Softwoods

[chuck172]

My tarm has been on a steady diet of oak. Due to gypsy moths I've had quite a few dead trees. I now have some tulip poplar and an aspen that uprooted. Normally I just let these trees rot, but I think I'll cut them up, stack them separately and mix them in and use them for kindling.
I know Jebeatty primarily uses pine for fuel and he doesn't seem to have any problems.
Anyone else using softwoods in their boiler?

 

[leaddog]

I've been cutting up some dead standing and down poplar. Some is full of wood pecker holes and bark is off with the wood fiber stringy. I'm only doing it because I want to get it out of the way but I've found that if I put a few splits of hard wood in to make a coal bed that I get alot of heat from this junk. I'm throwing in 10in rounds and yes they burn fast and I get more ash but btu's are btu's. I'm also cutting some live poplar and split they dry well and also burn ok. It's not oak but It cleans up my woods.
That said I would not buy it but because it helps my woods it works.
I have found that it helps to put a couple pieces of hardwood on the bottom for coals as the softer woods don't coal as well.
leaddog

 

[Duetech]

In my EKO40 good dry pine and other softwoods work well when I can spend the time to nurse the fire. Mixing in a little dense wood to help burn the char that otherwise likes to blow through the nozzle and fill the secondary burn chamber (pine goes to charcoal fairly fast but does not seem to burn down well without some denser coals to keep them burning). Gasification is for a shorter duration with the lighter woods. All woods are gasification city but some let you set on the park bench longer.

 

[jebatty]

I burn almost exclusively either aspen, pine, or both mixed. They work just fine. Have to start the fire a little more slowly to build up a coal base, but that takes only a few extra minutes, and after that, all is well. Also help to leave a good quantity of ashes in the firebox to provide an insulated base for the aspen/pine. Been doing this for 4 years and likely for the life of the boiler, as aspen and pine is the wood I have.

 

[willworkforwood]

... All woods are gasification city but some let you set on the park bench longer.

+1. It comes down to how much time you have to process wood, without it turning into something you resent. Two years ago I split up a fairly large pine, and 3 weeks ago started using it in my boiler. That pine will go another 2 weeks or so, for total of 5 weeks of heat/DHW. I've done lots of 100% pine fires with no problems at all. This week we had two 0* nights, so I went to the bullpen for 25% oak for those nights. But extra pine would have worked ok also. Yes, the pine has less BTUs/volume of wood - was it worth the extra handling time? For me, processing my own (free) wood, definitely yes. But, if I had to buy wood, unless the softwood price/volume was much lower, I would only buy good hardwood.