Burning the chunky monkeys !!

Instead of burning my chucks in the shoulder season I just burn them like a regular load of wood in the middle of winter. I'm glad I went with the liberty because that firebox makes it easy to load and get rid of some very big chunks

I have a stove full of chunky monkeys right now, along with a couple cedar splits, a stick of Fat Wood, and a piece of news paper.

Just waiting for it to be cool enough to fire it up. One match and it's off to the races.

My plan is to burn all the chunky monkeys first then move on to normal splits.

Burning some uglies right now along with some pine and oak pallet scraps. House is nice and warm. First official fire of the season. Although I am going to let it burn out for tomorrow. Might start it up again tomorrow night if the chill returns.

The other half calls them the "non stackers" cause the mess up her rows. We burn them in the stove, outdoor fires...

Starting to get some cooler weather here in the mountains of western NC, but not cool enough yet to fire up the stove. I did bring in a bucket of kindling today in anticipation of the first fire of the season. It's supposed to go down to the low 40s tonight, but back up around 70 tomorrow. I've arbitrarily decided to wait until the house gets down to 66 degrees to fire off the stove. This evening the walls and floors were still reading over 70 degrees with IR thermometer. As for chunky monkees, it depends on their size for when they burned. Some of those good size ones are saved for over night burns. Smaller stuff can go in anytime. The Jotul F 600 has a large and deep firebox, so I tend to stuff the big odd size pieces way in the back and build a more normal fire up front. That way it takes an hour or two before the big chunks in the back get lit up.

Same here, 1st burn of the year and I'm burning the "chunk pile". The pic of the 2 kids is two of my grandsons, and NO they didn't actually split all of it with the maul & wedges , BUT, they DID spend a weekend here at the ranch and BEGGED me , "Poppa, let US run the log spliter, we can do it !! " I turned them loose on the troybilt, and, they did a bangup job of it, even stacked what they got done in about a day & a half. They worked in the wood pile in between messin with the goats, shoveling the horse corral's, etc., etc, you know, the usual ranch chores & such. Both are gonna make fine ranchers someday, .......THEY'll tell ya just that too !

Damn !........................couldn't figure out how to edit the living room pic in my post

Due to the fact that I have a huge pile already, everything I trimmed up recently from some tree service wood got burned in the pit. I know I wasted a bunch of BTUs, but enough is enough.

In the big box, 12-24 burns with chunks is normal.

I call them "Shorties"....they burn like crazy, and hot as all heck. One time I threw in about 10 of them walked away for a few minutes...then BANG, BANG....I run to the stove, temp gauge buried, only took about 5 minutes to get there

I personally would not use them to start the fire, I would wait till you get a nice coal bed going before starting to use them.....on the other end of the spectrum, I threw in a sheet of black locust bark last night, it had some surprising lasting power as well as packing some heat.... I seem to get a lot of sheets of bark when using the splitter so I'm gonna play around with them in the upcoming fires....have fun burning all.....

What is shoulder season?

Thanks

-Emt1581

Before and after the heart of the wood burning year......ie. taking the chill out of the house, having multiple fires during the week, not really burning hard all the time for heat, like you wood in December and January.....

emt1581 said:

What is shoulder season?

Thanks

-Emt1581

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Typically fall and early spring. When it's cool enough to burn, but not crazy-cold like the dead of winter.

**Ram got to it before I did.

Ram 1500 with an axe... said:

Before and after the heart of the wood burning year......ie. taking the chill out of the house, having multiple fires during the week, not really burning hard all the time for heat, like you wood in December and January.....

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I've always wondered about that. I mean right now it's in the 50's out and the house is pretty chilly...enough that I'm in a jacket when I'm home. Not really COLD but some heat would be nice.

I figured that everyone stuck it out until 1) she complained or 2) it was in the 30's or 40's out.

But yeah, I've got some chunks left from last year and a bunch of branch wood I harvested over the summer that'd burn quite nice right about now and take the chill out.

Thanks

-Emt1581

Np, then I say go for it, I had a fire going last night, when I started the room was 62, when I finished it was 72, when I woke up this morning it was 68, a lot better then 62....now I need to open the windows so I can start another one tonight...