I'm gonna burn a lot of birch

[blacktail]

My uncle just bought a house on 13 acres and he wants the woods thinned out. My dad and I were told we can cut all the birch we can access, just leave the firs and hemlocks standing. Once he's moved and settled in, my uncle offered to help out with his tractor. To quote my uncle, "you guys won't need to get permits and cut wood up in the hills for a few years."
We made our first trip two weeks ago and went back again today. Birch is some of the highest quality firewood we have access to, and we're gonna be hauling a lot of it in our Toyotas.

 

[Rossco]

Nice. Wish I had a big chunk of land to cut on. Ov-course we have a million miles of crown land but its open season for everyone. Most hunters carry a saw and will take meat or wood.

So we assume you are cutting 'Green'? How long does CSS Birch take to dry?

 

[blacktail]

I haven't cut a ton of birch, but it should be OK if dried for a year. What I cut in the last two trips, combined with the maple I got in February, should meet my needs for next season. If not, I'll probably have a chance to cut more fir and alder in the next couple of months. Birch is nice stuff so I want to make sure I get it good and dry before I burn it.

 

[Richie]

Looks like yellow birch. I have a ton of black birch on my property. I believe they are similar. Should be seasoned in one year. My favorite mix in black birch and black locust. Man that is a wicked combo.

 

[Poindexter]

If you are getting behind on processing one thing you can do with birch logs laying on the ground is walk end to end dragging your saw tip through the bark.

We call it "zipping" or "unzipping" a birch log up here. Left on the ground but unzipped the bark will peel away over a couple months, allowing the wood inside to dry enough to not rot while you are getting around to bucking and splitting it.

I did run some experimental pieces zipped and not split this summer to see how big a piece of birch branch I could just unzip, season and burn without having to split it. I just finally got enough room in the garage to think about maybe opening up some of those this week. I did burn one test piece. It was of a diameter I could just barely get my middle finger and thumb tips to touch wrapped around it. Bark was zipped open. Piece was seasoned on the shady side of my seasoning stack. Good checking at both ends, in the stove it lit right off with no foam or steam out the end I could see, no telltale charcoal lump in the ash bed the next morning.

I find split to 4" max dimension, stacked on pallets with the pallets off the ground on cinderblocks and covered on top with plastic my splits are down to 16%MC per electronic gizmo in one summer no problem.

 

[Razo]

Happy to hear you guys are set for a few years. How are you (or your dad, not sure whose truck it is) liking the Duratracs? Awesome tires, I have them on my Jeep, was super impressed with them in the snow and slush, almost unstoppable.

 

[Seanm]

Very nice haul. Im jealous! I have a bit of birch around here and like you its the highest btu wood in the area although the larch that dominates my wood stacks is just a smidge below birch in btus. Poindexter has great advise in his post above. I would be very careful about how you store since it tends to go punky fast if you let it hold water.

 

[Applesister]

Unzipping, lol, have to try that one. I cut a lot of gray birch. It turns black quicker than the rest of my wood. Ive read here that the bark is impervious.
Never really thought about birch bark canoes and seasoning birch wood. Haha.

 

[Poindexter]

I got a few pics, and an experiment wrapping up. I start splitting next winters wood about this time every year so "next winter's wood" is c/s/s/c (cut, split, stacked and covered) and ready to go before the spring thaw starts. Gives me all winter to split, and I don't miss a minute of firewood seasoning time in the warm months.

"Sunnyside" is a pic of my main seasoning rack from the west looking east. On the plat drawing my lot lines run exactly NS and EW. The chain link fence on the right runs as close to EW as my GPS and compass can measure. The rack is 53 feet long, pallets up on cinder blocks. "Sunnyside", when I get to them would be the row to the right that gets full sun down the whole length. Tonight I was fooling with shady side wood from the backside of the pile on the main seasoning rack.

In this rack I stuck some birch pieces too small or crooked to fool with splitting, some zipped or striped, some not. As I was loading my woodshed last month I kept the shady side smalls segregated from the sunny side smalls.

I brought some of the shady side smalls into the garage tonight and got busy.

"Striped" is just a few of the shady side smalls I am getting ready to split open.

I did run some zipped spruce smalls too, I would certainly try this with any other pine in the lower 48, it worked good. "Positivespruceshade"

"Positiveshade" is birch smalls from the shady side that were unzipped.

"Negative shade" is birch smalls that were not unzipped. The piece at the back was a split from a much bigger part of the tree in the same shady side stack all summer. The regular split got to 16% with bark on one side, same thickness round with all the bark on only made it down to 22%.

After I deal with the rest of the shady side sample I'll bring in the sunny side pieces in a few days to see what I got.

EDIT: I should mention just because this works for me in Fairbanks doesn't mean it will work the same for you wherever you are, though I do expect your results anywhere else would be "similar". I _hope_ to find my sunnyside smalls are much drier. One one hand we did have the wettest summer in 107 years of official rain data, on the other I am between a river and a ridge top with dependable morning and evening breezes blowing through my seasoning racks.

 

[jebatty]

Birch needs pretty much full sun to grow. Cutting out the birch may mean a birch-less future woods unless patch areas have access to sun. Birch will stump sprout (result is clump birch), but again lots of sun is the key to keeping birch in the woods.

 

[gerry100]

cut some birch at the lake place and didn't bother to split or unzip.

Turned to useless mush in few years.

"unzipping" a quick smart fix

 

[Shawn Curry]

I like the idea of the "unzipping" technique - I'll have to give that a try. There is a huge black birch down on my parent's land; doesn't look like it's been down long but it's already getting a little soft under the bark. Wanted to grab it before the snow flies, but I was worried it might rot the rest of the way before I can use it.

I've just taken over management of my family's entire woods - 75 acres worth; originally my great-grandparent's farm. I bought my grandparent's house last year, located on the far end, along with the 14 acres at that end.

I've already got my 3 year plan out of the woods this year, just cutting up down trees on my 14 acres. Year 3 still needs to be split, but it's up at the house in rounds and small log form. But I don't want to stop. I'm going to keep pushing until my parents and my sister's family have their 3 year plan in place too.

 

[Bigg_Redd]

I haven't cut a ton of birch, but it should be OK if dried for a year. What I cut in the last two trips, combined with the maple I got in February, should meet my needs for next season. If not, I'll probably have a chance to cut more fir and alder in the next couple of months. Birch is nice stuff so I want to make sure I get it good and dry before I burn it.

That looks like what we call Alder (same family). It'll be as dry as it gets next fall. Also, get it off the ground ASAP as it turns punky very quickly.

 

[blacktail]

100% paper birch. Not alder. I already burn a lot of alder.
All this stuff was split and stacked under cover within 48 hours of being cut down.

 

[Poindexter]

A tale of four rounds. Long story short, the men's group from my church took care of a bunch of birch logs "down two years" for someone that had hurt their back. I was not impressed with how dry birch gets just laying on the ground, even two years. So I did an experiment just to see.

The two bigger rounds, about 11" in diameter were felled from a healthy sap up tree in August 2013. They probably didn't dry much at all before freeze up in late September 2013. They were laying on the ground in my back yard all summer.

The two smaller rounds, about 8 inches diameter were felled in April 2014 with sap rising but the tree not yet leafed out. These two I zipped.

Really, all four rounds have one summer of seasoning time on them.

As expected, the sealed up 11 inchers weren't anywhere near even fiber saturation point. The smaller striped/ sipped/ unzipped ones were nto as dry as I had hoped.

I split both of the big ones and found plenty of mold and fungus growing in the bark, and the wood was pretty soft already. I split one of the two smaller ones, it felt solid-ish, but softer than my regular splits. The striped but unsplit smaller round is back out on my seasoning rack, I'll see where it gets to next fall. I couldn't see any reason to let either of the big ones rot any further.

To recap what I am seeing so far, striped or zipped birch rounds under 4" diameter off the ground will dry out fast enough to not rot without splitting, but might take two years to be dry enough for a catalytic stove. 11" rounds with intact bark on the ground will be notably rotten after one summer. 8-9" rounds with the bark zipped open will dry, but not very fast when on the ground.

I got the garage door fixed tonight for the missus. Couple other chores on deck, but next up I will be bringing in unsplit smalls that spent the summer on the sunny side of my seasoning rack.

 

[Poindexter]

And another thing....

I ended up scrounging about five cords of mixed trees in April 2014 after my regular racks were full. A co-worker was clearing a lot to put a house on only three miles from my house. I sold a bunch of it off at the going rate, $250 per cord, green rounds, delivered. I put a cord of it on the east side of my house. It is damp and cool enough in that area, well, all that grows is moss. My wife and I peeled off the moss, put down landscaping fabric and gravel years ago. First pic is from the south looking north, the one split sticking out is a piece of birch I split and moisture metered later that same day. The four tires are where my fishing boat sits off the trailer. Pic would have been during salmon season, after caribou season but before moose season, so late August. I piled this up I think about 10PM on May 14th, firewood seasoning season officially starts here on May 15th and runs to July 4.

Suffice it to say i am not going to bother moving my hunting boat and fishing boat around again to make room for one more cord of wood over there. My house, to the left in the first pic serves as a windbreak blocking the evening breeze coming down off the ridge to my west. The fence to the east serves as a windbreak for the morning breeze coming off the river to my east. The dang ornamental birches in the foreground of this pic, the south side, kept all or most of the sunlight off this stack.

The 35+ %MC measurement was inside the re-split sample. The 18-24% measurements were from the OUTSIDE of the split that had been there all summer.

I dunno if wind or sunlight is more important for seasoning birch, but I got to have some of each. FWIW the shadyside splits off my main rack are metering about 16% average on the inside. The sunny side splits are going 12-13% resplitting and measuring in the middle. I split to 4" max single dimension whenever possible around knots and curves.

Thank you hearth dot com for all the good info I got when shopping for a new stove. Google just kept bringing me back here over and over and over. Sharing what I know about seasoning birch is easy karma.

 

[AnalogKid]

I love birch. Some seem to knock it...or just about anything that's not hickory, oak or locust. I had two large black birches taken down in April 2013. I had it split and stacked by May and burned it last year.

The stuff seasons in no time at all and burns long and hot. I was sad when it was all gone. Honestly, oak and locust is great, but the 2yrs needed to season adequately kind of make it a PITA. Give me a nice birch any day, I'll welcome it with open arms.

This year out if my 4 1/2 cords I'll be burning about 70% locust, 10% ash, 10% oak, 10% a potpourri of maple, cedar, birch and pine.

 

[Seanm]

I love birch. Some seem to knock it...or just about anything that's not hickory, oak or locust. I had two large black birches taken down in April 2013. I had it split and stacked by May and burned it last year.

The stuff seasons in no time at all and burns long and hot. I was sad when it was all gone. Honestly, oak and locust is great, but the 2yrs needed to season adequately kind of make it a PITA. Give me a nice birch any day, I'll welcome it with open arms.

This year out if my 4 1/2 cords I'll be burning about 70% locust, 10% ash, 10% oak, 10% a potpourri of maple, cedar, birch and pine.

For me its the best wood out here. If I wasn't surrounded by Larch which doesn't rot as quick and is just a notch under birch on btus I would seek it out more. The problem for us in the east kootenays of BC is that its not prolific and its illegal to cut it down green unless you own the land that its growing. By the time you get to a blow down birch its often gone to punk. I still have it in my stacks and will continue to seek it out and burn it. When I carry it to the stove im excited because I know how valuable and how great it is as firewood! I would love a little stack of oak to play with but I dont have the time or space to put up with it!

 

[gerry100]

Birch needs pretty much full sun to grow. Cutting out the birch may mean a birch-less future woods unless patch areas have access to sun. Birch will stump sprout (result is clump birch), but again lots of sun is the key to keeping birch in the woods.

Never need to fell birches, around here they seem to fall over before they much past 12" dia. The secret is to get them right away.

If you find one rotting on the ground you can yank the bark off and use it as great fire starter.

 

[Poindexter]

Finally I got er done, sorry for the delay. I got into a sample of the unzipped smalls that spent all summer on the sunny side of my seasoning rack. Under 2 inches, unzipped or striped I am under 16% per gizmo. 2.5" and up, they are drying fast enough to not be rotting, but I am going to give them another summer on the rack before I shed them. The one piece at the front of the pic that has the (-) sign for not striped, intact bark is spruce, and dry. The other ones behind the front one are all birch and not dry enough for the stove this year.

 

[Poindexter]

At this point in the birch experiment I conclude splits up to 8" max dimension might be dry in one summer in my climate. Birch split to 4" max dimension is dry enough for my catalytic stove in one season on either the shady or sunny side of my seasoning rack, but measurably drier on the sunny side.

8" max splits are too big for my wife to carry, and my stove is loving 4" splits so I am going to make all the 4" splits I can. If the big gnarly knotty pieces need two years to season that's just gonna have to be fine.

Birch smalls under 4" diameter and zipped or striped through the bark have a good shot at being stove ready in two seasons of drying, doesn't look like sunny or shady sign makes much difference.

For spruce, I am golden on the shady side of the seasoning rack with splits at 4" max single dimension. Striped or unzipped smalls under 3" are ready in one summer on the shady side.

Either way it looks like 3-4" smalls too knotty to split are going to require two summers to season no matter what I do with them.

 

[blacktail]

My dad called me this morning and said my uncle had dropped a couple of trees for us. I happened to be free today so I went and got 'em. Nice wood, and I could back the truck right up to them.