USU Wood Species Characteristics Table

[ponderosa77]

Came across this and thought it was well-organized and useful:
http://forestry.usu.edu/htm/forest-products/wood-heating

 

[Lake Girl]

It is a well organized chart !

 

[ponderosa77]

I thought so.

I found it when looking for information on Juniper as a fuel wood. It is missing some data but I'll keep an eye on the data to see if they update it at some point.

 

[Hasufel]

Interesting chart--thanks for posting! Some of the numbers looked a little odd, however, so I wanted to flag them to see what others thought.

For grins I decided to paste the dry weight and heat value numbers into Excel to see how well the two correlate. Other posters here have claimed that the heat value is strictly a function of the dry weight, but I thought that conifers may have more heat energy because of the resins they contain. The basic data show almost a straight line correlation, with some outliers (here's a chart with conifers in red, broadleaf trees in blue, and outliers labeled):

The trend line for conifers is slightly higher than for broadleaf trees, but I realized that the outliers (especially pinyon) could be responsible for most of that difference. So I replotted the data after removing all of the obvious outliers and found an almost perfect overlap between the two types of trees:

This raises the question of whether there was just an error in some of the data or if there really is something different about those wood species. I'm curious what others here think. Also, is there anyone here from USU who could double-check the posted figures to make sure they're correct?

 

[Firefighter938]

Interesting chart--thanks for posting! Some of the numbers looked a little odd, however, so I wanted to flag them to see what others thought.

For grins I decided to paste the dry weight and heat value numbers into Excel to see how well the two correlate. Other posters here have claimed that the heat value is strictly a function of the dry weight, but I thought that conifers may have more heat energy because of the resins they contain. The basic data show almost a straight line correlation, with some outliers (here's a chart with conifers in red, broadleaf trees in blue, and outliers labeled):
View attachment 173588
The trend line for conifers is slightly higher than for broadleaf trees, but I realized that the outliers (especially pinyon) could be responsible for most of that difference. So I replotted the data after removing all of the obvious outliers and found an almost perfect overlap between the two types of trees:
View attachment 173589
This raises the question of whether there was just an error in some of the data or if there really is something different about those wood species. I'm curious what others here think. Also, is there anyone here from USU who could double-check the posted figures to make sure they're correct?

Cool, thanks.

 

[ponderosa77]

Interesting chart--thanks for posting! Some of the numbers looked a little odd, however, so I wanted to flag them to see what others thought.

For grins I decided to paste the dry weight and heat value numbers into Excel to see how well the two correlate. Other posters here have claimed that the heat value is strictly a function of the dry weight, but I thought that conifers may have more heat energy because of the resins they contain. The basic data show almost a straight line correlation, with some outliers (here's a chart with conifers in red, broadleaf trees in blue, and outliers labeled):
View attachment 173588
The trend line for conifers is slightly higher than for broadleaf trees, but I realized that the outliers (especially pinyon) could be responsible for most of that difference. So I replotted the data after removing all of the obvious outliers and found an almost perfect overlap between the two types of trees:
View attachment 173589
This raises the question of whether there was just an error in some of the data or if there really is something different about those wood species. I'm curious what others here think. Also, is there anyone here from USU who could double-check the posted figures to make sure they're correct?

I have no affiliation with USU or the article but I did do a search on the USU web site and came up with this link:
https://forestry.usu.edu/htm/contactus

Looks like the author's contact information is listed. I'll bet an email to the author would answer any questions and it would be useful for us to know for sure.

 

[BringinHeat]

I don't understand how a lot of these charts have such different data when it comes to BTU's.

Here's one that I use:

(broken link removed)

Quite a few of the same species have a big difference in the amount of BTU's they show. I seem to remember 1 or 2 other charts I've seen that had differing BTU numbers.

Who's right?

 

[ponderosa77]

Who's right?

I've wondered the same thing. I'm just trying to figure out the best available wood to use for my area. I think my choices are: pine, aspen, cedar, juniper.