17-20% Water Content Willow - Can I burn it?

[Karottop]

Hey Folks,

I've been reading these forms lately as if I'm studying for an exam. I'm new to wood stoves and even fireplaces for that matter. We just bought a house with two fireplaces. I lined the first chimney and am in the process of lining the second chimney once my supplies get here. We got two wood burning inserts on the cheap - Osburn 1600 for upstairs and a giant Buck Stove model 80 downstairs (got this one on the side of the road for free!)

I'm also preparing my wood for this winter as I'd rather not pay crazy rates for oil heat if I can help it.

Here's my question:

I felled a giant dying willow tree about a month ago and cut it into cord wood. I hear willows already are not good to burn and the moisture meter is reading anywhere from 17%-25%. I doubt it'll get much less between now an winter so the question is, with the wood stoves I have, can I use this wood to heat my house this winter? I probably have about 1.5 cords of this stuff stacked in my backyard. I'm a newbie at this so thanks for any advise on how to burn in these wood stoves properly as well. Thanks!

 

[SeanBB]

All wood will burn if it is dry. If it is under 20% on a fresh split then it is dry. Willow is not the best and you will be loading the stoves more often than you would with oak or ash but it will burn and keep you warm. I've burned dry willow in the past with no problems.
Welcome to the forum!

 

[Boxer]

Willow is the one species I will not bring home. In my experience it will be rotten before it’s anywhere near seasoned enough to burn.

We cut several large willows off of a creek bank years ago. I was burning an outside boiler at the time and it wasn’t even any good for that. In my opinion you should start looking for some other wood ASAP.

 

[peakbagger]

Buy yourself some biobricks to keep the fires burning. IMHO at best burning willow is one step away from burning trash. It may contribute marginally to the amount of heat the biobricks throw out but the creosote generation will be much higher.

 

[maple1]

You didn't say whether you split it or not? Hope so?

 

[Karottop]

You didn't say whether you split it or not? Hope so?

Some of the willow is split (this is actually the wettest of all the willow because they come from the base). The rest are not, I plan to split either this weekend or next once I borrow a log splitter. All the un-split piece are rounds that are about 8" or less

 

[Karottop]

Buy yourself some biobricks to keep the fires burning. IMHO at best burning willow is one step away from burning trash. It may contribute marginally to the amount of heat the biobricks throw out but the creosote generation will be much higher.

I've got way more wood stove capacity than I need for this house according to the specs on the stove (Buck Stove model 80 is good up to 2600 sqft and the Osburn 1600 is good up to 1800 sqft) and I have an 1800 sqft house so from a capacity perspective I should be OK, but from a creosote perspective I'm worried. If I choose to burn it, do I need someone to sweep my chimney every month? Does it help that the 8" liner for the Buck Stove is pre-insulated?

 

[electrathon]

I have burned a lot of willow. Not the best but better than nothing. Split it and cover it. Do not let it touch dirt. It is like a sponge and seems to suck water in as fast as it dries. The stuff I left out in the rain was still solid wet two years later, the stuff covered was dry.

You do not need to clean your chimney monthly. Also, get a soot eater and learn to clean it yourself. Not that hard. You installed the stove, you can clean out the chimney.

 

[Pertzbro]

I wouldn't bother with it. Find better wood. You wont be happy with the stove performance, creosote, ash build up, less heat for all the work you did splitting, stacking, etc.

 

[Poindexter]

You are playing the first few bars of a song with multiple titles.

The name of the song for the first verse is new burner blues, but there is a bridge and a chorus. The second verse is usually titled experienced burner rag, and the third verse, same tune, is the seasoned operator waltz.

In real terms, a cord of Willow is worth about 14 million BTUs, enough to replace about 100 galllons of #2 fuel oil. My last oil fill for the furnace was June 2018, I was charged $3.02/ gallon. Your numbers are going to be different than mine, but 14 MBTU inside the house will be noticeable off your other energy bill.

I don't know how fast you can get it dry. Get it split, get it stacked up off the ground and get it top covered. Get some scrap 2x4s too.

Once you are into hard frosts and dark nights, build a rack in the garage, or wherever inside the heated envelope of the house. Fill it up with whatever wood you got. Leave a 4" gap, minimum, between the cord wood in your rack and outside walls. Leave it for a week or two. It won't season outdoors below freezing, and it won't move very fast in the garage at +55dF, but it will move. Once it is under 20% MC, Light it up, just burn baby burn and refill your racks from the outside stash. You'll have to let that go I dunno, two weeks, a month, whatever. Once it is dry, light it off and keep refilling your indoor rack.

NB: Leave room in the garage to get groceries out of the car with the garage door closed.

What will happen is you will start having room in the yard for incoming green wood. Pine brother, get all the pine you can find. Some folks will give it to you free even. But is is (about) 18 million BTU/cord - 128 gallons of #2 fuel replaced, for the same space in the lawn as the cord of willow.

As the wife gets accustomed to being warm and having money to go on dates you will probably get more and more lawn space to use for drying more and more firewood. Just keep going with the pine until you have enough pine stacked up to keep the stove running all winter. Split, stacked off the ground and top covered pine (and spruce) will consistently dry in one season. Just split and stack over the winter, give the entire stack the entire summer to season, you will be golden come fall.

Once you get to there, then you can be looking at hardwoods in the 24-28MBTU/cord class - but they usually take two years to season, more lawn space. Birches come in at 20-22MBTU/cord and can be seasoned in one summer, but they got to be split, up and top covered before Saint Patrick's Day, not before Easter. Easter won't cut it.

Up here energy logs are more expensive per BTU than #2 fuel oil. You can try some, but they will make a dent in your savings in a hurry. Maybe have a few laying around in case of a power outage so you can burn damp willow with some energy logs rather than watch the pipes freeze while your main boiler isn't running.

 

[Poindexter]

There is an implicit thing in my post above that I want to spell out explicitly. It is not that I think the OP is deficient, i just haven't seen this idea explicated lately.

Let's ass/u/me someone is burning say 100 million BTUs annually. That's a chunk, about 7 cords of willow, or 6 cords of pine, or five cords of hardwood. Just round easy numbers. If you get picky about your oak, or get into some hedge or mesquite, 4 cords, but general high volume mixed hardwoods, five cords.

With the willow/alder, the seven cord stack on the lawn isn't really quite big enough to hold two seasons worth of hardwood. It's close, but not really.

So imagine our guy has seven cords of willow up and stacked in late August, burns what he can after final seasoning in the garage this winter - and replaces on his seven cord stack as he goes with green pine over the winter. So on Saint Patricks Day 2019 (Saint Patricks Day is a good time to celebrate having all of next year's wood split and stacked in my book. Guinness.) our hero will have seven cords of mixed willow and pine on his rack, and come September 2019 he will have seven cords ready to go.

If he burns the willow first to get rid of it, and splits and stacks pine as he goes over the winter, he will get to SP day 2020 with seven cords of pine split, stacked on top covered, that should be ready to go September 2020. He will have advanced from something like 98MBTU partially seasoned cords on his 7 cord rack to 126 MBTU seasoned cords ready to burn in Sep 2020.

Here is where I stopped. My lot is <10k sqft, my 10 cord stack takes up a LOT of room in my back yard, but I turn it over every year.

To switch to hardwood, our hero should replace his seven cords of pine over the winter of 19/20 - and then over the summer take up more lawn space and put up another five cords of hardwood.

So then he replaces pine as he burns again winter of 20/21, and puts up another five cords of hardwood summer of 2021.

In September of 2021 he is going to have seven cords of seasoned pine ready to burn, five cords of hardwood seasoned 1.5 years - not quite ready, and another 5 cords of hardwood seasoned average 0.5 summers - and he can finally replace the pine with hardwood as he burns it this winter.

So then on SP day 2022 he will have five cords of green hardwood, five cords seasoned 1.5 years, and five cords seasoned six months. In September 2022 he will have five cords of hardwood seasoned 2.5 years - ready to burn, five cords seasoned 1.5 years, and five cords seasoned 1 year.

This is, I think, where the term "three year plan" comes from.

I just burn spruce myself.

 

[Highbeam]

Once dry to 20% or so burn it. Too many people like to poo poo different species but some of us have burned willow, cottonwood, pine, cedar, and alder in modern stoves and that stuff all burns hot and keeps you warm. It’s safe and efficient.

You need more volume of the less dense fuel woods to get the same heat. That’s the only meaningful difference.

You might like it and since the low density woods are often cheap or free you may decide it’s worth the extra work.

 

[firefighterjake]

Once dry to 20% or so burn it. Too many people like to poo poo different species but some of us have burned willow, cottonwood, pine, cedar, and alder in modern stoves and that stuff all burns hot and keeps you warm. It’s safe and efficient.

You need more volume of the less dense fuel woods to get the same heat. That’s the only meaningful difference.

You might like it and since the low density woods are often cheap or free you may decide it’s worth the extra work.

+1 . . . Haven't met wood yet that didn't result in heat when burned . . . well maybe petrified wood.

 

[Karottop]

Thanks for the feedback everyone! Finished stacking the third cord of this willow tree today. Judging by the responses it sounds like it'll get me through the winter just fine but I'll have to work my tail off this year trying to find better wood for the future winters ASAP. This forum is awesome