Can you burn books?

[DeanBrown3D]

My office is throwing out a whole load of old computer text books, all of them fairly decent size wads of 1000+ pages. I was wondering if its worth putting them in the furnace or not. Its not like its all screwed up paper that could ignite too fast.

Any thoughts?

 

[danielj618]

only if you are an authoritarian dictator bent on squelching free expression

you will be in bad company should you decide to do so





and...I dont have a clue

 

[Jay H]

Can you burn bras?

I would think books would shoot off a lot of embers and become a big pile of ash... Plus, when you burn computer books, all you have left is a bunch of 1s and 0s...

Jay

 

[Marty]

I remember being at flea markets in the past where they offered a paper shopping bag filled with books for $1.00

Got to figure that works out to about $128.00/cord... I worry about the bindings a little though.

It has a rampage agains reason sort of feel that I think I might enjoy.

Edit: P.S. for an overnight burn try a moby dick and a war & peace

 

[Corie]

It doesn't work well. It my experience, it just ends up a smoldering pile or half burned stuff.

 

[danielj618]

Can you burn bras?

anything bigger than a D cup you have to split or they wont burn well

 

[kevinmoelk]

I would think a donation to an educational facility or an ebay auction would be a far better use. Lots of glue in the bindings.

-Kevin

 

[drewmo]

My father-in-law said he once threw a thick catalog into a woodstove, and it became such an inferno that he invisioned the stove melting. It takes a lot to scare this man, and both he and the mother-in-law were ready to abandon home in favor of their own lives. He has cautioned us from making the same mistake.

 

[Marty]

Maybe it's time for BeGreen to pick up some used, pro oil and gas tomes and produce another video.

 

[KarynAnne]

In another house with a fireplace I tried to burn a lot of junk mail (you know, credit card come ons and junk like that) instead of shredding. Granted, it wasn't a wood stove, but the fire was good - until I put all that paper on it. Smoke, floating crap bits of charred paper, but mostly an unburned wad of mess. I'm pretty sure that the concentrate of paper just didn't allow for enough air to burn it right. Hmmm - a stove might be different though if it was all the way up to temperature.

If you try it - please post results. My shredder gets tired sometimes.

 

[BrotherBart]

Did it once in the old insert. You end up poking it every fifteen minutes to loosen up a few more pages to get them to burn. Air can't get between them and they just smolder. You stay plenty warm from all of the manual effort/exercise getting them burned.

And cleaning tons of fly ash out of the flue.

 

[carpniels]

I agree with BB. Same thing happened to me.

It is no good. Don't do it.

Carpniels

 

[Gooserider]

Remember, they will only burn if you get them over Fahrenheit 451 I don't think they actually burn all that well in any case. I know that I have this gizmo that let me make "logs" out of rolled up newspapers and junk mail - I find the logs last a long time, but don't make much heat and tend to leave these "cores" of unburned material and lots of ash.

It also took me longer to roll one "log" than it did to make several times as much in splits...

Anyone want the rolling gizmo? I don't think I'm doing much more with it, and may put it up on freecycle.

Gooserider

 

[carg3]

Tear the covers off and recycle them. A wise man once told me, "Your stove isn't a burn barrel." But then, you're talking about a furnace.....In these parts, I've heard of everything from tires to Thanksgiving turkey carcasses being thrown in outdoor furnaces.

 

[DavidV]

Perhaps we should revisit my experiments on BTU value of rodents.

 

[restorer]

Tear the covers off and recycle them. A wise man once told me, "Your stove isn't a burn barrel." But then, you're talking about a furnace.....In these parts, I've heard of everything from tires to Thanksgiving turkey carcasses being thrown in outdoor furnaces.

Covers or not , my neice will take them all. The Nevada Burning Man needs all the fuel they can get.Ship them your nickel, to never-never-land, Nevada. Lots of ash and lost of rush. Gee could we make paper pellets from them?

 

[restorer]

Sarcasm in the last post fully intended. Sorry p-heads, I wasn't being quite.