Pine is for suckas!
- Thread starter jrider
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According to these guys, it's equal to osage orange
According to these guys, it's equal to osage orange
Jakers
Owner - Arbor Jake's Tree Service, LLC
Nice. sounds like some great firewood then
Ha! I love how they listed the American Basswood as a "hardwood" on their charts. obviously they have never even seen one if they think its a hard wood. that being said, i do understand that in many areas of industry and study, the classification between hard or softwood is usually between seed types. it just made me laugh because normally charts referring to the BTU content of wood dont breakdown the same way lumber or arborist classification charts do
I was thinking that I was the only one that liked pine. I got a good scrounge of pecan, oak, and cherry this year but miss the rocket fuel known as southern yellow pine. It lights easily ( a big consideration in Georgia) burns hot and fast with little ash and just enough coals to light off the next load. Pecan is just downright ornery to light without some help.
ReggieT
Addicted to ArboristSite
Pecan is ornery & black locust requires a ton of embers to burn...at least for me!
I believe both aspen and basswood are classified as "soft hardwoods" as crazy as that sounds. Some trains of thought classify all needle trees as softwood and all leafy trees as hardwoods. Can't say I agree with that but I'm not a biologist either so what do I know lol
Yep, I know that feeling too, living near Portland, Oregon almost EVERYTHING is BACK EAST to those of us WAY OUT WEST. I Didn't really consider Denver "Out West "
I Have burned a bit of Lodgepole Pine, and it is a nice, clean , dry and easy splitting wood that burns well for me, and smells nice in a campfire
Doug
Cottonwood is no Oak, Maple or Orange Osage, I will give you that, but it does produce BTU's.
We had some large Cottonwood trees come down during a storm in our neighborhood about a block and a half from our house, on community property, the HOA, was Thrilled to have us cut it up and haul it home. Guess who would have paid in the end to have it removed? My neighbors and I, instead it heated our house for a couple of not so cold months, saving better wood for later in the winter, and keeping our forced air Electric furnace turned OFF.
Nope, not the preferred wood, but sometimes still not a bad choice.
Cottonwood definitely needs to be kept DRY, and well ventilated, it will stink to high heaven if you do let it get wet, but well seasoned, it burns okay.
I wouldn't go much out of my way for it, but we burned a LOT of it at our Boathouse on the Columbia, where the things grow like weeds, and we weren't looking for max BTU's, it was convenient and served our needs.
Doug
Captain Brown
ArboristSite Lurker
Where I live, there is one species that most people use for all of their firewood (myself included,) and that is lodgepole pine. It's easy to get to, almost always straight and fairly limb free, and splits easily. Other than that, our choices are aspen or cottonwood, and if you're really lucky a Douglas fir. We wouldn't know how to process and burn hardwood here
My Grandparents had a place in La Pine, OR that my Mom inherited, that has LOTS of Lodgepole on it, like Cottonwood near the Columbia, around La Pine, Lodgepole is practically considered a Weed, the stuff sprouts every where, without being specifically planted, almost as bad as Blackberries on the western side of the state, but no thorns and useful as Firewood.
I Wouldn't make the 4 hour trip each way to go get it from the Grandparents place but would take the saws and trailer when we had a Family gathering there. My 6x12 tandem trailer had 5' sides on it, and stacked a bit above those gave me just short of 3 cords.
Lodgepole is nice and light compared to many other woods, that would load me about 8,000# on the axles (7,000# Rating
)Again, it ain't Oak, Maple or Orange Osage, but it also produces BTU's and is a nice burning wood that I will take in the right situation. GrandPa always had plenty that he wanted taken out when ever we visited.
Go spend a couple days with Family and bring home a couple cords of wood, what's to complain about there?
We're not all Blessed with large stands of Oak and Maple, around here Douglas Fir is a Valued Firewood, as is Tamarack, I'm even burning a lot of Hemlock this year, at $10/cord for USFS firewood permits and a lot USFS felled standing dead that was stove ready, we Wished that we "wood " have had time to fill all 5 cords of our tags, but a death in the Family was more of priority time wise, so our woodshed is not as full as we would like
Doug
Northerner
ArboristSite Operative
Poplar, spruce,pine,birch and tamarack is about all we got here.
Mostly heating spruce this winter. Prefer tamarack though.
Mostly heating spruce this winter. Prefer tamarack though.
WPanhandler
ArboristSite Operative
Used to live on Almond orchard as a kid, Almond was all we used for heating, Burns long and hot a lot like oak, as we lived on the high desert with 105+ days for months on end and >10% humidity, it didn't take long to season. I believe the chart linked for the BTU rating. good.
Now I live to far north for Almond to grow reliably and produce a crop so oak and anything that is dead is what gets burned. from punky yellow pine and punky Sycamore to all species of oak and hickory, cherry..... this year thus far its mostly white oak.
LuDookie
ArboristSite Guru
I never go looking for cottonwood, but I'll sure take it and burn it if it's convenient. Unlike pine, it isn't so easy to fell, cut, split or season. Aspen, on the other hand, can't get enough.
ChoppyChoppy
Tree Freak
Cottonwood and aspen are sort of "hybred" around here (least that's what the forest circus has told us). We just call it poplar (which it is) to make it easier.
It cuts and splits easy. Heavy when wet, but dries fast and is light.
Lumber gets darn hard when it's dry. I've had to drill holes to get a nail or screw to go. Bends bails or snaps screws.
The bigger drawback with using it for firewood is BTU per cord us fairly low.
LuDookie
ArboristSite Guru
They are both called poplars around here too, but I find aspen and cottonwood to be two completely different behaving woods. I like to get my hands on aspen, but cottonwood on the other hand is a pain sometimes....like you said, "darn hard", and I don't think it stinks like others have said, but it is ashy.
I'm assuming the cottonwood and aspen hybridize in central MN too because they have more of a rounded shape with horizontal branches (almost like a pin oak) versus the true aspen (quaking, bigtooth) looks like a tootsie pop with no limbs on the trunk until the round canopy on the top. They also get much more girth on the trunk but don't get obnoxiously large like cottonwood.
What is "sort of hybred"?It is or it ain't.Everything else in your post is true.Still, I have used a lot of poplar for firewood but if that's all you have and it's really cold you'll need plenty of it!
Deerezilla
ArboristSite Lurker
Jakers
Owner - Arbor Jake's Tree Service, LLC
We get all kinds of Poplar around here. Lots of true (non-hybridized) Big Tooth Aspen, Quaking Aspen, White Poplar, Silver Poplar, Balsam Poplar, Balm of Gilead, Eastern Cottonwood (and all of its seedless varieties or other hybrids). I have yet to really burn much other than Eastern Cottonwood and like others have stated, its a SOB to split. I cut it into about 4x4-6x6 blocks and burned it that way. Most of the others split easily from talking to people but i have no experience with them
Regular aspen-quaking, bigtooth, or balsam poplar (one of the species that is called balm of gilead) is normally all very easy to split.
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