Birch Wood

[Supersurvey]

Fortunate to be finishing up the last of my hurricane Sandy wood this year but am wondering if 6-8inch birch rounds cut and split in half or thirds would be dry for next year. How does birch burn?

 

[Ctwoodtick]

Is the wood in decent shape? Birch is known to rot pretty fast if not processed fairly quick. I'm guessing you have whitebirch, which I would imagine should be good in a year. My favorite wood, black birch is a pretty quick drying wood in relation to its high BTU rating. I find yellow birch on the slower side, about 1.5 yrs or so.

 

[Poindexter]

20-22M btu / cord is not bad in any zip code that i know of. Birch does have a coaling stage that lasts longer than an eye blink, but shorter than red or white oak.

The main thing with birch is to get it split at least once asap after it comes down so it doesnt rot.

 

[SeanBB]

If you split it now and stack it off the ground in a well ventilated place it will be good to go next year. Birch burns well but is not a slow burning wood like oak. The bark makes good kindling.

 

[firefighterjake]

Cut and split now . . . should be ready for next Fall.

I like having some white birch on hand . . . I would rate it as a low-medium grade wood in terms of desirability (length of burn, coaling, BTUs, etc.), but it's a fantastic wood to have when you're doing a reload and the coals are low as birch comes wrapped in its own tinder.

 

[peakbagger]

As long as its split quickly, stacked and dried properly its good fire wood, I dont have the ideal place for drying but I have burned it after about 9 months of drying but prefer two years. Its not particularly a long burning wood. If you are lucky after it has dried out you can peel off the bark in big sheets. Set it aside in box and it makes great fire starter. It also is straight grain so its easy to split once its out of a round. I set straight lengths aside when feeding the boiler and use an hand ax to make up kindling while I am waiting for the boiler to start up. One hint it when you stack it, stack it with the bark facing up.

 

[WoodyIsGoody]

Cut and split now . . . should be ready for next Fall.

I like having some white birch on hand . . . I would rate it as a low-medium grade wood in terms of desirability (length of burn, coaling, BTUs, etc.), but it's a fantastic wood to have when you're doing a reload and the coals are low as birch comes wrapped in its own tinder.

I don't waste my birch on re-loads, I use it for cold starts (for the same reason you use it when your coals are low). I've not found any other wood that will torch as quickly and as hot without vaporizing like cedar. I pull off some of the loose bark and use it on the next cold start when I might not have more birch splits. Unfortunately, I ran out of Birch last winter and didn't find any more in the previous two years.

And no wood looks as good stacked inside as American Birch. I've heard some people pay a lot of money to mail order boxes of Birch splits just so they can stack it in their living room!

 

[billb3]

It might be good enough with a good drying area, but two years would be better.
I have some ( what I call ) grey birch and it burns about the same as soft maple, maybe even a little better.
Gotta be cut and split before it rots though.
I have a bunch dying from being crowded out by larger trees and find once there's fungi growing on it it is all spalted and soft and worthless. I missed out by waiting for them all to actually die. They go quick.
We have some yellow birch and I think that burns even better than the grey birch.

 

[peakbagger]

Yellow birch is definitely a far better wood than white birch for burning although harder to split, it to also can rot quickly if not split. White birch is a transitional species that grows in quickly after natural clear cuts, usually it straight grain and grows quick but the trade off its rare to find old white birch. If its a large stand it will get over mature and start to die off at the same time. Skiers like mature white birch glades as once the canopy forms there isn't much that will grown under it. If the trees look stressed at all or over mature they need to be cut sooner then later as they will rot while standing up. If you wait until the crown is fully dead it usually is not worth cutting and come the next wind storm the crown will end up on the ground. There is a company in northern new england that will pay people who are having white birch logged to allow them to come over and strip the bark prior to cutting. They cut it into sheets and sold to interior designers.

White birch is shade intolerant, it wont sprout in shady conditions. Yellow birch is shade tolerant and will sprout under a canopy. It will grow slowly until there is a local disturbance in the canopy and then it can get quite large. Its pretty rare to see a yellow birch stand, I normally see them mixed in with other northern hardwoods. I have a young one that seeded in on the side of my driveway that I have been watching over the years. Its completely shaded by much larger maples. When cut it has a peppermint smell. The slow growth means dense wood. They are also hard to kill, knock off part of the crown and they will just grow a new one. They tend to be mixed in with older growth forests. The trade off is they tend to get real odd grain patterns which is why they tend to be difficult to split but make nicely grained wood if kiln dried by someone who knows what they are doing as otherwise if can twist and split with humidity changes.

 

[Destructor]

I got some white birch early spring laying on the ground It must have been cut late fall during maintenance of a utility easement, preserved by the cold winter. I rescued it just in time. When I cut and split the logs they were just beginning to go but still plenty good. I stacked them out of the weather and will burn them this winter.

 

[Supersurvey]

Thanks everyone. I hand split a few today and was not that hard. Was quite wet inside.