Pound for Pound in BTU's... Pine is # 2

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Bubbavh

Feeling the Heat
Oct 22, 2008
475
NJ Piney
Well it is according to these guys! How skewed was the control... one may never know. I'll bite because I like to to think all the work I put into my pine pile is worth it!

Weight in #'s to produce 1 mil BTU's

Wood #'s

Hickory 145.35#
Pine 156.39#
Maple 172.05#
Oak 172.69#
Alder 172.78#

http://www.homefirelogs.com/comparison.html#3
 
I dont see the hedge apple(osage orange) I like testing my saw on pine and make a lot of small cuts (cookes) and spike the fire with them when its real cold out!
 
OK OK so I have to load the stove 3 times to make a pound! (with pine)
 
Interesting. Maybe more energy is stored per pound in pine pitch than in non-pitchy wood.

I looked at other sources, and the other woods were very close together, with pine being notably higher in BTU/#.
 
I think its a conspiracy theory from those west coast folks :)
Kidding of course!
 
you ever see a Christmas tree go up in flames? yes pine has some pretty flammable stuff in it.
 
even though hes pretty crazy :) im with crazy_dan. the sap in pine is incredibly flammable and offers a lot of heat, its almost like napalm. # for #, pure sap would probably top the list. im sure that significantly adds to the overall btu/# rating. i got a big load of pine and was just screwing around, and i scraped off maybe an 1/8 cup of fresh sap from a round. it goes up like crazy and burned for about 10+ minutes. yeah i know, im a pyro.
 
Sap does burn fast, but that does not mean that it has more energy per pound than wood. I am speculating that it may. As noted on another thread- explosives don't necessarily have a lot of energy per molecule as compared to other materials- they just release it all at once.
 
My dad cut a bunch of pine back in March or April of this year to keep the needles from junking up the pond on his mother's cattle farm. Not sure what species of pine this is, but it has a very slick bark. Not the large, flaky pieces like the pines on his property. It's been cut up and sitting in a barn since then, and it's only gotten lighter and lighter. On my lunch break today, I drove down to the barn and picked up enough to fill the Endeavor about 2/3 full tonight. I'm going to see how it performs. I know this is a sin, and I know I will go blind and grow hairy palms. Please pray for me.
 
Pagey said:
My dad cut a bunch of pine back in March or April of this year to keep the needles from junking up the pond on his mother's cattle farm. Not sure what species of pine this is, but it has a very slick bark. Not the large, flaky pieces like the pines on his property. It's been cut up and sitting in a barn since then, and it's only gotten lighter and lighter. On my lunch break today, I drove down to the barn and picked up enough to fill the Endeavor about 2/3 full tonight. I'm going to see how it performs. I know this is a sin, and I know I will go blind and grow hairy palms. Please pray for me.

You forgot about the going sterile part. :eek:hh:
 
Burning it now. I'm going to hell. Pics of the ole offender:

pine1.jpg


pine2.jpg
 
Pagey said:
My dad cut a bunch of pine back in March or April of this year to keep the needles from junking up the pond on his mother's cattle farm. Not sure what species of pine this is, but it has a very slick bark. Not the large, flaky pieces like the pines on his property. It's been cut up and sitting in a barn since then, and it's only gotten lighter and lighter. On my lunch break today, I drove down to the barn and picked up enough to fill the Endeavor about 2/3 full tonight. I'm going to see how it performs. I know this is a sin, and I know I will go blind and grow hairy palms. Please pray for me.
I've heard that the Hairy Palms are high in BTU's also.
 
Adios Pantalones said:
Sap does burn fast, but that does not mean that it has more energy per pound than wood. I am speculating that it may. As noted on another thread- explosives don't necessarily have a lot of energy per molecule as compared to other materials- they just release it all at once.

sap doesn't burn fast though. it ignites fast but continues to burn for a long time. this small amount i had scraped off with a stick burned for 10 minutes or more. and it didnt just smolder, it burned with a strong flame. i didnt believe it when my friend told me but when he demonstrated it, i was very surprised. i know you said "i'm speculating that it may", which is all im doing too, speculating. but it sounds plausible, right??? :) then again, ive been told im crazy on more than one occasion %-P

btw pagey dont throw your life away. you better rush yourself and your depraved mind into a psych ward, because thats exactly where you belong :mad:
 
cozy heat thats interesting. according to that chart each variety is withing 10% of one another and much of that 10% could be within the margin of error from rounding up/down. i guess it doesnt depend so much on the species, but rather, it strictly depends on the amount of weight youre throwing at the stove. well that shoots my sap theory to sh*t, huh? :lol:
 
cozy heat said:
Interesting - I guess it depends on the source of the info. I grabbed the btu chart from:

http://chimneysweeponline.com/howood.htm

did a little spreadsheet magic to come up with the btu's per pound:

I think their is never really going to be an accurate way to measure the BTU's in different species of wood. Their are to many variables with grain and moisture to ever get an exact. With that said I think pound for pound it is all pretty much the same. Pine just doesn't coal as nice or last as long as the hard woods.

Food for thought!

Happy Thanksgiving!
 
Dow N. Jones said:
Adios Pantalones said:
Interesting. Maybe more energy is stored per pound in pine pitch than in non-pitchy wood.

I looked at other sources, and the other woods were very close together, with pine being notably higher in BTU/#.
indeed & pine pellets have the highest btu ratings as i've read in the past

I think the pitch acts almost like a wax making the outside real flammable while also protecting the core itself. Pine trees need fire to regrow, the outer sticky pitch burns off and the charred tree remains and sprouts new growth all over the trunk. It also opens the pine cones to seed and lets the sun in.
 

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a stick of dynomite probably has a very high btu rating doesnt mean its going to last long though
 
Something else to ponder. All same species of trees are not equal. A red pine tree in the south will be less dense than a red pine tree up North. Same with altitude. All those charts are just a rough guide, what really matters is how it burns in your stove.
 
I have burned a lot of pine of various types and It is a warm fire but it is just a flash in the pan compared to real heating wood. Pine don't last long in my boiler compared to other woods. Length of burn is proof positive to me. Pine is gophur wood. Just when you sit down to relax by the warm fire it's down to small coals and dying and it's time to go phur wood. Of course that don't mean it doesn't produce heat and any wood usually burns better compared to no wood. $.02
 
Pine has a very low density compared to even other western softwoods. I burn at least 1 cord of lodgepole pine per year and when I take a load of lodgepole home versus a load of standing dead red fir there is a definite difference in how low my truck rides with a full load. On a pound basis pine has a high heating value, on a density basis or energy per unit volume, the energy content is lower.
 
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