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newburner

newburner

Burning Hunk
Aug 26, 2014
211
Massachusetts
We are having a huge maple in our yard taken down. This tree is somewhat of a hazard as it randomly drops limbs without notice. These limbs have been 4-6" thick and sometimes 10-15' long. Because of this, we don't allow our kids to play out back. It's at least 80' tall with about a 3' diameter trunk. Hoping to get a whole season of heat out of her.

If she comes down this year, will it be ready for the '16-'17 season? Is it unheard of to get 4 cord out of an 80'+ maple? I have no idea what a tree yields just by looking at it.
 
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4 cord might be a record for a maple. 2 cord, probably for a very large common tree. Now If it was a sequoia!
 
The last Ash I did was around 30" base trunk up through branches to about 6" dia. - yielded a bit over 2 cord css + a half of a 8ft box pick up load of uglies. I have a honey locust and an Elm here also that are going to yield about the same. That will be 16 cord done since Aug. 1. just me -an assortment of chainsaws- truck- hydro splitter - tractor with a bucket and chains to lift the big stuff.
 
Speaking of maple, I got 2 cords out of this:

maple11-jpg.125017
 
Goggle it - a 22" diameter tree is roughly 1 cord
 
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I had a red oak taken down this spring - it was 40 inches at the base. It was not a full tree, it had been trimmed over the years. At least one big 12"+ branch was gone and lots of small branches 3-4" were gone. I got between 2.5 and 3 cord from that tree.
 
I just had two red oaks and one white taken down hoping for 5 cords out of of it.image.jpgimage.jpg image.jpg
 
You may get it. Those big trunk rounds have a lot more splits in them than you realize at first.
 
Thanks for the replies. I'll be happy with whatever I get. I've taken measurements and the trunk alone is 63 cu.ft. I'm not sure how that translates to CSS but I would imagine that it would stack up to be more due to empty spaces?

Im just estimating on the height but the tree is only 55 years old. It was planted as a sapling in 1959 when the house was built. From what I've read, that is middle aged. All I know is that it is MASSIVE.
 
A coworker had two menacing limbs taken off of the silver maple in his yard and gave them to me. It came to 2 cords. The trunk is 6-ft diameter, and the limbs were about 24-30" diameter where they sprouted out of the trunk 8 ft above the ground. Tree is about 110 yrs old. So I can easily imagine getting 4+ cords out of the right tree, although your tree doesn't sound nearly as big.
 
Thanks guys. The tree is coming down this weekend. I hope to be able to burn it next winter? Are there any objections to that?
 
Depends how you split it and where it's going to be seasoned. I had some maple seasoning 1.5 year and some of it was border line. If you split it on a smaller side and your spot is nice and sunny with good air circulation it might get ready in a year.
 
newburner said:
Thanks guys. The tree is coming down this weekend. I hope to be able to burn it next winter? Are there any objections to that?
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Can you burn it next year if you split it now, single stack it in the sun and wind? Probably but I would save it for the following year especially if it is a hard maple. My Norway was ready in a year but burns and heats better on the second year.... Don't rush it if you can help it. That's why we try to get over 3 years ahead.....less worries.....
 
Ram 1500 with an axe... said:
Can you burn it next year if you split it now, single stack it in the sun and wind? Probably but I would save it for the following year especially if it is a hard maple. My Norway was ready in a year but burns and heats better on the second year.... Don't rush it if you can help it. That's why we try to get over 3 years ahead.....less worries.....
Click to expand...
Cool, thanks. That's what I thought.

Here is a shot of the tree. Not only will we be gaining firewood and eliminating an injury hazard but its removal will open the sky up for our new solar system. Win/win/win!
 

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Cool, now get it split and stacked.....
 
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I say two cords. You might get close to three if you season branches down to 1.5" or so. Under about 3" diameter they get hard to split, but if you run your saw down the branch the long way, cutting a stripe through the bark end to end, and then buck the smalls into stove length pieces, well, they might take two years to season, but it will save taking them to the dump and you'll end up with a bigger yield.

For handling smalls look here: https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/branch-diameter.135313/

and here: https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/im-gonna-burn-a-lot-of-birch.132184/
 
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Yup, split it fairly small, stack where it will get sunlight and air movement. It'll be good to burn next winter.
 
She's coming down today! Tree guy says it should yield 2 cords at the very least.
 

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5 hours later...
 

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Turns out my tree was actually a cluster of 5 trees that grew together over the last 50 years.
 
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that thing is a beast down at the bottom there
 
Yes it is. I'm not sure if you can see him or not but there is a guy in a red sweatshirt standing behind the trunk. (You can see a little bit of his sweatshirt peeking out on the left) He is as tall as me, 6'3" and you can't even see his head over the trunk!

I just don't know how I'm going to split those trunk pieces.
 
Well, i wanted to revive this thread as we are now starting to emerge from the snow. Today was the first day I had to start splitting this stuff. I put my new splitter to work.

My wife and I cut, split and stacked a quarter of a cord this morning. It took us about 3 hours. I'm not sure if that's fast or slow but having never done this, I was satisfied. Plus we had our 2 year old to keep an eye on.

So, a quarter cord in and I barely made a dent. Feeling good about hitting the 2 cord mark.
 
Looks like you are going to be working to split the trunk of that thing.
 
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