Great link! Thank you! I'm in my wood-nerd gloryHere’s an article someone shared with me a while back:
http://dec.alaska.gov/media/7558/wood-storage-best-practices-final-report.pdf
Great link! Thank you! I'm in my wood-nerd gloryHere’s an article someone shared with me a while back:
http://dec.alaska.gov/media/7558/wood-storage-best-practices-final-report.pdf
I think the comments in this article are interesting:I burned some 5 year old white oak in my fireplace this winter. It had been stacked in completely dry conditions the past 5 years. The splits were perfect, there were a few 5-6” unspilt rounds in the stack. Moisture still boiled out of the ends of these. Not sure if this applies across all species of wood in all locations.
I think the comments in this article are interesting:
"White oak, on the other hand, has such a tight cell structure that water can't pass. That's why white oak works so well for whiskey barrels and outdoor furniture."
And for exposed wood on boats.
https://www.woodmagazine.com/materials-guide/lumber/understanding-wood-grain
I burned quite a bit of white oak this year. 3yrs stacked like all the others. After a while I kind of dreaded using it, because it seemed to burn slow and cold, like it was a little high in moisture, no sizzle, just weak. Everything else would take off like a match. Next year it will have another year to cure. We'll see.
Mostly true, for east coast softwoods. In some parts of the west we have more choices. In the rockies folks have access to alpine spruce which grows slowly and is quite dense, much more than lowland spruce. Out west there is also tamarack, doug fir and lodgepole pine. These are excellent fuels. I have been burning cherry hardwood for the past month, normally I burn doug fir. The hardwood coals a lot more which is nice for slower release of heat. It also creates a lot more ash. But I prefer doug fir and get some good long burns without more frequent refills. The doug fir ignites faster and gets the stove up to temp quicker. I burn thick splits which extend the burn time.The bigger hassle is the density of softwood is far less than hardwood. This means a lot more trips back and forth to feed the stove and more volume of wood you need to store. Hardwood is readily available in most of NH so its the preferred wood to burn.