I have quite the fondness for freshly cut down Locust. its my favorite. have a pile thats seasoned, but i rather go get some green cranks the heat.
Welcome to the forum Alex
I can understand your fondness for locust but certainly can not understand a fondness for burning green wood. Either you've heard too many old wives tales or listened to some extremely bad advice. But I can believe it because I've heard that same bunch of baloney many times myself.
For a little background on myself, we've burned wood for a few years now and fortunately I also grew up in a wood burning home. In fact, we were one of a very few folks we knew who burned dry wood. Most folks back then cut the wood in the fall and even into the winter and burned it right away. They knew nothing about how wood should be handled and burned. Sadly, there are many yet today and your post shows that you are one! Please do not think I'm attempting to run you down or put you down at all because that is not my intent. Hopefully though, we can reason things out a bit.
The first thing that happens when you put wood in the stove is that it has to get rid of the moisture. It has to evaporate and that goes up your chimney. When the chimney is a bit cool, that wet stuff creates lots of creosote. Of course this is a bit simplified but you know what we're talking about.
Typically, folks will state that the wood is a bit harder to get going and you have to give it more air. You say it cranks out the heat. It can give you some heat but the trouble is, there is probably as much heat going up the chimney as there is staying in the house. This means you will burn up to twice as much wood for the same amount of heat. I really try to not be lazy but at the same time, I don't like to work harder than is required, so that is a good reason we let our wood dry before burning it.
One winter we ended up in a bad way. I had been injured and, of course, could not cut any wood. So naturally we ran out of wood and ran out before I could get back to cutting. But I knew a fellow who cut a lot of wood and sold a lot. We've known each other for 60 years or more and I figured I could get some good wood from him. Wrong!
The first load he brought I about crapped myself. It had been cut that morning and split then delivered; all in the same day. Naturally I was a bit ticked but my hands were tied. Fortunately we got a really good price on the wood. But gee whiz. This was white ash and, as most folks know (that should be, they think they know), ash can be cut and burned right away. That is what makes ash so great! Right? Wrong!
Ash indeed is one of the lowest moisture content woods there are when cut. Still, it will be about 35% moisture when cut. That is way too much water to attempt to burn. But, we burned it all that winter. We did not freeze nor did our water lines freeze. But we were never warm that winter either. In addition, we cleaned our chimney many, many times that winter. We fought the fire constantly but learned to load the wood on a huge bed of coals. Let the coals burn down some and then it was a battle to get the wood burning.
But I grew up burning dry wood and I learned from many neighbors who did not burn dry wood that there is a big difference between burning dry or green wood and all favors dry. But let's compare that year we burned green wood with what we have been burning the past several years. And fwiw, wood heat is our only heat source in winter; we have no back up furnace.
We purchased our first epa stove in 2007 so this makes our sixth year for heating with this stove. The wood we've burned in this stove has been probably 95-98% white ash. So it is good to compare with that winter when we burned green wood.
That winter with green wood I do not remember for certain how many cord we burned but will guess around 7-8 cord. We also closed off part of our house to try to stay reasonably warm. Since installing the new stove we have never had to close off any part of the house. The most wood we've burned during any one winter in this stove is 3 cord. The least was a bit under 2 cord and that was last winter which was an unusual winter.
We did some remodeling before last winter adding a lot of insulation, putting in new windows and doors and we also put on a small addition. Of course we do not know yet how much wood we'll burn this winter but we are guessing it won't be much over 2 cord. That is a whole lot less work than burning 7 cord! And remember, we no longer close off part of the house. In addition, we keep the temperature in our house 80+ degrees. I just looked at the thermometer and at present it is exactly 80 in here.
Now let's look at the chimney. That year we burned green wood we were constantly cleaning the chimney and always got lots of creosote from it and the cap. After installing our present stove, we cleaned the chimney after 2 years just to see what was in there. We got about a cup of soot from it. No creosote. So when we are done burning this spring the chimney will be 4 years since being cleaned. We might clean it this summer but will determine that later.
My whole point is that if you give your wood time to dry and dry it properly (don't count drying time until the wood has been split and stacked out in the wind to dry), you will burn a lot less wood to get the same amount of heat so that will save you money and labor. In addition, you won't have to clean the chimney as often nor will you be fighting the fire. I also believe your stove will last longer and for certain it seems the gaskets last much longer.
Until we can come up with a good way to burn water, it is just not a good practice to burn wood before it has dried to a decent level of moisture. That takes time. We usually give our wood 3 years or more in the stack before we burn it. The benefits are numerous and we are very thankful because it saves us much labor and dollars.
Now I'd best quit before I really get carried away.