Burning Softwood

[Coldfront]

Not true. ALL wood has about the same BTU per pound, its just that you get more pounds per stick with hardwoods.

Ok my bad, I meant btu's per cord.

I have sure burned a lot of pine and don't seem to ever have a problem with creosote. Just because pine is light weight doesn't mean it is dry wood, you still need to season it, and I find with pine if you have a moisture meter you can get it down below 12% moisture fairly easy.

 

[PEKS]

Total wealth of information here.
So, is the softest hardwood, harder than hardest softwood..:msp_sneaky:

 

[Carl Anderson]

Sorry.. i reread what i posted.. It sounds like i was jumping on your arse... That was not the case. Again I appoligise.. We have VERY strict building codes here when it comes to wood burning appliances. I treat all woods the same when i burn.. I keep in mind Its burning wood.. my house is mostly wood.. If there was hardwood to burn i would be all over it.. I keep reading.. 8 to 10 hours of burn with a full load and dry wood. I wish.. When its -40 i'm up every 3 to 4.5 hours to feed the beast.. but its worth it to keep the gas bills down.. and hey.. Its a excuse to buy more saws....:biggrin:

That was a ####ty ordeal you went through.. Glad to hear all you lost was belongings. It could have been worse.. I think your right.. The big guy was watching out for you both. Be safe no matter what you do.. My fire marshal asked me why i have a smoke detector in each room.. I told him.. I LOVE my family.. shouldn't that be enough reason..

No worries, I didn't take it as being jumped on. I don't even know what the exact codes are but that little cabin was well over 100 years old so they just did whatever. I bet it had never been inspected at all. I did learn a valuable lesson though and I like to think I'm a safer burner from it. And I have smoke alarms everywhere now too.

There are some guys who burn pine in CT too because it's still heat so I can't say I'll never do it but probably only during the day when I'm home to monitor it and I'm awake anyway so filling it up every few hours is no big deal. Stinks that you have to get up in the middle of the night to feed the stove but it is better than supporting OPEC any more than we have to.

 

[stumpy75]

Total wealth of information here.
So, is the softest hardwood, harder than hardest softwood..:msp_sneaky:

No! :msp_rolleyes:

The softest hardwood is SOFTER than the hardest softwood. Or something like that... uttahere2:

How much wood...Oh, wait, that another one, isn't it?

 

[Garmins dad]

Stinks that you have to get up in the middle of the night to feed the stove but it is better than supporting OPEC any more than we have to.

I'm a insomniac so I'm sitting here anyhow.. I just read all night.. pretty much any shop book i can get my hands on.. I wish my wood and steel shop wasn't attached to the house.. The amount of projects i could get done would be amazing..

 

[Dalmatian90]

that the wood around the pipe in the wall had just gotten so old and dry that the flashpoint was very low and with the hot fire from the pine it just ignited.

Pyrolysis is the technical term for it.

It's beyond just being dried; the wood is slowly chemically altered by the long-term exposure to heat to be higher in carbon content and easier to ignite.

http://www.chimneycricket.net/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/pyrolysiscausesfires.pdf

You hear a lot fewer "partition fires" go out on the scanner nowdays then back in the late 80s; I assume that's as a lot of poorer chimneys have been replaced by properly installed insulated chimneys.

 

[grandnational]

i burn softwood regularly, w/o incident...

I cleared out a 100' oak last fall that had fallen in a cluster of tulip trees (poplar to non new englanders). The main spar of the oak took down 3 separate board straight tulips with it, so figuring it would be a sin to leave that nasty softwood just to rot on the ground, I bucked it up too.

Fast forward to this year, and now it's being run through the insert with no problem. Lights super easy, lasts decently in the fire box even compared to maple or oak, and it dosen't leave a metric #### ton of coals in my tiny 1.8 ft3 so I can get home from work, start a small blaze with the tulip, then jam it full of oak when I go out for the evening and have a nice warm house when I return a few hours later.

That being said, I'm not going to go out of my way to bring softwood home when better wood is available...not because of the softwood part, but more because I hate the pitch/sap all over my hands, saws, truck, and maul. If pine was clean, I'd burn it all the time...

 

[Metals406]

I don't know what kind of pine y'all get into, but the pine I burn isn't full of pitch, or sticky, or gooey. Now, that doesn't mean you don't get the occasional tree or round with a few pitch pockets, but overall -- pine/fir/larch isn't pitchy at all. I guess when weighed against hardwoods, I can see how someone would say that though.

I've never had the opportunity to cut or burn hardwood. . . Does it have no resins/pitch/sap at all?

You want pitch, try your hand at cutting some piss fir (sub-alpine). That stuff is like a pitch factory.

 

[forestryworks]

I don't know what kind of pine y'all get into, but the pine I burn isn't full of pitch, or sticky, or gooey. Now, that doesn't mean you don't get the occasional tree or round with a few pitch pockets, but overall -- pine/fir/larch isn't pitchy at all. I guess when weighed against hardwoods, I can see how someone would say that though.

I've never had the opportunity to cut or burn hardwood. . . Does it have no resins/pitch/sap at all?

You want pitch, try your hand at cutting some piss fir (sub-alpine). That stuff is like a pitch factory.

Fresh cut Mulberry oozes out a white sticky sap.

Most hardwoods I've been around either have a specific smell to them (oak smells like a sour wet horse, not stinky like cottonwood though) or they don't really smell at all. Not many of them have the runs either.

 

[grandnational]

Fresh cut Mulberry oozes out a white sticky sap.

Most hardwoods I've been around either have a specific smell to them (oak smells like a sour wet horse, not stinky like cottonwood though) or they don't really smell at all. Not many of them have the runs either.

The oak I cut around here (red and white) has a very distinctive, sweet, earthy smell when first cut. People that don't even burn know what it smells like. Simply smelling burning oak in the air is enough to make most people go off into a tangent about how that smell reminds them of childhood Christmas/thanksgivings. The absence of the smell from stacked oak is an important way of knowing it's seasoning nicely.

Hardwood here has NO sticky pitch. None. I can't even imagine having to ONLY burn pine.

 

[Metals406]

Fresh cut Mulberry oozes out a white sticky sap.

Most hardwoods I've been around either have a specific smell to them (oak smells like a sour wet horse, not stinky like cottonwood though) or they don't really smell at all. Not many of them have the runs either.

Well if'n them hardwoods don't have any sap, I could see fellas thinking there's a lot with pine.

 

[gtsawyer]

Last year I cut a cord (which is pretty close to 15,320 cups for you kitchen-folk) of what I think was Douglas fir. Whatever it was left pitch all over the place - hands, bed of the truck, driveway, lawn, carpet, wife, kids, dog, etc., etc. The burn on the seasoned wood was great, and as others have noted; it was hot but didn't leave as many coals as the broad-leafed wood I normally burn. If it weren't for the pitch, I'd try to chase down more of the stuff, although I think I'd stay with the smaller diameter stuff. It sounded great in the insert too, as it was a chatty wood (lots of snap, crackle, and pop) although all the popping probably wouldn't make it good for an open fireplace. The larger diameter rounds were hard to split by hand, as the knots only would let you split large pie-wedges. A hydro splitter finally took care of the stuff left over from last year that I couldn't split by hand.

 

[forestryworks]

Well if'n them hardwoods don't have any sap, I could see fellas thinking there's a lot with pine.

Pinon Pine seemed to have a lot of sap when I cut some a week ago.

I've heard it is one of the hardest pines as well.

Sure did smell good.

 

[Richard C]

Well, here we have thousands of Fir, all kinds, some pine and one Incense Cedar. So we burn lots of Fir. It's a great wood.

 

[Carl Anderson]

Pyrolysis is the technical term for it.

It's beyond just being dried; the wood is slowly chemically altered by the long-term exposure to heat to be higher in carbon content and easier to ignite.

http://www.chimneycricket.net/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/pyrolysiscausesfires.pdf

You hear a lot fewer "partition fires" go out on the scanner nowdays then back in the late 80s; I assume that's as a lot of poorer chimneys have been replaced by properly installed insulated chimneys.

This is great info, thanks for getting it out here, rep sent. So it wasn't just the pine burning hotter then, my fire might have happened eventually even with lower temp burns since there wasn't enough clearance between the pipe and the wood. The hotter fire from the pine probably contributed to the fire happening when it did but it seems it was inevitable.

Here's another long winded part of the story (optional, ha ha :wink2 -
We were only there a few months and hadn't gotten renters insurance either, the other stupid mistake but we were young and took dumb risks. At least most of our best belongings such as furniture were in storage because this cabin was too small for much of anything. We lost mostly just clothes and our older bedroom furniture. Funny thing, we have this Christmas decoration of an ice skating rink with little skaters going around on a glass pond (they make them plastic now) while it plays Christmas music. It survived the fire but was soaked and covered in soot. I remember my wife loved it so much that she meticulously cleaned every piece and I took it apart and replaced the white paper under the glass, etc. We still have it and our kids love it, nice reminder of how blessed we are to have gotten out OK.

 

[testlight]

Here in Southern Southeast Alaska all we have is softwoods, and a little Alder that people use to smoke fish. From hot and short burning to longest burning we have red cedar, yellow cedar, spruce, pine and Hemlock. My favorite is Hemlock, but its hard or impossible to find dry.
As long as it is seasoned and dry you should be able to burn anything as long as you keep your stack temperature in check. Too hot is bad, too cold is worse.
With a proper lay out and insulated pipe and a little sheet rock wood fire places are safe.

 

[borat]

You don't have any tamarack or larch up there in Alaska? That makes very good firewood (for a softwood). Nasty stuff to split with a maul but no problem with a splitter.

 

[BILLSFIREWOOD]

Hear in NC, we have all the hardwood we need. But if your home is cold, softwood [ pine] will heat it up faster than hardwood. :angry2:

 

[rob206]

I enjoy burning pine. Around my area most people don't gather it, so that makes it quite plentiful. Also, it is so much lighter than oak that I can really get a good haul of it out of the woods much faster. The fire box on my OWB is large enough that I can 12hr burns in single digit temps with pine. I keep a couple cords under a tarp next to my woodshed which holds the oak & maple. Next winter I will have a larger pile of pine and popple stacked and ready.

 

[russhd1997]

I enjoy burning pine. Around my area most people don't gather it, so that makes it quite plentiful. Also, it is so much lighter than oak that I can really get a good haul of it out of the woods much faster. The fire box on my OWB is large enough that I can 12hr burns in single digit temps with pine. I keep a couple cords under a tarp next to my woodshed which holds the oak & maple. Next winter I will have a larger pile of pine and popple stacked and ready.

To help control the amount of coals that build up in my OWB I mix pine, hemlock and other softwoods right in with my hardwoods. I generally try to fill the firebox with softwood during the day and with hardwood for overnight.