Boxelder....might as well be pine!

[stee6043]

Unfortunately for me we haven't had much of a shoulder season here in West Michigan. It seems we went straight from highs in the mid 60's to highs in the mid teens.

I have a bunch of boxelder, two years seasoned, which I had planned to burn up during the shoulder season this year. Well I'm failing miserably using this stuff when I need real heat. I may have to start mixing it with some decent wood since our cold snap looks like it will persist. I got up this morning with tanks at 156 top to bottom after 2 loads of boxelder last night. If that were two loads of black cherry I would have had well over 170 on the tanks.

I feel like such a wood snob. I refuse all softwoods and now boxelder may end up on my "not worth the work" list.

 

[oldspark]

That sort of surprises me, I thought it would have given off a lot of heat for a very short period of time.

 

[My Oslo heats my home]

Nothing wrong with being a wood snob. You know what works for you.

I'm not a big fan of pine but I use it in mixtures of other hardwoods in the shoulder season.

 

[jebatty]

... and I burn just about only pine. Love it.

 

[Clarkbug]

Boxelder does suck. I am waging a war against them on my property. they are falling faster than I can cut them down, and most of the stuff is too junky to deal with. The few solid pieces that I can get out of them I will stack and burn it, but it does go quick.

 

[BoilerMan]

Pretty much anything that isn't punky goes into my stacks.

That said, only good hardwood is worth much travel, softwoods close to home are generally fair game.

TS

 

[stee6043]

I've decided the only good news about this stuff is that it seems to light off very easily compared to other woods. A well seasoned piece of boxelder is practically a duraflame log. But alas, it still stinks in terms of bang for my stacked buck.

I'm off to light the fire and burn as much of this stuff as I can this weekend. It's perfect for the days I spend working in the basement on projects.