Flame me now I burn wood green and other wise

[Eric Modell]

I keep hearing the mantra burn dry dry wood.
I guess I have been to poor to understand this.
When I cut wood for a living, I burned the greenest wood on earth because the rest got sold.
I would like a fancy EPA cat stove, but the rig I have burns any thing I throw at it.
I would like to have a two or three year pile but that is not happening right now.
I am thrilled to have a couple of cords of relatively green wood stacked in the the dry, we do have a indoor wood room.
The quality of the wood I cut usually would not season for a few years.
How do I turn my situation around.

 

[cheeves]

Keep On Keepin' On

I keep hearing the mantra burn dry dry wood.
I guess I have been to poor to understand this.
When I cut wood for a living, I burned the greenest wood on earth because the rest got sold.
I would like a fancy EPA cat stove, but the rig I have burns any thing I throw at it.
I would like to have a two or three year pile but that is not happening right now.
I am thrilled to have a couple of cords of relatively green wood stacked in the the dry, we do have a indoor wood room.
The quality of the wood I cut usually would not season for a few years.
How do I turn my situation around.

Eric, God love Ya! At your age you're doing just fine. When I was selling wood like crazy after the oil embargo of the 70's remembering cutting green locust to burn in my Tempwood. As long as it had been dry for a spell would burn just fine. Had to keep an eye on the chimney tho. :redface:

 

[mizzou]

Generally it only takes about 7-9 months too season wood well enough to burn. If you must burn it green, you don't have much choice though. I've done it when I didn't have a choice.

 

[mga]

to each their own.

you have to ask how to correct??

 

[chopperfreak2k1]

i just started burning wood this year and was real worried about not having enough seasoned wood. my dad who was a logger and burned wood for many years told he never burned one stick of seasoned wood. he just kept hot fires and checked the chimney every so often. now i'm not saying not to season your wood, i'm just saying if you can't get seasoned wood it's not the end of the world if you're careful about it.

 

[Eric Modell]

Cheevs

My Metalbestos double wall stainless flue works great. We have a clean out In the house so we can clean with a fire burning, but have found it works so well. once a year is more then ample even when green wood.

The old liner less brick flue we had needed to be cleaned every month or so, (or it would catch on fire), even with totally dry wood.

Thats my point everybody's situation is different.

I started burning wood when I was 16 years old and lived in an army tent. I cut my wood with a bough saw. The tent wood catch fire two or three times a winter, and I would climb the tent pole and spit the fire out with a glass of water.

As I say different situations different time and place.

 

[IHDiesel73L]

I don't worry about creosote buildup as I own a chimney brush and rods and I know how to use them. The thing that sucks about burning green wood is the fact that you have to burn twice as much wood to make the same amount of heat. Dry oak or hickory = true overnight burn and a warm house in the morning. Green oak or hickory = house is cold, fire goes out at 4 a.m., house is freezing at 6:00 a.m. and I'm in the doghouse by 6:30 a.m. :msp_scared: I'm not flaming anyone, just stating the facts. Green wood don't burn hot and wood that burns hot ain't green.

 

[Eric Modell]

Mizzou & Mga

I am being sarcastic????? The drier the wood is not always better. It all has to do the here and now, How much moisture do you need to to put out the needed BTU's.

If the wood is to dry it burns too fast.. If the wood has too much moisture content it burns to slow and can cause trouble.

All I am trying to say drier is not always better.

I have a huge brand new home made stove in my garage. It will probably see very little dry wood it.

Green wood burns very , very hot if you can burn it fast enough.

 

[blackdogon57]

If your cutting and selling a lot of wood, try setting aside the off cuts for yourself. I keep bins of unsaleable wood for myself. Mostly stuff that's a little punky or dirty. With extra drying time it all burns OK. With wood selling for 300-400 per cord I don't like throwing money into my own stove.

 

[IHDiesel73L]

All I am trying to say drier is not always better.

Well that's true-if you have petrified oak that's been sitting in the desert for five years and is drier than a popcorn fart its going to go up like matchsticks. Lots of heat, but it's gone too quickly-I burn hardwood pallets, but they're kiln dried-I don't expect to get long burns out of them. They do warm the house up quick when needed though. So you are right, some moisture content is good-as in 20% or a little less. That's a far cry from most green wood-even green ash.

Green wood burns very , very hot if you can burn it fast enough.

All you have to do is search back through the archives to find topics like "My stove won't make any heat," "Stovetop won't get above 400 degrees," "Fire won't stay lit, etc..." Click on any one of those and you'll find that it was all due to burning wood that wasn't ready. I just see burning green wood as a waste of time-I find, cut, transport, buck, split, and stack every last stick of firewood I burn so I make sure that I'm getting the most BTUs out of it I can. Anything less would be a complete waste of time.

 

[mizzou]

Not sure how I was being sarcastic. Was agreeing with you.

 

[Eric Modell]

IHDIESEL

This is my point !!!!!

Maybe your stove does not breath enough.

All the old timers that tough me to burn wood, burned green.

Just food for thought.

I know EPA and the government has been involved for a long time.

If your stove burns fast enough it is hard to control dry wood. And heaven help us if you have an out of control stove.

 

[Eric Modell]

Mizzo

I was sarcastic. Us older people from yesteryear burned and do burn green wood , because that is the way our equipment operates.

 

[Chris-PA]

If you have to burn green wood then it's better then freezing. But there's simply no way to get around the fact that a lot of the energy goes into boiling the water and right up the flue as steam, rather than producing heat. Water has a huge heat capacity and it simply absorbs a lot of energy to raise its temperature to boiling. If you don't end up with a puddle of water running out of the stove, then it boiled and left and took your heat energy with it. It's not a belief system or a judgement on right or wrong, it's just physics.

 

[IHDiesel73L]

If you have to burn green wood then it's better then freezing. But there's simply no way to get around the fact that a lot of the energy goes into boiling the water and right up the flue as steam, rather than producing heat. Water has a huge heat capacity and it simply absorbs a lot of energy to raise its temperature to boiling. If you don't end up with a puddle of water running out of the stove, then it boiled and left and took your heat energy with it. It's not a belief system or a judgement on right or wrong, it's just physics.

That's all I'm sayin...trust me-I've been there. Keeping a house warm with green wood isn't fun, but if its what you have to do then you do it. If I was stuck on the side of the road and had to change a tire using a short ratchet and a socket rather than a proper lug wrench with a long arm I'd do it somehow because I had to, but I wouldn't act like that's the ideal way to do it. WHW speaks the truth-if you're using up BTUs to make steam up the flue those are BTUs that aren't heating your house.

 

[CrappieKeith]

If you have to burn green wood then it's better then freezing. But there's simply no way to get around the fact that a lot of the energy goes into boiling the water and right up the flue as steam, rather than producing heat. Water has a huge heat capacity and it simply absorbs a lot of energy to raise its temperature to boiling. If you don't end up with a puddle of water running out of the stove, then it boiled and left and took your heat energy with it. It's not a belief system or a judgement on right or wrong, it's just physics.

Exactly...not to pile on but c'mon....burning green wood is pretty ignorant.
Then again if it works for you and your happy with all of the extra work...knock yourself out.

...another question...why would a wood burner come here and go...hey look at me...I'm burning green wood....do ya need a hug....

 

[Eric Modell]

My Deceased neighbor great friend and very wise man. Had me bring four cords of green red oak every year to go with his rick or two of seasoned wood from last year.

He burned a down drafter stove of yesteryear.

In the olden days we had choices of the woods moisture content, but our equipment performed very well with green wood.

If we had had modern stoves I am sure we would have been burning dry wood like we do today.

 

[IHDiesel73L]

...another question...why would a wood burner come here and go...hey look at me...I'm burning green wood....do ya need a hug....

I think he felt like I was going after him with this post in the "what firewood should I use" thread:

How do you figure? My Englander isn't that old, but because it's a furnace it's EPA exempt, no cat, no secondaries, so essentially it functions like an "older stove." The one year I got behind on scrounging and got desperate I started burning stuff that wasn't totally green but wasn't dry either. I had nothing but problems-hardly any heat, the wood was bubbling, hissing and spitting, I couldn't get an overnight burn to save my life, and my chimney was a mess. Fast forward to the following year with more of the same wood (after having sat under cover for nearly 18 months) and the furnace was practically cooking us out some nights! Now I don't burn anything that hasn't been split for at least a year. Really dense stuff like red oak, locust, hickory, etc...gets two years.

If we had had modern stoves I am sure we would have been burning dry wood like we do today.

Dude, my Englander is no more modern than your stove. Hell I wish it was an EPA stove-it'd put out more heat with less wood!

 

[mga]

Mizzou & Mga

I am being sarcastic????? The drier the wood is not always better. It all has to do the here and now, How much moisture do you need to to put out the needed BTU's.

If the wood is to dry it burns too fast.. If the wood has too much moisture content it burns to slow and can cause trouble.

All I am trying to say drier is not always better.

I have a huge brand new home made stove in my garage. It will probably see very little dry wood it.

Green wood burns very , very hot if you can burn it fast enough.

i simply said to each their own.

alot of guys burn green wood...in OWB. i prefer well seasoned wood because i like it HOT in there.

your closing question was : "how do i turn this around?"

well, as one suggested keep some dry wood for yourself.

 

[Chris-PA]

It's all about different strategies to fit different situations.

If you have a stove that is not well sealed or a fireplace, and not enough thermal mass (masonry), then the only way you can stretch out heating time is to slow down the burn. Water in the wood will do that, but only at the cost of losing some of the heat energy. I could do that in my "EPA" secondary combustion stove - leave it wide open and let it smolder until it cooks out the water, and it will work every bit as well as any other stove doing that. But there is no advantage to doing so compared to stopping it down with dry wood. It does not get out of hand because it is well sealed.

If you have a large thermal mass you could burn dry wood hot and let the heat store up in the stone/masonry, and it will re-radiate out for a long time. But then you won't have much in the way of coals to start it up again, and nobody wants to deal with that. So wet wood is easier.

If you have a flue with a lot of draw and a leaky stove, then wet wood might be a way to moderate it.

You can use wet wood to deal with a variety of sub-optimal situations, but you are always going to be losing heat energy.