hallelujah, burning hot again

[begreen]

Finally have burned the last of the damp soft maple. Now we are burning the wood shed fir. What a difference in almost every aspect of the fire. Secondaries firing off quickly, air all the way closed, hot stove top temps, long lasting fire. So glad to be through with that stack of wood.

 

[Hogwildz]

Tisk tisk. Is it even cold enough to burn over thar?

 

[Cynnergy]

I love fir! Great for getting the cabin up to temp. Getting more C/S/S for next year is top of the to-do list.

 

[gyrfalcon]

Tisk tisk. Is it even cold enough to burn over thar?

Heh.

 

[begreen]

Tisk tisk. Is it even cold enough to burn over thar?

LOL Yup, we been known to occasionally need a fire even here.

 

[Highbeam]

I am happy to be done with fir and on to the more ashy "hard"woods that we have. Fir makes nearly zero ash and the burn times end up suffering as a result. I haven't emptied ashes yet all year and I've gone through 1.25 cords of straight doug fir. Seriously, only about 1 inch of ash on the bottom of the firebox.

So now I'm onto the bigleaf maple which seems to be a good burner.

BG, do you think the problem was the wood density or the dryness?

 

[PapaDave]

Went through that early this winter while burning some Soft Maple from Nov. '12.

 

[begreen]

Definitely dryness. Our fir is bone dry and the maple never got to that point due to the location it was stacked.

 

[Cynnergy]

When you say soft maple BG, I assume you are talking about bigleaf/broadleaf? We do have it around here and I thought it was good firewood (at least according to Roderick Haig-Brown - I love this quote from Measure of a Year, written in 1950 from his home on the south bank of the Campbell River):

“A few years ago we used to cut about twenty cords of wood and pile it into the basement every fall. It was alder for the most part, cut from the stand on the far side of the road, long straight trees up to eighteen inches or so on the stump and clean of limbs for fifty or sixty feet of their height. Felled in spring and summer, cut into four-foot lengths and split once, then piled, the wood was perfectly seasoned for burning by fall. Left in the round or over a winter, the heart goes out of it and it becomes soft and half rotten, with only a fraction of its heat left in it.”
...


“Here on the Pacific Coast our abundant natives are Douglas fir, western hemlock, red cedar, amabilis fir, Sitka spruce, maple, and alder. Douglas fir is the most commonly used firewood and it is a worthy wood, easy to dry, straight-splitting, burning with a fine and generous heat so long as it has plenty of oxygen-not a wood to smolder and glow and hold in, but fine for stoves and a cheerful flaming fire. The bark is even better fuel than the wood itself. Often three or four inches thick, creviced and corky, blacksmiths have told me it will make a welding heat in the right fire...I doubt if woodsmen anywhere in the world have quicker and surer, more generous native fuel.


Hemlock is hard to season, but burns honestly and cleanly with a good heat when fully dry. Red cedar is quick and hot, splits out sliver thin at the touch of an axe, and makes perfect kindling. It dries readily, is proof against rot for years, has a lovely colour and scent. But it will not last in a fire and it burns with a fierce sputter crackling that no man wants for longer than the start of his fire. Spruce and the true firs burn away quickly, without much heat; a woodpile of either is a false show, put up by an ignorant or improvident man unless it is wood he has to be rid of. Alder, properly seasoned, is a noble wood, full of heat, free of sparks and all uncertainty; but it burns away too quickly for perfection. Of all our coast woods only the broadleaf maple is perfect, a calm hot wood that burns slowly and steadily, often with blue flames of its own gases, never throwing sparks, never sealing itself away in carbon, glowing with heat to the end. But maple is too seldom an easy wood to get. It grows scattered and we prize the trees too much to cut them easily. Nor is it an easy tree to cut into wood, because it usually splits into separate trunks or heavy limbs only a few feet from the ground. We are used to the tall straight trees of the true forest and hesitate before the gnarled and twisty mass of a great maple. Perhaps it’s just as well. Better the live tree standing than the finest fuel in the world so long as there is other to be had.”

I cribbed this for notes . RHB is a great writer, I highly recommend his books to everyone on the forum. Mostly known for his fly-fishing books, but some of his conservation essays are incredibly prescient. Aldo Leopold-esque.

 

[begreen]

Yes, big leaf maple.