owb and burning pine

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adamant

Member
Hearth Supporter
Sep 30, 2007
58
any pro's and con's?
i can get a few cords today. what are the con's?
ant
 
Makes no difference what you burn it in, pine is pine. If it's really dry it might burn too hot, so you have to watch that. If it burns well, then the only downside is that it will not generate as much heat over time as hardwood, which is another way of saying that you will have to load the firebox more often. If you have a mixture of hardwood and pine, burn the hardwood during cold spells and the pine when it's not so cold out. If it's green or wet, the bark will probably burn OK, but the wood itself will burn crappy just like any other green or wet wood.

Comparing pine to hardwood is kind of like comparing Bud Lite to Sam Adams or some other decent beer or ale.
 
The only thing I'll add to Eric's post is that there is a much smaller heat loss penalty for burning pine when it's green than for burning hardwoods when they're green. I like to mix in a little dry softwood with my hardwood, especially if my hardwood isn't perfectly dry.
 
Eric Johnson said:
Comparing pine to hardwood is kind of like comparing Bud Lite to Sam Adams or some other decent beer or ale.

Or, like comparing 'Kristen' with a $100 date. Both will get you where you wanna go, but the former will sell your sorry ass out for a book deal. And probably tell everyone how 45 seconds would have been a long time. Anyway . . .

I went and got a load of oak this weekend, and am mixing it in with Aspen/pine/rotten maple. With the GW you just need to get the wet stuff up off the coals and it will dry out and burn.

BTW, how cool will it be if Idiot looses his law liscence, gets convicted of a felony, and finally gets the girlfriend of his dreams in the pen?!!:D:D:D
 
When I burned pine almost exclusivley in my OWB I would run out of coals like pine had direct flame but would not burn down to coals and to keep any fire in the box so I had to throw in a couple of pices of hard wood to bring the coal count back up to consume more pine..Just my experience have about 1/2 hardwood to mix in with pine to keep hot coals in the stove...Good luck Dave
 
...oak this weekend, and am mixing it in with Aspen/pine/rotten maple.

Faint recollection from N. MN that aspen got no respect last winter. Is emergence occurring, ISeeDeadBTUs?

Burn dry pine nearly exclusively in the gasifier. Took me awhile to get the draft adjusted down to keep it from burning too hot. And in the end it took the chain turbulators to finally get the flue temp into a more acceptable range.

Daytime temps are still in the high 70's to very low 80's, but night temps are now in the low 50's. First sprays of color in the maples. Expect first seasonal firing of the gasifier in about a month.
 
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