, sugar maple, locust, shag hickory etc.) I do miss the locust and shag hickory.
LuDookie
ArboristSite Guru
Used to live where my only choices were conifer and aspen. Burned 10 cords a year. Lots of times I would try to season for a full year but wasn’t always possible. Never had a problem with chimney build up and never had a problem with any of it. Kind of miss the smell of burning pine. I miss the smell of having 2 cords of wood stacked in the living room too. Those were the days.
freeasaburt
ArboristSite Operative
Seems to me that there's a different definition of 'dry' firewood here than in the States. I wouldn't even consider burning any wood, except for maybe dead standing in some cases, that hasn't been in proper storage (with lots of wind exposure and preferrably a good cover) for at least two years.
Also, I don't really get how wood can be better (like in 'seasoned') than dry. To me, dry means dry enough to burn properly, and it usually doesn't get better than that unless you use a kiln.
On topic: I usually mix in spruce and fir with better quality firewood, and make sure the fire roars. I also think creosote is a result of a 'suffocated' fire and the moisture content, rather than of the type of firewood. Not giving the fire enougn oxygen also results in elevated levels of carbon monoxide, dust particles, etc etc. Whether that's a big problem or not depends on the amount of people living close to you, I guess, and the quality of your chimney setup, as CO can also be 'pushed back' into your living room.
The water vapour of too moist wood will condense in your chimney, especially when you start the fire, and dust and other particles will stick to that.
I almost never have to clean my stove glass, and it's definitely never black. I sweep once a year (insulated 'double-walled' stajnless steel chimney) and almost nothing comes out.
Also, I don't really get how wood can be better (like in 'seasoned') than dry. To me, dry means dry enough to burn properly, and it usually doesn't get better than that unless you use a kiln.
On topic: I usually mix in spruce and fir with better quality firewood, and make sure the fire roars. I also think creosote is a result of a 'suffocated' fire and the moisture content, rather than of the type of firewood. Not giving the fire enougn oxygen also results in elevated levels of carbon monoxide, dust particles, etc etc. Whether that's a big problem or not depends on the amount of people living close to you, I guess, and the quality of your chimney setup, as CO can also be 'pushed back' into your living room.
The water vapour of too moist wood will condense in your chimney, especially when you start the fire, and dust and other particles will stick to that.
I almost never have to clean my stove glass, and it's definitely never black. I sweep once a year (insulated 'double-walled' stajnless steel chimney) and almost nothing comes out.
Bill G
ArboristSite King
That must have been one big living room
freeasaburt
ArboristSite Operative
There's also a (group of) species that we here in Belgium actually (and wrongly) call 'conifers' themselves. They are often put in gardens, as hedges, but grow into full fledged trees if not trimmed. I believe it contains species like Thuja. Those are generally considered to be unfit for firewood, around here, I believe because the resin content is even higher. There might be another reason though, and it might be a falsehood altogether.
LuDookie
ArboristSite Guru
Fairy, but nothing extraordinary.That must have been one big living room
It means the same thing. Honestly not sure why we call dry wood "seasoned". The amount of time it should sit before being used is going to vary widely based on the conditions. To use a couple of extreme examples, in Ohio, green red oak in log form stacked in the shade won't ever dry out before it rots, while in Idaho, Lodgepole pine cut, split and stacked in the sun could be ready in a month. Those are opposite ends of the spectrum, but the point is that it all depends on the specific circumstances. Not all wood needs to be seasoned/dried the same amount of time before use.
Thuja, as a genus, is definitely a conifer. They make great firewood, as they light easily and contain lots of BTU's. Not easy splitting, however. The variations we get around central USA are not usually worth the trouble, as they are big on having dense foliage and not so good about having large wood worth chopping up into firewood.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thuja
freeasaburt
ArboristSite Operative
That makes a lot of sense. I once split some spruce (into smaller pieces) that I split earlier and let dry in good conditions for 2+ years, as an experiment, and out of some pieces resin simply ran out. I suppose moisture is moisture, in that sense, and that that's maybe the reason for conifers' (in general) bad reputation?
I heard that sun and (during the first year) rain exposure help with lowering the resin content, but I'm not sure it's true.
Pretty knotty stuff indeed. I sometimes 'scrounge' some branches, when I help family with pruning duties or whatever, but I generally burn them outside, when we have a little get together around the fire pit. Burns fiercely, but not for long, and ash residue seems high (although a bonfire is obviously less efficient than a good stove).
I think the best reason for bad reputation would be ignorance. You don't ever hear folks complaining about the unsuitability for firewood of conifers in those parts of the world where everything is conifer.
The resin of conifers contains a lot of chemicals that are "volatile", which means they evaporate. Collectively they are called terpenoids, Turpentine, formerly popular for making and diluting paint, was extracted from pine trees. It is these volatile chemicals that contribute to the ease with which many conifers burn. Those terpenoids & resin ignite easier than just the dense cellulose and lignin of a tree, and they get that fire going faster than otherwise.
So yes, the resin will continue to evaporate and it will wash off to a certain extent in the rain. If you think about how well pine sap washes off your clothes and hands, that will give you a good idea how well rainwater washes it off the logs themselves. Not so much.
I suppose that depends on how you define "good". We have lots of cedar (which is part of that genus) here, some of it gigantic. It certainly lights easily, but it burns up very quickly. Most folks only use it for kindling or for a quick, short warming fire in spring or fall.
Sierra_rider
Piss revver
Some of it depends on the local weather as well. Out in the western US, we have a lot of dry days in the summer...humidity drops into the teens from time to time and we can go for months without any precipitation. If I cut a tree down in the spring and split the wood, it's totally conceivable that it will be readily available to burn by winter.
In the midwest, the only thing we have that is Thuja is the Eastern Red Cedar. They can get 30 feet tall, and they burn real well once dried.
I had a friend ask me once (long before I became a woodburner) to bring some firewood to his house for a party he was having. I didn't have any seasoned firewood, but I thought that cedar tree we just cut up would take off like a torch. All those volatile terpenoids, right?
Nope. Boy was I wrong. He had that wood in the fireplace with the gas ignitor under it for an hour or more. It smelled nice, but it obviously was never going to burn on it's own.
I had a friend ask me once (long before I became a woodburner) to bring some firewood to his house for a party he was having. I didn't have any seasoned firewood, but I thought that cedar tree we just cut up would take off like a torch. All those volatile terpenoids, right?
Nope. Boy was I wrong. He had that wood in the fireplace with the gas ignitor under it for an hour or more. It smelled nice, but it obviously was never going to burn on it's own.
freeasaburt
ArboristSite Operative
My guess is that they are not a native species here, and also that there's a lot of cultivars, because it's popular for hedges and other use in gardens.
EDIT a lot of conifers here are not native, yet can grow/thrive without 'help' (as opposed to so called 'ephemeral' species); there's a list of such conifer species here https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lijst_van_exoten_in_de_Benelux#Coniferen
EDIT a lot of conifers here are not native, yet can grow/thrive without 'help' (as opposed to so called 'ephemeral' species); there's a list of such conifer species here https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lijst_van_exoten_in_de_Benelux#Coniferen
Smitty Smithsonite
ArboristSite Operative
My dad burned wood for over 30 years, and from my childhood, it was FORBIDDEN to put ANY KIND of pine in that wood stove! I'd have got beaten!
I do remember the handful of neighbors in the neighborhood that weren't as picky as my dad was, and they seemed to have the fire department up on a ladder with the hose aimed down the chimney more than once EVERY single winter. To be fair, I never saw any of those people on the top rung of a 40' ladder, swinging an old motorcycle chain around inside the chimney every spring, either.
I do remember the handful of neighbors in the neighborhood that weren't as picky as my dad was, and they seemed to have the fire department up on a ladder with the hose aimed down the chimney more than once EVERY single winter. To be fair, I never saw any of those people on the top rung of a 40' ladder, swinging an old motorcycle chain around inside the chimney every spring, either.
Here in their native range, Western red cedar gets huge. 200+ feet tall and 8+ ft. diameter isn't unusual. Here's one that I drove past on a recent hunting trip. For reference, my pickup bed is 6' 4" wide. The wood catches fire easily and burns fast.
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