Getting ready for my first year of wood burning. How am I doing?

[lugoismad]

I just bought my house in April, and it has baseboard heat. Screw $500 a month electric bills!
So I'm putting in a wood furnace.

I'm on my 9th pickup truck load of lumber cutoffs from the local amish pallet mill.

I was sure to spray the side of the house with malathion, and the pallets I stacked the wood on in the yard.
Don't want termites in the house.
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Heres my giant pile of scrap that was too small to stack. I'll just have to use a wheel barrow for it I guess.
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My furnace I got for $250. Still needs to be installed and I need to order a chimney for it.
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My roommate (co-op at work I'm renting a bedroom to for the summer) fixed a crack in it for me last week with his TIG welder.
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[Highbeam]

Check on the furnace manufacturer's literature. Almost every woodstove made requires that nothing but firewwod be burnt in the firebox. Lumber scraps are kiln dried and too hot for stoves. Prehaps your wood furnace allows burning of such material.

7 truckloads of anything won't get close to a winter's worth of wood for me.

 

[savageactor7]

I can't see your pics but I would say you're tracking correctly grabbing all the wood you can. I know guys that have burned nothing but pallets for years...they burn hot so damper down lugoismad and grab another 9 loads just in case.

 

[lugoismad]

Check on the furnace manufacturer's literature. Almost every woodstove made requires that nothing but firewwod be burnt in the firebox. Lumber scraps are kiln dried and too hot for stoves. Prehaps your wood furnace allows burning of such material.

7 truckloads of anything won't get close to a winter's worth of wood for me.

These aren't kiln dried. Theres still alot of green in it.

 

[lugoismad]

I can't see your pics but I would say you're tracking correctly grabbing all the wood you can. I know guys that have burned nothing but pallets for years...they burn hot so damper down lugoismad and grab another 9 loads just in case.

I'm getting about 3 cords of sassafras from a guy at work next weekend. That should pretty much finish me out for the year.

 

[abj1969]

..

 

[mayhem]

My brother in law has an outdoor wood boiler that he uses for his DHW and main heat in the winter...he goes through about a cord of firewood every 7-10 days in the dead of winter. Without knowing ahead of time how much you'll really need I would recommend you get about 3-4 times as much wood as you've gotten so far.

Hell I went through 6 cords minimum with just my wood stove last winter.

 

[FatttFire]

I agree plan ahead/ you have time/ and get as much as possible! Better to get to spring with a cord left, then to get to spring and be short a cord!

 

[lugoismad]

Yay, fixed the pictures. I guess it doesn't like spaces in filenames.

 

[N/A N/A]

Looks good. If that stuff is green you might want to stack it looser or it will never dry ;-)

 

[lugoismad]

Looks good. If that stuff is green you might want to stack it looser or it will never dry ;-)

90% of it is dry as a bone.

Worse case scenario is I toss the green stuff to a pile in the garage, and wait till the end of winter for it to have dried out, or toss it in on a hot fire.

 

[aandabooks]

That wood furnace you've got there is going to eat that wood like its nothing. I've got a Daka and I bring home a truck load of 3x3 cottonwood boards once per week during the winter. They are 63" and I cut them to 21". About 250 when all the cutting is done. If I burned them 24 hours per day, maybe 1 1/2 days per truckload.

 

[woodconvert]

If that stuff is green you might want to stack it looser or it will never dry ;-)

What he said....stack it looser. Hell, for giggles turn it into a monster game of Jenga and see how high you can go. HEY....that stuff would be somewhat ideal for building a Holtzen circle stack thingy or two.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

Looks like you got the first week of burning covered. Only 5.75 months of burning to collect.

Matt

 

[savageactor7]

Well I can see the pics now and just want to say I think you have plenty of scraps just keep scoring more of those pallet ends...they stack real nice.

 

[countrybois]

Check on the furnace manufacturer's literature. Almost every woodstove made requires that nothing but firewwod be burnt in the firebox. Lumber scraps are kiln dried and too hot for stoves. Prehaps your wood furnace allows burning of such material.

7 truckloads of anything won't get close to a winter's worth of wood for me.

WHATEVER! As long as it's not treated with anything toxic, it is a 'wood' stove, if it is wood, burn it!! AHAHAHAHA Some of you guys take this way to serious. This ain't rocket science. It is a metal box that you build a fire in to get heat out.

 

[lugoismad]

That wood furnace you've got there is going to eat that wood like its nothing. I've got a Daka and I bring home a truck load of 3x3 cottonwood boards once per week during the winter. They are 63" and I cut them to 21". About 250 when all the cutting is done. If I burned them 24 hours per day, maybe 1 1/2 days per truckload.

I got the furnace from my mom's boyfriend. He heated his house with it up until this year (he's upgrading to a Tarm wood gassification boiler this year). His house is roughly three times the size of mine. He said he would go through about 15 hoppers of wood. When you get the wood from the mill we go to, they give you a cubic yard hopper of it on a forklift dumped into your truck. What your looking at in those pictures is 9 hoppers.

My goal is to get 20, plus the 3 cords of sassafras the guy at work is giving me.

 

[lugoismad]

Well I can see the pics now and just want to say I think you have plenty of scraps just keep scoring more of those pallet ends...they stack real nice.

You don't really have any control over that. They just give you a hopper. Sometimes its all chunks, other times theres a ton of scraps in it.
I plan on using the scraps to get the house heated back up every morning after its all just coals in the stove. A few shovel fulls of that stuff should get it going really nice again before I leave for work.

 

[lugoismad]

Looks like you got the first week of burning covered. Only 5.75 months of burning to collect.

Matt

You live in New York.

I live in Ohio. It doesn't get that cold here. Winter stays in the 30's most of the time.

Plus, I have electric baseboard backups, in case I run out of wood or something happens. I'm probably going to have to travel for work this winter, so I know theres going to be a few weeks where I won't be burning.
I may invite my sister and her boyfriend to house sit for me though.

 

[jpl1nh]

I can't see your pics but I would say you're tracking correctly grabbing all the wood you can. I know guys that have burned nothing but pallets for years...they burn hot so damper down lugoismad and grab another 9 loads just in case.

I'm getting about 3 cords of sassafras from a guy at work next weekend. That should pretty much finish me out for the year.

I'd say for your first year your well on your way to cutting your electric bill a lot. 3 cords of sassafras? I have no idea what kind of BTU rating it has. Plus where the hell do you get three ocrds of sassafras from? That's kind of obscure wood!

 

[lugoismad]

3 cords of sassafras? I have no idea what kind of BTU rating it has. Plus where the hell do you get three ocrds of sassafras from? That's kind of obscure wood!

I know, isn't it? Apparently he has a bunch in his woods that he cleared out. He said just take whats big enough to burn, and leave the brush. He said its mostly stuff roughly the size of your forearm or so. He's cutting it up for me, I just gotta go pick it up with the truck sometime.

 

[N/A N/A]

Check on the furnace manufacturer's literature. Almost every woodstove made requires that nothing but firewwod be burnt in the firebox. Lumber scraps are kiln dried and too hot for stoves. Prehaps your wood furnace allows burning of such material.

7 truckloads of anything won't get close to a winter's worth of wood for me.

WHATEVER! As long as it's not treated with anything toxic, it is a 'wood' stove, if it is wood, burn it!! AHAHAHAHA Some of you guys take this way to serious. This ain't rocket science. It is a metal box that you build a fire in to get heat out.

LOL..ya...until you start a fire with it and walk away for a few and come back to the sides starting to glow and you will never do that again....(been down that road with some kiln dried oak)

 

[Carl]

Check on the furnace manufacturer's literature. Almost every woodstove made requires that nothing but firewwod be burnt in the firebox. Lumber scraps are kiln dried and too hot for stoves. Prehaps your wood furnace allows burning of such material.

7 truckloads of anything won't get close to a winter's worth of wood for me.

WHATEVER! As long as it's not treated with anything toxic, it is a 'wood' stove, if it is wood, burn it!! AHAHAHAHA Some of you guys take this way to serious. This ain't rocket science. It is a metal box that you build a fire in to get heat out.

This ain't rocket science, agreed but some knowledge helps and these stove have a lot of innovation and research put into them to get them this efficient.....

I agree, some do take this and life much too serious. ROTF..... :blank: :red:

 

[JustWood]

Nice wood cache man ! I burn the same stuff. About 4 cord a year and 1 cord of scraps in the warmer months (fall and spring). Have a similar type stove and it works great. All night burns are no problem. That sassafras will burn quick. Keep on haulin cause alot of pallet shops are shutting down. Get 2 or 3 years ahead if you can.

 

[countrybois]

Check on the furnace manufacturer's literature. Almost every woodstove made requires that nothing but firewwod be burnt in the firebox. Lumber scraps are kiln dried and too hot for stoves. Prehaps your wood furnace allows burning of such material.

7 truckloads of anything won't get close to a winter's worth of wood for me.

WHATEVER! As long as it's not treated with anything toxic, it is a 'wood' stove, if it is wood, burn it!! AHAHAHAHA Some of you guys take this way to serious. This ain't rocket science. It is a metal box that you build a fire in to get heat out.

This ain't rocket science, agreed but some knowledge helps and these stove have a lot of innovation and research put into them to get them this efficient.....

I agree, some do take this and life much too serious. ROTF..... :blank: :red:

You are right. Some knowledge and commons sense go a LONG way. I was trying to give this guy a break. Everyone was busting his ba!!s when he was looking for encouragement on preparing for his first year burning by collecting what wood he had access to.

If he's got kiln dried wood, then he should burn it! Sure if you fill 'er up with it and pour the air to it, it is going to get red-hot. Same can happen with air dried wood.

Rather than jump all over him, how about warning him about over-firing his stove, a common problem with new burners.