fastest seasoning wood.

[Poindexter]

As above, softwoods like spruce and pine are your best friends for September 2015.

If I could burn spruce only in my cat stove for the rest of my life I would have 1 complaint only, the bark flaking off on the living room carpet getting from the garage to the stove. The family dries quick and burns nice.

From reading about it here, once you have a good supply of evergreen split and stacked, go after ash, cherry and soft maple next. Once you have a bunch of that in the pipeline, then cut up your first oak tree and look for it to be ready in Sept 17 maybe if you get it up fast, or more likely Sep 2018 if you spend a fair amount of time on evergreen and cherry first.

If you have any birch its a candidate for Sep 2015. Whack it with a baseball bat or similar before you fell it. Look for conchs, fungus globs growing on the trunk. If you find one with zero, one or two conchs on it still alive and tinkling like a bowling pin when you whack the snot out of it, go ahead on, fell it and split it smaller than a 4x4 for Sep 2015 with good sun and good wind, stacked off the ground and covered on top. 21M BTU per cord average, pretty good really. Punky birch with center rot is good enough to burn in shoulders, but you got to cover birch punk, it will absorb a lot of water in a hurry otherwise.

If you find a birch that sounds at all dull when you whack it, or one with three or more conchs on it, leave it standing for bird habitat. If you got three birches to choose from, whack all three. Leave the dull sounding two, fell the tinkly sounding one and see what you got.

 

[DougA]

What are the characteristics of soft and hard maple? Also you guys say split small. How small is small? Like 4"?

I really depends upon your stove. I've got a big stove and 4" is small for me and is burned during the day. An overnight chunk would be 6x8 or larger. A 4" round is 12.5 sq in whereas a 6x8" is 48 sq inches. So, big chunks take a long time to burn and are great for overnight.
Of course, if your stove is 2 cu ft., 4" is not so small.

Soft maple such as Silver Maple is much less dense, weighs less for the same sized piece when equal dryness to hard (Sugar) and has less BTU available to use for burning. All the wood species that dry fast as lighter and less dense and that allows the moisture to escape faster when split and drying. The downside is that they burn faster and you have to re-load more often and dump ash more often. They still produce good heat and if you have them available, why not use them? There are a lot of maple species and they all have varying amounts of potential BTU. The worst in our area are called Manitoba Maple which are actually Box Elder. Fast growing, rarely grows straight and smells bad when cutting or burning but wood is wood when you're cold, they all produce heat.

 

[DougA]

If you find a birch that sounds at all dull when you whack it, or one with three or more conchs on it, leave it standing for bird habitat.

Good for you.
Always remember to leave some old stuff standing for all the small creatures to live in and eat from. I love walking in the woods in the winter and hearing all the woodpeckers echoing through the forest. Better that than on my house!

 

[Dune]

He's looking for wood for 15-16 season. That starts around November for most folks - 8 months from now. Black Walnut and Cherry will be low 20s on the mm by then. If and when my pine trees fall down on my property line, they will be thrown in the woods, not in my stove. It's about as useful as Cottonwood, which is barely capable of holding my tarps down. I do agree with the other person that suggested looking for dead standing stuff, as that is sure to have a head start on the drying process.

Hardly. Dry pine burns like gasoline.

 

[ohiojoe13]

Are there pines that are better than others? Or is any pine ok? My in laws have been asking me to take a pine tree down for them.

 

[Dune]

First year burner and have to say soft maple was a big dissapointment, I think its comparable to willow JUNK. Now pine has exceeded all my expectations burns hot, not as long as ash but great stuff

Must not have been seasoned enough. All types of maple burn great.

 

[Hogwildz]

Are there pines that are better than others? Or is any pine ok? My in laws have been asking me to take a pine tree down for them.

Grab it, any pine will dry fast, and burn hot, with shorter burn time. If you have other wood to mix it with, feel free. It does burn hot.

 

[Applesister]

Tamarack or larch
But they arent a common tree where I am. They usually appear as nursery trees. Douglas fir, also not in my area.
Im following this thread thinking of easy pickings to fill in serious gaps in next seasons woodpile.
Im gonna try some downed white pine, even though my instincts tell me it will burn like a run away train.
Im also a hopeful dead oak hunter, petrified, half gone partially decomposed white oak fan.
Like a swamp logger.

 

[Jon_E]

Most of my firewood for the past three or four years has been white pine. It does burn fast when dry. The only problem with it is, because of the low BTU content, you have to burn twice as much volume to make up for it. I'm sure that if I burned only hardwoods, my total firewood needs would decrease on an average annual basis.

I'm gonna wind up with mostly pine again for 2015-2016, but I'll have a fair amount of soft maple, ash, white birch and larch mixed in.

 

[claydogg84]

Hardly. Dry pine burns like gasoline.

And just as fast. Plenty of better options that will meet his criteria.

 

[Dune]

And just as fast. Plenty of better options that will meet his criteria.

Um, no, I have no problem getting an overnight burn from pine except on very cold nights like last month ( I do have a pretty big firebox). One November I had coals after 24 hours.
I burn a lot of pine, in fact I save oak specifically for the last before bedtime load, but only in the deep of winter.
I get pine delivered to my house, stove length. I just have to split it and stack it. Pine also seasons faster than oak which is the predominant wood in my area.

Pine is excellent fuel the only problem is you need twice as much because it isn't as dense as oak, but for how little effort I need to expend, I am gradually burning more pine and less oak.

The funny thing is, on those super cold nights, 10 or more below zero, oak isn't hot enough and I have to burn some pine or the stove will overfill with coals (yes, I still need to do some insulating).

 

[jatoxico]

I don't pass up pine either. Aside from it being a great shoulder season wood I find other uses for it. As a night/weekend burner I do a lot of cold starts. When I have it I use it as mostly as a mix in wood to stretch it out because it's very good at getting the firebox heated up quick until the hardwoods can take over.

As a scrounger I get what I get and actually wish I'd run into it more often. I usually run out of it before I run out of uses for it and as originally mentioned, it dries quick.

 

[claydogg84]

Um, no, I have no problem getting an overnight burn from pine except on very cold nights like last month ( I do have a pretty big firebox). One November I had coals after 24 hours.
I burn a lot of pine, in fact I save oak specifically for the last before bedtime load, but only in the deep of winter.
I get pine delivered to my house, stove length. I just have to split it and stack it. Pine also seasons faster than oak which is the predominant wood in my area.

Pine is excellent fuel the only problem is you need twice as much because it isn't as dense as oak, but for how little effort I need to expend, I am gradually burning more pine and less oak.

The funny thing is, on those super cold nights, 10 or more below zero, oak isn't hot enough and I have to burn some pine or the stove will overfill with coals (yes, I still need to do some insulating).

What I said wasn't an opinion - it is factual, so "no" won't work there. Soft Maple, Cherry, Black Walnut, and Elm are all options in this situation. ALL of which are of a higher quality then pine.

 

[ohiojoe13]

How big should I split the pine. Also all the wood I have split and stacked now is in a single row. How much space do I need between rows?

 

[claydogg84]

How big should I split the pine. Also all the wood I have split and stacked now is in a single row. How much space do I need between rows?

I would split all the wood you're going to need this coming season 4-5". Are you stacking on pallets? 5-10" between rows will help it dry for sure.

 

[DougA]

I like a variety of split sizes and stack everything together so when I grab pieces for the stove I'v got a choice of small, med. or large, depending upon my needs.

You'll need smaller than 4-5" to get the fire going, some 4-5" and some larger for longer burns but I'd say 4 to 6" is most useful. It also depends how large your stove is and how controllable it is. If I filled my 4 cu ft stove with dry 4-5" pine, I'd be in real trouble with overfiring, even with the controls closed.

 

[jatoxico]

DougA said about what I would say. Remember you can always split it down a bit more depending on what you're trying to do but can't go back the other way. Considering you don't have a stove yet it's a bit tough but I'd go a little big with pine since it will still dry, any hardwood you want to have ready for next year I'd split a bit smaller. What you do for wood 2 and 3 years out might be different.

 

[Seanm]

Are there pines that are better than others? Or is any pine ok? My in laws have been asking me to take a pine tree down for them.

Ive included a link to chimney sweeps btu chart which will show the btus of the various coniferous trees. Any pine is good but like hard woods not all pines are created equal.

https://www.chimneysweeponline.com/howood.htm

 

[Tom Wallace]

You shouldn't compare the guys out west to the guys on the east coast. They are forced to burn pine, and given the chance to burn hardwoods, I'm sure they would.

I dunno, I'm quite happy with douglas fir actually. It's easy to split, dries fast, ignites easily and produces great heat. Sure oak would burn longer, but also takes 3 years to dry compared to 6-9 months for douglas fir to dry. Means I can use a lot less space in my yard for storing split wood. We are more or less forced to burn fir here, but we do have some hardwoods like madrona (higher btus than most oak), but that stuff's expensive. Not worth it in my opinion. We've also got a lot of fruit wood, mostly apple, plum and cherry, but again those are expensive, and in my experience a huge pain in the ass to split. Douglas fir can often be had for free since it's so abundant here. Other evergreens are not nearly as good as douglas fir, though. If I was forced to burn western red cedar or hemlock instead, both of which are common here, I'd consider hardwoods.

 

[claydogg84]

I dunno, I'm quite happy with douglas fir actually. It's easy to split, dries fast, ignites easily and produces great heat. Sure oak would burn longer, but also takes 3 years to dry compared to 6-9 months for douglas fir to dry. Means I can use a lot less space in my yard for storing split wood. We are more or less forced to burn fir here, but we do have some hardwoods like madrona (higher btus than most oak), but that stuff's expensive. Not worth it in my opinion. We've also got a lot of fruit wood, mostly apple, plum and cherry, but again those are expensive, and in my experience a huge pain in the ass to split. Douglas fir can often be had for free since it's so abundant here. Other evergreens are not nearly as good as douglas fir, though. If I was forced to burn western red cedar or hemlock instead, both of which are common here, I'd consider hardwoods.

Free wood is always better than paying for it. Doug Fir is a bit better than the typical White Pine I would be burning around here - Actually pretty close to Silver/Red Maple BTU wise.

 

[FIshing_Fool]

Douglas fir, alder, pine, plum and poplar should all be ready by next fall from my experience. Plum being the best (heat wise) followed by alder and fir.

The notion that us in the pacific NW would burn all hard woods if we could is false. My house would get WAY too hot most nights burning hardwood. I save that stuff for the days/nights the temperature is below freezing and this year I can probably count those on my fingers.

Get a big alder tree if you can - great coaling properties, easy splitting even through big knots and good enough heat output.

 

[Hogwildz]

Tamarack or larch
But they arent a common tree where I am. They usually appear as nursery trees. Douglas fir, also not in my area.
Im following this thread thinking of easy pickings to fill in serious gaps in next seasons woodpile.
Im gonna try some downed white pine, even though my instincts tell me it will burn like a run away train.
Im also a hopeful dead oak hunter, petrified, half gone partially decomposed white oak fan.
Like a swamp logger.

Split the pine big, and load big pcs, that will help control from a blazing inferno. Once the pitch burns off, it burns like any other wood, just doesn't last as long. Larger splits will also help it last a little longer.

 

[Hogwildz]

How big should I split the pine. Also all the wood I have split and stacked now is in a single row. How much space do I need between rows?

Split the pine on the larger size. Not like 2 blocks that fill the stove, you want dome air between to help the burn, but large 6x6, 6x8. It will be dry in time for next season, and those large pcs won't flame to hell like smaller ones, and will also get a longer burn time. Other hard woods, split around 4x4 size or in that area.

 

[ohiojoe13]

This is cherry correct?

 

[claydogg84]

This is cherry correct?

Yes.