Eucalyptus Score!

[bob95065]

A friend had a neighbor that had three giant eucalyptus trees cut down. The neighbor doesn't burn so he gave all the wood away. I scrounged all the firewood I need for a winter in one day. My woodshed holds enough wood for two winters so this firewood will be for 2020 - 2021. The wood for 2019 - 2020 has been in the woodshed for a year.


First load. A cord on the trailer, half on the truck.


Same load looking forward


Three loads on the ground. Wood Dog inspects the green gold.


This is where I left it last weekend.

Eucalyptus is my first choice for firewood. It is easy to split and stack because it grows straight. It burns real hot and doesn't leave a lot of ash. I am grateful to have all the wood I need for a season. This year it was easy.

Bob

 

[begreen]

Good score. Eucalyptus has high oil content, that's what makes it burn hot and fast. The trunk wood may be easy to split when green, but harder when fully dry. The limb wood can be a real bugger. At least our particular eucalyptus tree's limbs are. They grow in spirals and are amazingly strong which allows them to project far from the tree with a full load of heavy leaves. Hand splitting the limb wood is worse than elm and power splitting often just mushes through the limb wood.

 

[SeanBB]

As begreen says, it is a bugger to split when it dries. Split it as soon as possible.

 

[Woody Stover]

Chimneysweep doesn't rate it as high BTU but a couple other sites do. Seems like if it is strong wood, as begreen says, then it might also be dense and high-BTU...

 

[bob95065]

I've burned this wood for 15+ years when I can get it. It has high oil content but is seasons very fast. My splitter goes through it easy and I don't intend to milk this job.

The big tree was over 6' across DBH. The arborists said they had a 300' rope that wasn't long enough. Lots of wood there.

 

[Woody Stover]

I've burned this wood for 15+ years when I can get it

So what about the BTU? How does it compare to other high-BTU woods that you have burned (Almond, Manzanita, Live Oak, Madrone?)

 

[mar13]

From Wikipedia:"Eucalyptus /ˌjuːkəˈlɪptəs/[2] is a genus of over seven hundred species of flowering trees, shrubs or mallees in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae. Along with other genera in the tribe Eucalypteae, they are commonly known as eucalypts. "

In California, I believe most of the eucalyptus is Blue Gum from Tasmania. It can grow huge in the right conditions (well over 100 feet) and I see some heavy rounds just sit as they're too big and heavy for most people to scrounge. Near San Diego there are groves of eucalyptus that are left over from failed attempts to grow the for lumber... They weren't good lumber.

If I get the opportunity, I do scrounge the wood as it still feels heavy after seasoning (unlike redwood) and burns well enough for the effort.

In Australia, they have the fights over saving old growth forests too, but they're eucalyptus forests

 

[mar13]

A local controversy is a stretch of nearly a hundred or so ~century old eucalyptus trees (hundred feet tall) that line the main local highway next to our bay. A bike path is planned right along the bay at the base of the trees. Well, their branches almost randomly drop off and can, like lightning, be fatal. So the latest plan is to cut the trees down if the bike path is to be built....risk management; aka lawyer avoidance according to some.

When I drive past them, one common thought of mine is, "Who'll get the wood if they get cut?"

Eucalyptus are almost a (nonnative ) symbol of much of rural coastal California. The smell of eucalyptus on a damp foggy morning is very distinctly embedded in the mind of many coastal Californians.

 

[mar13]

https://www.firewood-for-life.com/eucalyptus-firewood.html

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[begreen]

So what about the BTU? How does it compare to other high-BTU woods that you have burned (Almond, Manzanita, Live Oak, Madrone?)

Eucalyptus has a lot of varieties, but the stuff we see here has very high BTU content.
http://worldforestindustries.com/forest-biofuel/firewood/firewood-btu-ratings/

 

[gabenson]

Nice one. It burns really hot.

 

[Kevin Weis]

Non-native, cut it and burn it.

 

[mar13]

A friend had a neighbor that had three giant eucalyptus trees cut down. The neighbor doesn't burn so he gave all the wood away. I scrounged all the firewood I need for a winter in one day. My woodshed holds enough wood for two winters so this firewood will be for 2020 - 2021. The wood for 2019 - 2020 has been in the woodshed for a year.

View attachment 243818
First load. A cord on the trailer, half on the truck.

View attachment 243819
Same load looking forward

View attachment 243820
Three loads on the ground. Wood Dog inspects the green gold.

View attachment 243821
This is where I left it last weekend.

Eucalyptus is my first choice for firewood. It is easy to split and stack because it grows straight. It burns real hot and doesn't leave a lot of ash. I am grateful to have all the wood I need for a season. This year it was easy.

Bob

So did you split on site in order to be able to move some of the rounds into your truck? By hand or machine?

 

[Highbeam]

The big tree was over 6' across DBH. The arborists said they had a 300' rope that wasn't long enough. Lots of wood there.

I can't help it. This just begs for math. If we assume the tree is 3' average diameter and that the 300 foot rope is used to lower chunks so it needs to be double length and the tree is 150 feet tall. This makes 1060 cubic feet of wood which is 8.3 cords. Looks like thin or no bark too.

 

[mar13]

I can't help it. This just begs for math. If we assume the tree is 3' average diameter and that the 300 foot rope is used to lower chunks so it needs to be double length and the tree is 150 feet tall. This makes 1060 cubic feet of wood which is 8.3 cords. Looks like thin or no bark too.

Looking at the eucalyptus trees around town yesterday made me think about your post. Yes PI * (1.5^2)*150=1060 ft^3 and 1060/128=8.3 cords. But that's assuming the cord is all wood and no air space between the splits, so I'd guess it'd be more than 10 cords?

Any guesses on the range of how much "air" there is in a typical cord? (I'm sure it depends a lot upon split size and who's doing the stacking.)

 

[Highbeam]

Looking at the eucalyptus trees around town yesterday made me think about your post. Yes PI * (1.5^2)*150=1060 ft^3 and 1060/128=8.3 cords. But that's assuming the cord is all wood and no air space between the splits, so I'd guess it'd be more than 10 cords?

Any guesses on the range of how much "air" there is in a typical cord? (I'm sure it depends a lot upon split size and who's doing the stacking.)

Great point, there is indeed fluff. I recall reading that 80 cubic feet of a 128 SF cord is wood for a 1.5 fluff factor. so 8.3x1.5 is 12.5!