wood burning question

haypoint · #21 01/29/11, 08:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by highlands

If it was left as logs for three years it could be still fairly wet. The poplar simply isn't good burning wood.

Highland is correct, unsplit wood only dries a little, mostly on the ends. It is important to split wood so you can get the most heat possible from each piece. To do otherwise is a waste of wood.

I have burned many varieties of wood. None burns well when the inside is wet.
Poplar is a very light wood, when dry. Oak, even when dry is somewhat heavy. Pound for pound, Poplar has about as much heat as oak, but the catch is "pound for pound". It may take a whole arm load of dry poplar to weigh what a single piece of dry oak weighs. I would feel cheated if I bought firewood for heating my home and there was poplar in the load. However, I have effectivly heated a large home for extended periods of sub-zero weather burning only poplar. It burns up fast.

ChristieAcres · #22 01/29/11, 09:03 PM

Funny, Texican, you mentioned it being such hard work. My Len cut down (12) trees in five days, which still left numerous trees, he was pretty tuckered out. He knows how to grade for lumber, so used his log boom w/8,000# wench, to haul those logs to our lumber grade pile. He limbed all of those trees, hauled all the limbs to a big pile, then cut the rest of the logs into rounds. There is a large pile of rounds ready to split. When he is ready to do that, he will pull our log splitter over to the pile, split it all right there, then load the truck with split firewood, and move it to our wood shed. Last estimate was 7 cords. A few of the trees were a full cord (100 feet tall, big ones), others half or a bit less. Since there was one good sized dead snag, I have a little pile of wood in my office drying. That is for my little wood stove, that I have in here. We also have a wood stove in Len's shop, and also one in our living room (the one Len built).

I made Len take a day off! He would have gone back to logging today, but it rained. We heat with a wood stove, so never burn green wood. Also, we split the wood while it is green. Most of our firewood is Maple, Douglas Fir, or Alder. We also have other hardwoods and still burn Cedar, too.