It's a sickness

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Holiday

Burning Hunk
Feb 18, 2013
231
Saskatchewan, Canada
I pretty much ran out of good wood, and the weather wasn't too bad the last few days. Now I end up in a 4 to 8 inch snowfall warning with lows of -6C to -10C the next three nights and nothing above freezing in the daytime. Well I can't be without a fire in that weather so I drive over to a nearby grain elevator and pick up a few pallets and cut them up so I can do some burning again the next few days. I think I have a problem lol.
 
No problem - as you just solved it. Another option is the compressed wood bricks. Just do not stuff the stove full of either of these as you will get an overfire.
Temps are going to slide down here also, and Like you I am just about out out of dry wood. Not out of seasoned wood just dry as we have had so much rain over the past month and winter just does not want to let go.
If you have seasoned wood just wet from weather you could mix that in with the pallet or compressed bricks. I picked up a small load of cut offs from a pallet shop. Guess what , That stuff is weather wet as well so it looks like I will be needing some of the compressed material as well.
For grins I split a split to see how much weather penetration it had ( silver maple, bone dry last fall) the weather has penetrated 2" in from the out side.
 
It's just part of being a wood burner. A week ago I was complaining about still burning. Now that the stove has been cold for 5 days I've got that empty feeling and the spring withdraw going. I haven't done the spring sweep and clean yet just in case it is cold enough at night in the next week or two to fire it up one more time.
 
My stove has been off for a couple days, but night temps are going back down to the high thirtys for the weekend. So last night instead of feeding the stove I did some splitting, well really grabbed a bunch of uglies and fed them through the bandsaw . The kind of items that will rip a wedge off, bend a beam and the like. Sometimes they eat the blade. Mean buggers, but I will have revenge in the end.
 
I see the "still burning" thread ended, and now we just have a few sick burners left. High of 81 today, but headed for 30's as lows and 50's as highs later in
the week with rain. Stove is going to get used some more this year.
 
40F last night. I lit up the beast with a 2/3ds load around 9pm. Plenty of coals left over for a quick restart at 7am. We'll let it go out once the sun warms up the house and will probably repeat the cycle tonight.
 
40F last night. I lit up the beast with a 2/3ds load around 9pm. Plenty of coals left over for a quick restart at 7am. We'll let it go out once the sun warms up the house and will probably repeat the cycle tonight.

Dang ! you're getting as good a burn times as I'm getting and I have a PH !
 
I pretty much ran out of good wood, and the weather wasn't too bad the last few days. Now I end up in a 4 to 8 inch snowfall warning with lows of -6C to -10C the next three nights and nothing above freezing in the daytime. Well I can't be without a fire in that weather so I drive over to a nearby grain elevator and pick up a few pallets and cut them up so I can do some burning again the next few days. I think I have a problem lol.

Your love of wood heat is not a sickness, or if it is, you have plenty of company. ;)

You may have a problem though with your wood supply and you should have had next winter's wood already stacked up drying. If not, do yourself a big favor and get it as soon as possible.
 
I completely agree, and next winter may be a problem. I haven't been able to do any outdoor wood gathering work due to all the snow and late spring. I've been noting all your posts and others about dry wood.

My woodstove wasn't planned until I bought it in December so I'm not ahead on my supply, although I usually cut up fallen trees into firewood and had some on my covered porch from 04 that was good and dry. Even that I had to cut shorter as it was all around 20 inches. So that lasted me close to a month of steady burning.

I have maybe a cord of maple that's under the eave of the garage from last year but it wasn't split so it may work for this coming winter if I get it split right away. And it all needs to be cut shorter as well. Also have the odd stack of unsplit out wherever I was cleaning up trees but whether that would be dry or rotten I have to check.

Cutting pallets is a lot of work too, and I'm not sure if it's ideal burning them. I have a good supply if that is an option.
 
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It sounds like you know what is ahead and I predict you will be in good shape very soon!
 
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