Hardwood vs. Softwood

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Lemms

New Member
Oct 18, 2006
58
Edgar, WI
Okay, I have heard that softwood is better because it is cleaner and gives of more heat.
And I have heard that hardwood is better because it burns longer and gives off more heat. So, who has an opinion on this subject???
 
Hardwoods have more BTU's per unit (pick a measurement; pounds, cord, metric ton) than softwoods. Thus you have to burn more softwood to get the same BTU output of a lesser amount of hardwood. Where you live will determine what types of wood you have available, not all areas have quality hardwoods to burn. In the end just make sure it is well seasoned and dry, if it's a softwood you may have to burn a bit more.
 
First, I would say throw out any notion of hardwood and softwood. The lines of what is hard and what is soft are blurry at best and some "soft" woods can be harder than some "hard" woods. What you really care about is the species of wood. There are tables all over the internet detailing how each species burns with respect to odor/smell, coaling quality, smoke, sparks, etc. You also want to compare that with the BTU per cord. You will basically have to make a certain number of saw cuts and splits to get one cord of wood - or spend a certain amount of $$. So for that amount of effort, you might as well get the most BTU's as practical.

With that said, some of the generally "good" woods:

Hedge - my favorite, tends to spark a bit, but highest BTU and very fragrant burning
Oak - good BTU, good smell, good coals
Locust - like oak, although the thorns on some species can be a bit of a headache to deal with.

Some of the generally "bad" woods

Pine - acrid smoke, low BTU
Poplar - low btu
Cedar - acrid smoke, low BTU

With that said, I'm sure people will chime in that burn pine and poplar all year long simply because that is what is available in their area.

Corey
 
I appreciate the comments, as they are all helpful and interesting to read. By the sounds of it, unlike most of you, I am burning pellets (pellet stove). So, I am in the midst of getting a few ton of pellets and am just trying to decide what type to go with... Everything that I heard hear will translate into pellets.

Dylan, Will the "heat-RATE" aspect that you were taking about affect pellets stoves as much as wood? Seeing as though the stove will feed itself more pellets as needed, it doesn't seem like it would be as important as when you have to manually keep a wood stove stoked...

So, I have Hedge, Oak, and Locust as good options to look for. (Was is hedge? I'm from WI and never heard of it.)
 
Lemms I have never seen hedge in WI either when I lived there. Hedge aka Osage Orange or hedgeapple grows to about 30-40 ft grows very slowly and is commonly planted as hedgerows in the great plains states. The tree bears a green fruit about the size of a grapefruit with small furrows which kind of resembles a brain. In WI your common higher BTU trees are the red and white oaks, sugar maple and shagbark hickory which are easily identifiable. The main general difference between the hardwoods and softwoods is the coaling quality of the wood. Hardwoods have generally great coaling qualities and softwood tends to immediately turn into ash after it has burned.
 
Lemms - you will know hedge as osage, or osage orange in the Wisconsin and Illinois area. And yes, we do have it. Alot of farmers tried to get rid of it in the fence rows, but its still around. But it looks like you are talking about pellets. Wood almost always has the same btu PER POUND no matter what species, soft or hard. It really boils down to one pound of softwood pellets vs. one pound of hardwood pellets should really have the same btu output. As far as burn characteristics, I think that will depend on the MFG. I am sure you will get some pellet burners to chime in on that one.
 
Dylan said:
It has to do with heat-RATE, as someone here recently brought to light.

On that coldest night of the winter, when you need to keep that stove operating at seven hundred degrees, AND you don't want coals (They REALLY don't yield all that much heat !!) AND you're willing to wake up every couple hours to recharge, then softwood is the way to go.

Trust me...I've been there. When the mercury hit minus 21, the (three-inch deep) accumulation of (hardwood) coals in my H-II, ABSOLUTELY prohibited combustion air (which entered from below on that model) from reaching the coal/new-fuel interface and stove temperature plummetted. Softwood would have more readily degraded to ash and the combustion air would not have been impeded.

I thought this was a great point Dylan. When I burn pine it's all flames for much of the duration of it burning, and when it does get to the coal stage it vanishes quickly into pure white ash. A way to achieve similar results with a higher BTU per lb wood is to use a lot of smaller splits. Goal is to get lots of surface area with a high BTU wood. Not apples and apples, but....

The one thing I've noticed pine vs hardwoods like ash or oak, is that the hardwoods are easier to control, and burn a lot cleaner. Pine does tend to make the glass get dirty where as the hardwoods burn very clean.... Clean blue flame, vs the very yellow and smoky pine.
 
I am sitting here with a pine fire in the office right now. I have several big pines that blew down in the same storm that got the hardwoods. Some I have to cut up just to make a path to the oaks in the woods.

The great thing about the pine is that even though it burns faster, it is also about half as hard to cut, toss around the rounds, split them etc. May be half the heat but it is half the work also.
 
Dylan said:
BrotherBart said:
The great thing about the pine is that even though it burns faster, it is also about half as hard to cut, toss around the rounds, split them etc. May be half the heat but it is half the work also.


Yeah, but twice as much time (at least) washing yer hands.

Anyone else notice how pitch-laden the eastern white pine cones were this year?? I have one majestic eastern in my front yard and whenever I walked beneath it, the soles of my shoes would be covered with pitch AND whatever else wanted to stick to it.

YES No kidding Dylan...Steve's gonna be wondering what's on his hands!
 
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