What Is In Your Stove Right Now?

BrotherBart said:

We went off the cliff starting last night too.

Click to expand...

Temp dropped like 10 deg in a half hour or so here and going into the teens too. Tell us more about this house and its many Beeches.

Red and white oak, ash and hickory for a few days here

Finally got the BL going strong. I still mix in some cherry to keep my stove from melting into a puddle of cast iron

Jay106n said:

Started the day with pine to take the chill out quick, then built in cherry, a full load of ash, and i just finally dipped into my leftover oak stash from last year, for a cherry/ash/oak mix.

Click to expand...

I still don't know how you guys keep your species separated, and manage to have the right thing near the house, when needed. Everything I split goes into the same stack(s), sits two or three years, and then gets moved to the house 1 cord at a time. Most of one tree usually stays in the same stack, but I pay absolutely zero attention to which species is in which stack, when moving it to the house or grabbing it for the stove.

Black & Black

Black Locust & Black Birch that is. Like Jay said temps in CT are falling time to break out the locust.

I've still got the same cold ashes in there from last time I checked in. We're nine days into a solid fuel burn ban with no end in sight. We've had overnight lows in the low singles F with daytime highs approaching 20 F for about a week now. Sure could use some fire. At least it's warming up some, should only get low 20s F tonight.

Starting to feel like winter now. Temp this morning is 3°. Got into a pocket of yellow birch in the woodshed. That's good stuff... once it's processed. Limby, gnarly, hard to split, lots of uglies... but, it sure does burn nice.
So, it's yellow birch and oak for us this morning.

Wood . . . plenty of wood. -7 degrees F this morning when I took off for work . . . it's slowly warming up though as the temps were just above zero by the time I rolled into the back parking lot at work.

Zero deg this morning, did a load last night at 8pm all oak, weirdly woke up this morning at 2a, did a half load of oak, was walking up there stairs when the fire pager went off for a structure fire next town over, I was up so I ran out the door, got home at 6am took a shower, did another full load of oak and went to work, the nice thing is that my house hasn't slipped below 68deg. Suppose to go down to -5 tonight, not as windy though.

Ashful said:

I still don't know how you guys keep your species separated, and manage to have the right thing near the house, when needed. Everything I split goes into the same stack(s), sits two or three years, and then gets moved to the house 1 cord at a time. Most of one tree usually stays in the same stack, but I pay absolutely zero attention to which species is in which stack, when moving it to the house or grabbing it for the stove.

Click to expand...

A little OCD, room for it and when I split most of it I had time to do it in the Spring

A load of 5-year-old apple lighting off - left to me by a friend who moved to Oregon 2 yrs ago - kept under cover the whole time! I have a few stoveloads-worth of BL in the basement I measured at 12% MC - I'm too much of a rookie to dare burn it yet!

Ashful said:

I still don't know how you guys keep your species separated, and manage to have the right thing near the house, when needed. Everything I split goes into the same stack(s), sits two or three years, and then gets moved to the house 1 cord at a time. Most of one tree usually stays in the same stack, but I pay absolutely zero attention to which species is in which stack, when moving it to the house or grabbing it for the stove.

Click to expand...

I have to agree here. While I can differentiate what species are within a stack, I keep the wood piles very democratic. Everything is mixed all together from start to finish.

Cold few days here. Cherry Apple Ash and Silver Maple are combining to keep us warm and happy. The IR is chugging along happily at 450.

After all these years of burning and admittedly not knowing what I was really doing, Things have changed a hundred fold since being here this is just one of many examples :
Always burned oak. Oak is oak is oak.
Tonight despite the stacks of oak I switched to ash and elm to bring the house up to temp, will go to overnight with oak.

Never used to think other options were available, oak is king right .

If you think education is expensive..........try ignorance ............some one said that and were right.

Happy burning season and a happy new year.

Thanks to everyone who contributes to this forum.

English Bob

I have some sort of oak in tonight. Only had a half dozen small logs of it and didn't even remember it until I dug it out of the shed yesterday. I have some red, white, burr and swamp still drying, but this is different. Only way I know its oak is becuase of the rays and smell. Whatever it is, it burns hot/long - 8F last night, 70's still in a.m. Post a pic maybe later. As far as separating stacks I organize by btu's - top shelf heat - bread n butter - fire starters/shoulder season. All the stuff in each stack takes similar seasoning time that way too.

Ashful said:

I still don't know how you guys keep your species separated, and manage to have the right thing near the house, when needed. Everything I split goes into the same stack(s), sits two or three years, and then gets moved to the house 1 cord at a time. Most of one tree usually stays in the same stack, but I pay absolutely zero attention to which species is in which stack, when moving it to the house or grabbing it for the stove.

Click to expand...

I pick up most of my wood from a tree service that cuts and splits an entire tree at a time, so each load i pick up and stack is from the same tree. It's handy, and because i get it green, i know exactly how long it's been seasoning.
BTW, I have soft maple and ash in the stove right now.

It's interesting how many members who live in climates with winters much *colder* than ours have stated that they haven't burned much of anything until relatively recently.

We've pretty much had the stove going during daytime since Oct. 1st. This isn't a truly cold climate, but it's a cloudy, damp and extremely "chilly* one. Not much incidental solar heat here over the fall and winter.

Still burning up the ultra-dry Doug fir that wasn't soaked by our recent floods, and now going overnight by supplementing that with BL, oak and Bradford pear.

First year burning and been about 90% PIne and Spruce with a few pieces of hard maple on top for the nightly burn. Like i said its my first year so i'm burning what i have. Those logs you see in my picture are of softwood. I will say i really like the spruce over the pine.

Builderml said:

First year burning and been about 90% PIne and Spruce with a few pieces of hard maple on top for the nightly burn. Like i said its my first year so i'm burning what i have. Those logs you see in my picture are of softwood. I will say i really like the spruce over the pine.

Click to expand...

There is nothing wrong with pine and spruce. If this is your first year burning, I'm assuming you are new to this whole process. Folks will give you all sorts of talk about why pine is not a good wood to burn. This is absolutely false and most on this forum would agree. If it is seasoned, and appropriately dry, just like any other wood, it will burn cleanly and throw good heat. There is more resin in pine but that does not equate to more creosote in the chimney.

Pine and spruce will burn faster than hardwoods but there is no substitute when you are trying to quickly burn the cool temperatures off of a room and aren't concerned about the longest possible fire. My advice is to mix your wood and absolutely include some pine and spruce in the years to follow.

CentralVAWoodHeat said:

Folks will give you all sorts of talk about why pine is not a good wood to burn. This is absolutely false and most on this forum would agree. If it is seasoned, and appropriately dry, just like any other wood, it will burn cleanly...

Click to expand...

All true.

CentralVAWoodHeat said:

... and throw good heat.

Click to expand...

bullshit! Oak splits just as fast as pine, but provides twice the heat. THIS is the problem with pine, for anyone who doesn't have infinite hours to spend splitting and stacking fire wood.

Ashful said:

All true.


bullshit! Oak splits just as fast as pine, but provides twice the heat. THIS is the problem with pine, for anyone who doesn't have infinite hours to spend splitting and stacking fire wood.

Click to expand...

I'm sorry to cause such a strong negative response. Maybe I can be more accurate with my statement. By 'good' heat I mean they make a hot fire and will warm your stove. I was not comparing their exact BTU output versus time to any other species.