What WON'T you burn?

[branchburner]

I'm putting stuff in this stove I never would have dreamed of burning in years past: lumber scrap, cut-up pallets, small branch wood, even (gasp!) pine. And all with good success. I watch my temps and air settings very closely, of course, to be sure I'm not overfiring and I am getting successful secondary burning.

Only after reading the forum this summer did I realize a few things: 1) you can burn just about any wood as long as 2) the wood is pure wood, paint/chemical free, and is seasoned/dry and 3) I was going to be really short on truly dry cordwood if I wanted to heat my house with my Harman this winter. The trees I dropped in August had to wait, and I wasn't going to buy wood with 10 acres of it out back.

To save my seasoned maple for the real cold I needed to scrounge some stuff for fall and spring, so I've been having fun experimenting. If the kitchen sink was made of wood, I would have found a free one on craigslist and burnt it by now. A few hours ago, a threw a big basket of dry pine cones on a good coal bed, got it lit and closed the bypass. Stove top temp stayed right at 500 for a good half hour plus. Checked outside, not a trace of smoke. What next? A basket of two-year old black walnuts.

What's in your stove?

 

[BJ64]

I recommend NOT burning anything with or that had Poison Ivy on it.

I understand the smoke from that stuff can cause problems.

 

[LLigetfa]

Pressure treated wood - not sure what burning Creosote, Pentachlorophenol, or Chromated Copper Arsenate does.
Wood with nails in it - I put my ashes on the compost pile and don't need nails in my tiller or tractor tiires.
Paper - it leaves large black specs on the snow.

 

[skinnykid]

Funny how you said "gasp pine" I made a thread about how I dropped a standing dead pine on my property and have 3 more like it. I said to myself, hey the guys out west burn butt loads of it so why can't I.
free wood is good wood.

What is in my stove? typical southern NH stuff. Oak White and black birch, a little bit of maple, and some wood that I cannot figure out for the life of me what it is, Closest thing that I can match it to is Pumpkin Ash, oh ya and some (insert scary music here)......Pine.

I am also getting a load of Hemlock soon.........

 

[jpl1nh]

I agree, no nails. They get caught in my ash grate. tjen I can't pull the ash tray out to empty it. :bug: and I don't want them lying around where I scatter my ash.

 

[begreen]

Limburger cheese. It will really mess up your life if it gets burnt on your stove.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

I've burned my arms a few times throwing splits in the stove. It doesn't put out enough BTUs to be worth it.

Matt

 

[skinnykid]

I noticed that since the cold has gotten here, my trash output has gone down alot!

Now all paper plates, paper cups, frozen food boxes and anything paper goes into the stove rather than in the trash.

Egg containers are good fire starters!

My girlfriend thinks I am weird because when she throws things in the trash I am like " hey dude, that has some BTU's in it!!"

Yes I call my girlfriend Dude, as well as most people I talk to! Some people think it is funny.

 

[branchburner]

I noticed that since the cold has gotten here, my trash output has gone down alot!

Now all paper plates, paper cups, frozen food boxes and anything paper goes into the stove rather than in the trash.

Egg containers are good fire starters!

My girlfriend thinks I am weird because when she throws things in the trash I am like " hey dude, that has some BTU's in it!!"

Yes I call my girlfriend Dude, as well as most people I talk to! Some people think it is funny.

I try to limit my paper to just plain newspaper/cardboard when starting fires - nothing waxed or glossy or colored. Maybe some others can chime in on why I don't burn that stuff - I know there's a reason.

My daughter and I call each other "dude", though she has lately taken to calling me "dork". I'd ask for a little respect, but I really can't argue with her on the factual aspect of her term of endearment.

 

[Beanscoot]

"What WON’T you burn?"

Hard plastic.

Tires.

Large quantities of glossy paper.

Years ago my dad used to burn all the household garbage in his woodstove. One time he missed an aerosol can in the trash and it went in too. I wasn't home (and luckily neither was my mother!), but he told me there was a terrific boom, but amazingly, the glass in the door was not broken.

I do throw in bones regularly, they burn up into a brittle white facsimile of themselves that can be crushed to dust with a little effort. They also produce less smoke than the barbecue, which is doing the same thing.

As for nails, I remove them from the ashes with a magnetic picker upper, as I do burn a lot of scrap lumber. I just converted to a stove with a grate so understand the nuisance of a nail jamming the ash drawer. Empty tuna cans go in for a few minutes to burn out the residue so that they don't attract animals or pets which might cut their tongues on the sharp edges trying to get the smelly remains out.

Small quantities of glossy paper are okay, but it tends to want to leave a lot of semi burnt black flakes. It has to be in for a long time before being consumed into white ash. It can really smother a fire in large amounts.

 

[donatello]

OIL SOAKED LOGS!
About 25 years ago, my dad had the great idea of soaking a few seasoned splits in motor oil from the family truckster (car). One bitterly cold autumn afternoon, dad threw a few of those in his big cast iron stove and went upstairs. After awhile he heard noises down the cellar. He said that stove was glowing and making all types of scary noises and looked like it was going to blow. I guess the neigbors called the fire dept.because they thought the house was on fire due to all the thick black smoke bellowing out of the chimney and engulfing the neighborhood. He sat across from the stove for hours until the stove "calmed down". Never again...

 

[cmonSTART]

Wow. That sort of gives new meaning to "smoke dragon."

 

[Hanko]

try some old tires, i hear they they work good, according to the OWB guys, neighbors love em too

 

[CowboyAndy]

My father in law will burn anything. ANYTHING. When we eat at his place, its always on paper plates. Doesn't matter if there is still food on the plate, nor does it matter what kind of food. It ALL goes in there. I won't leave my daughter there alone anymore. He will load up the stove with anything he can find, then close the air and damper down ALL THE WAY. Im afraid hes going to start burning the pressure treated scraps he has out in the garage.

I am just waiting for the day that he burns the place down.


In his outside firepit, he literally burns anything and everything. Plastic jugs, shingles, even freakin drywall. Right now there is the metal frame/springs to a mattress that he burnt.

the things that man is doing to our enviornment.

 

[Backwoods Savage]

I won't burn wet wood.

 

[d.n.f.]

Hey CowboyAndy.

He will burn all that crap but he won't burn pine?

Tis the wood of Satan donchaknow.

 

[karri0n]

My cats used to climb in the stove while I was trying to start the kindling. I figured the moisture content was a bit high considering they were only seasoned about 4-6 months at the time.

 

[CowboyAndy]

Hey CowboyAndy.

He will burn all that crap but he won't burn pine?

Tis the wood of Satan donchaknow.

Ya, go figure.

And to top it off, he is burning wet wood. And he lets it smolder.

He has only been burning a month or so, and you should see his chimney already!

 

[Jay777]

I agree, no nails. They get caught in my ash grate. tjen I can't pull the ash tray out to empty it. :bug: and I don't want them lying around where I scatter my ash.

Big magnet.

 

[mayhem]

I don't put alot of paper in there and other household trash, but maybe I'm all backwards on the subject. I'm not too fussy about the type of wood I put in there, but I try to be mindful of putting too much super-dry wood in at once, like pine lumber scraps.

For paper, does anyone have any experience with those paper log compressors? Worth investigating or just a waste of my time? We recycle about 10lb of paper a week at our house, mostly junk mail. I burn 24x7 so I usually don't need a startup but might toss in a bit to get a stubborn piece of wood to ignite...now I'm wondering if I'm throwing away a significant source of btu's. I bet the town compactor would let me raid the paper container too since we have to pay by the ton to have the recyclables hauled away.

 

[caber]

Scrap lumber I burn outside in a barrel during the winter for when I'm working or the kids are playing. In the wood stove, I'll burn seasoned wood, paper products, small amounts of cardboard and my forearm hair. That's about it.

 

[mountaineer79]

My father in law will burn anything. ANYTHING. When we eat at his place, its always on paper plates. Doesn't matter if there is still food on the plate, nor does it matter what kind of food. It ALL goes in there. I won't leave my daughter there alone anymore. He will load up the stove with anything he can find, then close the air and damper down ALL THE WAY. Im afraid hes going to start burning the pressure treated scraps he has out in the garage.

I am just waiting for the day that he burns the place down.


In his outside firepit, he literally burns anything and everything. Plastic jugs, shingles, even freakin drywall. Right now there is the metal frame/springs to a mattress that he burnt.

the things that man is doing to our enviornment.

That sounds just like my stepdad. He won't burn pine (unless it's pressure treated lumber), but he will saw up some laminate countertop and throw it in the stove. He had a bunch of old tiles torn out from my old bedroom stacked on the woodpile. Who knows what they were made out of (hopefully not asbestos????). My brother and I moved them to the landfill bound dumptruck and he forgot about them. All of this would be funny except for the fact that my parents & brother are breathing that stuff in, and I'm the guy that has to climb up the 10:12 pitched roof and sweep the damn chimney.

 

[skinnykid]

pressure treated is wicked bad to burn! causes cancer!

 

[CowboyAndy]

pressure treated is wicked bad to burn! causes cancer!

of course.


try and explain it to my father in law. the man burns asphault shingles that smolder for days the man scares me.

 

[ScottF]

People around me wont burn pine. I went to the local stump dump last year to drop off about 3 cords of pine logs. (I have more than enough hardwood to process so I dont bother with the pine) and when I was there I noticed a huge pile of pine logs (about 100 or so) that people had already dropped off .