So, heating season is here, how many people started to panic (like me in September) not having enough wood and who is ready for a deep freeze? Myself, I have three triaxle loads cut and split but a few months ago I couldn't get wood and started to panic.
I didn't have any firewood cut until Sept.. I had been busy cutting firewood for my dad ,he's 91 and still burning wood. If it ever stops raining and dries up I will get back into the woods . We had another 3" of rain since Sunday bringing us to about 70" so far this year . Our average around here is 39" .
I hear ya, the rain made the ground too soft and loggers couldn't run their equipment, I thought I wasn't going to get anything. Got to count your blessings.
This year will be a little early to be burning that green wood cut/split in September.
But imagine you know that.
It will be good for next season unless it is oak. ;)
Everyone was scearming for wood in November.... the big guys were out of wood and everyone waited to the last minute. I moved over 20 cords of recovered storm damaged wood,still cleaning up from 2008 ice storm.... 4" minus is too far gone but 4" plus is beautiful (DRY) ready for the stove or furnace.... Here the But !!!
I only have 2 cord in the cellar for my own burning and need a total of 5..... I have the wood, 3 year old pile of 4 footers just have to make it stove length and get it in. Hadn't bothered with it because I bought the processor!! Now I need to go old school and get to it !!
I was panicking but was able to scrounge up enough from the woods to get me from mid Oct. till now. It's been nice not having to dip into the primo stuff during shoulder season. Not sure I'll make it all the way through the winter. Might have to pay a premium in March for a cord or two of kiln dried to finish the year.
The good news is next years stack is getting big along with some oak to be used two years from now.
:D I had enough cut three years ago to get through this winter .There's some where around 20 plus cords all stacked nice and neat on palletts covered with tarps .I burn about 4-5 a year .
Kind of funny .My little bud the tree trimmer must have 50 -60 cords ,only 10-12 split ,out in the rain . He came out yesterday and got a truck load of my dry because he didn't have any . :D 8)
I walk our farm ,91 acres,looking for dead standing black locust and red elm to cut down . The ground just needs to dry or freeze a little . The deer hunters sure made a mess out of the trails with their 4 wheeler last week .They shot 5 more . That makes 13 for the season . One guy said he saw a herd of 15 . I thought we had thinned them out a little .
Hey Tom
What kind of stove do you have, I am pretty close to you. I have a Central Boiler E-Classic was wondering if we delt with the same guy? It all worked out for us so far, first year
My firewood comes in all split and cut to length as soon as the ground is firmed up enough in the spring. The only worry is to pay for it. :D :D
Think I have enough for the OWB for this year, going to be bit easier for next years stash as the power company came and cut the right a way along my property and cut and piled maybe 3-4 cord of oak and maple. Just need to get before the woodboogers show up.
I process it as I need it :) Orders have slowed up now and I've still got 50 pulp cord of seasoned on the landing. It's the time of year that I'll begin mixing it half and half with green if the client doesn't mind. Most don't and they avoid the premium $$ for straight seasoned. I've also got a good bit of ash on the stump to cut this winter.
Well one thing about ash is you can cut it one day and burn it the next .Those dead EAB ash burn pretty well I'm here to say .It's whats in the stove now as I type .
Quote from: Al_Smith on December 08, 2011, 08:45:28 AM
Well one thing about ash is you can cut it one day and burn it the next .Those dead EAB ash burn pretty well I'm here to say .It's whats in the stove now as I type .
Ash..Does it have creosote? I have a full triaxle load of the stuff and was planning on burning that for the winter and leave the other two loads for next year since it drys pretty quick.
All wood will have a certain amount of creosote .It's all in how you burn it if it causes you any problems .
Everybody wants to analize it but here's the hot info .You burn the stuff until you have a nice layer of charcoal about 3-4 inchs thick .Then maybe every two hours toss in just a chunk or two over the coal bed .If you don't try and jamb a wheel barrow full at a time in ,it will do just fine .
You want to bank the fire for the night start about an hour before you close it down.Few chunks ,burn ,few more ,burn .Then cut the damper and air .In the morning open it up and toss in some small chunks and let it rip for ten minutes ,then close it back down a tad .
With a temperature controlled damper like on a furnace with limit controlls you don't have to fart around with dampers. I never do anyway, I use seasoned wood to. There may not be as much water in green white ash as in maple, but it's sure ain't no 15%. And logs and standing dead stubs don't dry like cut up firewood. They are wet fungus factories.
Well it depends on where it's at .These dead ash are bone dry .
I'll tell ye when you have to lay the file to the chain about every tank full that's dry .
I've never seen a dry stub unless it was a white cedar that stood a lifetime. I've seen dead ash, but they were too small for even firewood most of the time and usually by the time I came upon them on the woodlot, a little jarring would cause the top to snap off and land near your feet. ::) We had 450 acres of woods with the farm and dad never cut dead stuff for firewood, there was enough live junk to cut to help the growth of the better stuff. By doing just that alone, we never made a dent as far as covering or working all the ground. Not even close. The woods was for heating and supplementing income. But it wasn't that much of a supplement and never on a regular annual schedule. Just when the mood hit. :D Could go 10 years and never cut a maple saw log. In fact I think it was more like 20 for sawlogs. Dad cut some hardwood (maple/ash lots 25+ inches) in the 70's then in 90's he sold stumpage and on his maple log lot he got more than twice the stumpage. He really wasn't interested in cutting it that was why it was a higher price. But someone came with the cash. ;) That same logger cut in our community for 3 or 4 years on 100's of acres. Never been much cut since the mid 90's.
Yeah but have you ever seen an ash that got killed by EAB ? We're not talking 4 inch saplings here .These are old giants ,3 feet plus diameter 100 feet tall with often over 1000 Bd Ft of saw log .
Fact as I look out the window right next to where I'm typing this post stands a 110 footer with 65 feet to the first limb that I know will tally out at close to 1500 Bd ft .That one will shake the ground when it gets flopped .
I've not been up close and personal with an EAB killed ash, but have seen from a distance. Michigan and Saulte St Marie, Ontario have it.
A decades old fire killed white pine 150 tall makes some noise to when it falls in a new forest of spruce and fir. Makes a noise kinda like splitting cedar kindling. :D
plenty for a few winters here... i have been cutting agressively this year too . i have been pickin everything up the last 3 years that i could find
The point I was trying to make on this killed ash is the fact they died on the vine in most cases fully leafed out .That fact alone will suck the moisture out of them .
You get one standing dead about two years it's almost like the whole thing has been kiln dried .Now were that an oak it will still hold a lot of moisture but ash is totally different .It's kind of in a class all my itself .
Then too and not go off on a tangent about EAB ,simpley information ,it blows the bark off them .I have pictures of a mountain of just bark alone from about 6-8 trees the size of a single car garage on my burn pile from last summer . A debarked tree by only that fact alone will dry hard as a bone .Ha that pile of bark burned for three days .
I have standing dead beech trees that are bone dry. I'm talking mature size. I just cut split and put in the pile. This is near Algonquin Park. The bark is off them too for the most part but not sure why. Anything that has been laying on the ground for a while always seems more wet than green standing.
Quote from: Al_Smith on December 09, 2011, 07:11:25 AM
The point I was trying to make on this killed ash is the fact they died on the vine in most cases fully leafed out .That fact alone will suck the moisture out of them .
Ah, I don't think so. The roots would die last and so still feed displaced water being transpired by the leaves. If you cut the tree and the water fed the leaves some before wilt, then yes some drying, but still not a lot of drying. There is still lots of water left. Plus even if the free water was sucked out of the wood cells, it would still be close to 35% at the very least and that's assuming everything is perfect. This is the close to the threshold MC for bound water in wood cells of NA hardwoods. The FSP of 30% is the theoretical value used in the textbooks. So basically you don't really notice a big drop in weight like you would with oak because the water weight isn't there when green.
Here's the average MC of sapwood and heartwood (green)
Ash, white - 46, 44
Birch, yellow - 74, 72
Oak, northern red - 80, 69
Beech, American - 55, 72
Elm, rock- 44, 57
Glenn I know a beech stand near here that was so diseased and mostly dead, barely alive, and wouldn't even make good firewood. All punky with rotten pockets. Maybe it's a climate thing, I don't know. But, the dead stuff around here ain't dry. I mean I see flat head borers in some stuff and that means it's still wet. I wanted to use some dead maple one time for a camp fire in the winter. I started hacking off pieces and I found borer grubs into it. It didn't burn too good except the branch tips.
I didn't know anything about moisture content of wood until I got on the Forum and started using my OWB, but my personal observations, and the posts of others here on the "standing dead timber" thread, make me agree with SwampDonkey (much as I hate to admit it.)
I had a standing dead oak - big tree, 3 feet diameter - back in my woods near my neighbors power lines. The electric utility wanted to trim a few high twigs off the cherry and maple on the driveway because it was easily accessible, but they didn't want to bury into the woods to tackle this big guy. This fall, the winds blew the dead oak over, and felled it in a favorable direction for harvest. I have noticed this tree for at least three years, because my neighbors were worried and mentioned it to me. Fortunately, their power and phone lines were spared.
I cutup and split that tree over the past few weekends. Has some rot and some fungus, but also has a lot of good solid firewood. Moisture content on the surface of a split log....29%. Looking at it you would think a single match would have ignited that tree, but, until you cut and split, it holds moisture. Maybe oak is the worst possible example for this, and other species may season better while standing, but this wood won't be ready until next winter at the earliest.
Well there ya go .Oak is a whole 'nother ball game too .
I had cut into down cull logs left over from a cut made in 1937 in about 1980 .The sap wood was rotten but the heart wood had water running out of it ,no rot ,no fungus amounst us nothing .
Split and dried it burned just as good as any other oak albiet it made a mell of a hess packing it into the stove .
Usually on a long standing dead oak it's the roots that give way ,then if falls .Usually if you cut up 3-4 foot from the roots you get into pretty good wood .They'll stand a long time most times before they fall .
Quote from: SwampDonkey on December 09, 2011, 07:40:47 AM
Quote from: Al_Smith on December 09, 2011, 07:11:25 AM
The point I was trying to make on this killed ash is the fact they died on the vine in most cases fully leafed out .That fact alone will suck the moisture out of them .
Ah, I don't think so. The roots would die last and so still feed displaced water being transpired by the leaves. ...
Maybe not, if the EAB got it. They kill the tree by basically girdling it underneath the outer bark. Wouldn't that cut off the flow of water up from the roots?
Yes but you have a hard time explaining that to a donkey . ;)
Nope, water flows up live sap wood and some heartwood, the xylem tissue. Deeper than them bugs are. The bugs are interrupting the flow of food coming from the leaves where sugars are made. Bugs like sugars and starch, that is where the energy is, not water. Water up the inner layers and food down the outer tissues closer to the bark and distributed with rays and pores to keep sapwood alive and to be stored in special cells.
Hard to explain to a chainsaw carver. ;)
Let me reiterate ,you've never seen an EAB killed ash . :D
Now I will admit like the big oak I tripped a week or two ago .Standing dead 5 years ,moisture but it was an oak not an ash .Solid BTW and 950 BD ft of probably F and S with a cord and half out of the top above the good saw logs .
We must have different trees than you folks in the frozen north country or something . ??? They're larger that's for sure .--Good corn,big trees ,big women .Gotta love it . :D
I cut some dead Black Locust today .I used my moisture meter on it and it read 14 percent .
There ya go .Locust is another one that dry hard as a bone .Good firewood .Makes a good fence post too but nobody uses them any more .