Pine.. burn or not to burn?

Burn it after drying. My southern yellow pine gets to 15-20% MC after 9 months C/S/S in wind and sun. I love how it fires up so quickly on minimal coal bed.

I think it depends on the stove you're using. A modern EPA approved stove or insert with a catalytic combuster or secondary burn tubes should do fine burning pine. The key is to get a hot fire and mix the pine in with some hard wood. The pine will put off a lot of gasses, but that is where its heat is with the secondary burn. BTUs are BTUs regardless of what wood produces them. People who say, "don't burn pine because you'll get a lot of creosote in your chimney," are talking about slow burns without secondary burning taking place. I sure wouldn't waste all that pine you say you have available. I just worked up a pine tree that came down in a storm over two hears ago and it is in great burning shape due to being up off the ground that whole time.

Split it, dry it, and enjoy burning it. Free heat is free heat. Now if you have limited space and plenty of hardwood available for the same price, then I'd be biased to the hardwood simply due to BTU density. Keep some harder woods available if you have them for overnight etc.

Nice that it is light weight to carry into the house... not so nice in that it just doesn't have the same heat potential/volume as denser woods.

I've burned a decent amount of pine and other soft woods - picking it up I've learned to tell the giver we have a fire pit to avoid the lecture about burning my house down

Pine being bad to burn is an Eastern myth. Pine doesn't produce anymore creosote then any other wood of the same moisture content . Wet wood (of any type) and poor burning practices is what makes creosote.
Of course eastern pine won't burn as long as dry oak, but most woods don't burn as long as oak, so that doesn't mean anything, except you'll use more wood.

Right now I wish I had some pine for the mild days weve been having ,better than wasting oak .

Burn 'er.

Dropped an Eastern White Pine near my garage just the other day in an attempt to get better satellite reception . . . turned out that wasn't the issue . . . but now I don't have to worry about the pine landing on top of my garage AND I've got some wood for burning during the Fall and Spring burning seasons (or I can turn some into kindling.)

I'd base my decision on whether or not to put effort into bucking and splitting it on how much hardwood I have. I have limited time to get my felling/bucking/splitting/stacking done, so I would not waste my time on it, unless I was short on seasoned hardwoods. It will burn fine, I've burned plenty of pine this year, and a cleaning two weeks ago showed near zero creosote.

mook1302 said:

I have a ton of pine for i cut down about 15 75 ft pine trees beside my house..

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You know the old saying, "A softwood in the hand is worth two hardwood in the bush".

Funny, those who say don't burn pine wouldn't think twice about tossing chunks of 2x4 into the stove.

I never burned any pine before this year. Gave all mine away. Tried a few pieces I had left that I was using to elevate my hardwoods (pieces were several years old and still excellent quality), after burning them shoulder season, truely regretted the wood I had given away. Pine makes great wood for the shoulder season, or as a single front starter piece in a winter hardwood burn. Light to carry, lot of quick heat, very easy to start. Great for shoulder season because it takes the chill off the house very quickly, then you can let it burn out and light another fire the next evening. I disagree re it not being worth cutting if you have plenty of hardwood...serves a different purpose.

I agree with rideau. It is worth cutting and having around unless you are really strapped for space. I love having a cord or two of Pine, Maple, Cherry or other fast burning wood around here. It's great for starting fires, the shoulder season or just getting a hot fire going quick. If there is only hard wood around, you have to split some of it smaller for kindling. If you have Pine around, it's not necessary to split into kindling.
A word of caution. Be careful loading up the stove with Pine. It can get out of hand quick....

Don't assume that it has seasoned a whole bunch while it's been stacked in rounds. You may be surprised just how wet it still is, because the two ends don't provide much surface area for the water to escape. Split some and check it out. After it's split it'll season much more effectively, because the exposed (non-barked-covered) surface area is much greater..

As stated above, many of us burn softwoods exclusively, 'cause them's all we got. Well seasoned it burns just fine and keeps us perfectly warm. Rick

Nick Mystic said:

People who say, "don't burn pine because you'll get a lot of creosote in your chimney," are talking about slow burns without secondary burning taking place. I sure wouldn't waste all that pine you say you have available.

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I agree with Nick. Don't burn pine is what they used to say in pre EPA days.. Now, with the new stoves you can burn any kind of wood.

Just amazes me how many times this subject comes up and how many have heard that you can't burn pine in a stove. Even back way before the epa stoves came on the market folks burned pine. A lot of it was also used in wood cook stoves because it burns fast. Easy to regulate the amount of heat but don't throw heat too long for when grandma was cooking during the warmer months!

Hum.... Maybe that is why the dentist was so curious the last time I was there?

Yeah, I keep hearing this stuff about how it use to be true you couldn't burn pine pre- EPA stove days....
Well I gota ask those saying that, what do you think we burned out West here before they ever came out with EPA stoves???

Lumber-Jack said:

what do you think we burned out West here before they ever came out with EPA stoves???​

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ummm, I'll go with "What is pine?" Alex

mook1302 said:

lol well then looks like burn it is... hopefully going to go some splitting done this weekend suppose to get in the 50's...

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If you haven't split it before, you'll be pleasantly surprised at how easily it will come apart. With that much of it, I would split most of it big. It will still burn for a decent amount of time if it has some size to it. I've easily done overnights with it in my Buck Cat stove. Big pieces though.