Dylan said:It has to do with heat-RATE, as someone here recently brought to light.
On that coldest night of the winter, when you need to keep that stove operating at seven hundred degrees, AND you don't want coals (They REALLY don't yield all that much heat !!) AND you're willing to wake up every couple hours to recharge, then softwood is the way to go.
Trust me...I've been there. When the mercury hit minus 21, the (three-inch deep) accumulation of (hardwood) coals in my H-II, ABSOLUTELY prohibited combustion air (which entered from below on that model) from reaching the coal/new-fuel interface and stove temperature plummetted. Softwood would have more readily degraded to ash and the combustion air would not have been impeded.
Dylan said:BrotherBart said:The great thing about the pine is that even though it burns faster, it is also about half as hard to cut, toss around the rounds, split them etc. May be half the heat but it is half the work also.
Yeah, but twice as much time (at least) washing yer hands.
Anyone else notice how pitch-laden the eastern white pine cones were this year?? I have one majestic eastern in my front yard and whenever I walked beneath it, the soles of my shoes would be covered with pitch AND whatever else wanted to stick to it.