New to the forum & new to gathering wood

[Oww My Back Hurts]

Hello, I am new to the forum & I'm also new to gathering wood. I just cut up my first tree and am wondering if anyone knows what this is? Sorry if it is obvious! I am trying to figure out how long I would need to let it dry before I'd use it in my fireplace.

 

[Pallet Pete]

Welcome to hearth I appolagize typing on the phone makes it hard to tell what that tree species is. A general rule of thumb for wood burning is to split and stack your wood in the wind for 1 year minimum 2 if possible. Wet wood will put off lots of creosote and not much heat as well as coal down poorly. It in essence needs to dry itself in the stove before it can put out heat by that time it is already used up. If you dry it properly you will get a clean chimney lots of heat and a good coal bed that will last. You will notice many of us here have lots of wood built up and some people are literally 5 years ahead or more on there wood piles for those reasons. While and braging rights lol.

What type of stove do you have ?

Pete

 

[Jon1270]

Looks like white oak to me. If you split it now and stack it in the wind, it will be at least a couple of years before it's suited for a wood stove.

 

[Blue2ndaries]

Welcome to the forums! It looks like oak and if that is the case, you are looking at min of 2yrs...3 would be better. Well seasoned wood is really key to efficient and effective heating w/a stove...that is certainly the mantra around here.

 

[Oww My Back Hurts]

Thanks for the responses everyone! We have a vermont castings merrimack insert in our fire place. A nearby farmer is looking to clear a tree line and is letting me come over and remove trees and that was the first one I saw, I really had no idea what it was (but it was heavy!). Once my back stops hurting I will split that stuff & stack it, and it sounds like winter of 2015 at the earliest to burn, or maybe 2016 if I can make it that long.

 

[swagler85]

Oak, great firewood! Takes a longtime to dry, tried some 18 month seasoned this year and it was still really wet.