Bringin' up da Wood

[GAB]

Doc H:
If it's any consolation here, just a bit S of Burlington, VT, at 9:30 AM it was pouring rain and 40° F and the wind was less than a few hours ago.  Next week the long range forcast is for lows of 10° F.  As an FYI "long range forcast" also means subject to revision.
Note: The sawdust from the snow logs was going down.
GAB

[SwampDonkey]

I've still got about 8 cords left all dry. And 8 more green about 5 steps from the door. ;D

We haven't seen anything colder than 7F this winter. Their predictions for lows are off by as much as 10 degrees and some mornings, not very often, they are close. :D

[Al_Smith]

As I type I'm toting in the wood .It usually takes about 6 totes but it looks like 4 is going to get-er-done today .Lot  of difference between bone dry ash and good old white oak .Lot of difference in weight also .Dang oak is like lifting lead . Fot that matter a lot of difference of being 40 and 75 .Takes more rest periods these days .

[SwampDonkey]

Not much difference when dry like I go with firewood. 42 lbs for ash and 45 for white oak. Sugar maple is most common good firewood up here, it runs 44 lbs. These are @ 12% MC by the cu foot. We burn some hophornbeam, which is about 50 lbs. I burn mostly aspen and fir, it's 26 lbs dried. :D I don't mind cutting more because it's got to be thinned anyway. So might as well burn as rot. ;D

[doc henderson]

got my two new totes out.  an extra for the house and one for the shop.  I reinforced the bottoms with some 7/16th inch osb so the wood dropped on the bottom does not break the molded plastic bottom.



 

 

[Al_Smith]

I've got a canvas type fire wood toter .Best $17 I ever spent .About that light weight wood I've burned up all my tender dry cottonwood .It caught fire almost instantly and put out as much heat as oak but it only lasted half as long .Once again proving it's more about dry weight than cubic feet .About the sugar maple which I have a lot of .Seldom does it die off and I seldom cut a live tree for firewood .It does fine I just don't have a lot of it but the trees I do which are going to stand proud and tall as far as I'm concerned .That standing dead or down work just fine for me .

[barbender]

 Doc, that cold truly is dangerous, and even more so in areas that aren't accustomed to it. Up here if you're not prepared for a winter of below zero temperatures on the regular, you won't survive. But when it gets that cold in more Southern areas people aren't used to or ready for it.

Magic- I'd like to say I feel bad for this cold blast hitting you, but if I'm being honest I think it serves you right after making fun of us frozen northern folk. "Oh look I got my 3 wheelbarrows of wood in, I'm good for the winter" you better get a few more now buddy!😁😁

[SwampDonkey]

it's more about dry weight than cubic feet .

Yep, for sure. Also a lot to do with house construction to. I don't have to burn wood all day. I've got windows here that put out a lot of heat from sun rays. ;D I never burn wood all night. My uncle in his old drafty farm house, never let the fire out. And that's rock maple and beech wood, much like your oak. I'd melt like a stick of butter if I did that. :D Green white oak is 15 lb heavier than green maple, there's a lot of drying time in comparison to. Some say at least 2 years on oak.  Maple and aspen 12-16% between cutting in the fall and burning the next. :D And ash carries a lot less water than maple when green. When it dries I can hardly tell the difference in heft from when it was green. ;D Most of my hardwood is ash and maple, probably twice as much ash.   It seems just as tolerant to shade as maple because it will poke it's way up through fir and spruce canopy where you will not see the sun shine. Again I'll leave a good ash to stand any day. Will the borer eventually get them, possibly. Maybe not to. They said you'd loose your fir in the budworm wave. That proved to be false. They attack mostly old stuff and stuff that lived a suppressed life. Most of the northern fire stuff is old fir ready to fall down anyway. The only disturbance up there is bugs, fire and old age. Go look at an old fir stand burning if you still want to claim old growth is more immune to fires. Millions of acres of the stuff burned last summer. :D Of course if you word old growth just right, it excludes the fire vulnerable species. How convenient. :D

My aspen is specific to old field and past cutting. There's 30 acres of fir ground that might have 15 aspen trees. There's spots were I cut 8 cord to the acre of aspen and still have trees 8 feet apart left. The more shade tolerant trees grow slower, so aspen can get above the canopy quick. That's more wood than DNR's aerial survey says is there per acre. They do that guestimating off photos. The only cruising that bunch does is in permanent sample plots. They used to have a plot across the road from my woodlot, but that was cut some years ago. They can't stop anyone from cutting the wood in those plots.

[Al_Smith]

My fire seldom goes out .Ash by it's nature is a dry wood .Oak holds moisture .Cottonwood is 51 percent water but dries out fast when split .Maple if it's not cut and split will rot in the log .
I for one will not freeze in my own house ,I keep it warm .If I liked cold weather I'd move to Alaska .BTW as I type the temp is a big fat 0 at 7:40 AM .Thanks a lot lake Erie .

[SwampDonkey]

Nor I. Never seen ice form at 80+ degrees yet, either with wood or sun. ;)

Neighbor here leaves maple long length and cuts as needed. Several cord in a big pile by his barn. Not the way I'd have it, not so much rot, but it won't dry good. I've seen winter cut long length maple left in a grassy field that will support green leaves all summer long. So it sure ain't drying or rotting. I bet after two years it would be pretty punky and moldy.



That being said, have seen lots of maple firewood split and piled uncovered for a year that was never rotten. The ends are black stained, but never rotten. No fan of doing that so much either, more about the wood bugs in the house. : Get'r cut and where you need it to be from the get go. ;)

[Magicman]

 :D

"Oh look I got my 3 wheelbarrows of wood in, I'm good for the winter" you better get a few more now buddy!

You just go right ahead and make fun, but I intend to stay warm no matter what you Glaciated Guys shove toward me....I'm Grits Tough.  Anyway, I can refill that wheelbarrow if'en I need to, so there.   :D

[doc henderson]

You guys get sassy when you are cold.  We are up to -4° degrees from -10° overnight.  cable TV still not working right.  We did not go this year as we are down to finishing one eagle scout, but this was trappers Rondes've so scouts were camping this weekend.  low temp record for Kansas.

[hedgerow]

Last Thursday was our sort of our last nice day here. I finished unloading a wood trailer about a cord into my Garn barn and put that trailer in another shed and put another full one in front of the Garn barn that is inside another shed. We received  about a foot of snow Friday and Saturday and lots of wind. It was twenty below zero this AM and the radio said we had forty below wind chill. Went out to load the Garn and I didn't think the wind was too bad but it was cold. Its January in Nebraska and sometimes its like this. Looks like by Wed it may be twenty degrees. In the mean time I keep feeding hedge into the Garn three times a day and keep the skid loader plugged in. May head to town Monday to get some supplies. Haven't been off the farm since Thursday. Everyone stay safe.

[stavebuyer]

I suppose climate has a profound effect on whether Hard Maple rots in the log. Frozen logs won't rot. In more temperate areas like KY, Hard Maple will absolutely rot in single season if left unsplit.

BTUs may all be equal but that doesn't mean burning qualities are equal. Burn Hickory for a day and see what you have left in the morning when you clean out the stove. Ash will be just that; an equal amount of hickory will leave you with an abundant bed of glowing coals. Knotty gnarly chunks will burn slower than straight grained of the same size and species.

[SwampDonkey]

Pound per pound at the same moisture content yields the same heat. It's been proven scientifically. Varying moisture is more significant than anything.  A bed of coals will matter if your using a stove versus a force air furnace to. You could have a bed of coals 2" deep of maple or oak and the fan won't trip on the furnace. You have heat around the stove, but not the living spaces in the floors above except what ever floats by convection which is a fraction. This is why in loss of power we have 'gravity heat' with a lower  fire going than normal, the house won't freeze but it won't get 85F degrees either.  The side panel on the furnace needs removed to get air to cool. These days with generators, that is a mute point. But if the generator won't start, that's what your up against. :D And Hickory and hophornbeam has a lot more BTU's, they're 5 or 6 lbs heavier than hard maple and w. oak @12%. I have all kinds of hard maple coals in the morning when I burn that. But stove type makes a lot of different whether you benefit from it much. I can actually turn the fan on continuous to take advantage of that coal heat. Trouble is you'll be mighty hot in doing that since it don't care what the thermostat is saying to the furnace in that mode. I do that sometimes with aspen fire, because I'm heating the grow tent a little. Even that will get rather roasty with two slabs of aspen on the fire. :D A furnace has a bigger firebox compared to a stove working from convection and radiant heat. Mine is a mid sized furnace because I didn't want to have it so hot in here you have to open the doors. I already do the open window thing on a daily basis. Most days between 10 am and 5 pm I don't even use a fire. Not needed, might as well throw wood out on the rock pile as waste it when not needed and be hot as hades. Rarely do I keep a fire all night unless I know the temps will get into the single digits or colder. Usually no fire here after 9:00 pm until 4:00 am.

Remember we need heat up here 9 months a year. Mighty cold sitting in 50 degrees in early June or late September in your rocker. Around the 20th of June and 20th September you can get buy without heat. We can have some cool days in July in the 60's after a cold front moves in, a little heat feels nice on old arthritic bones. :D Up this way, if you don't have a furnace, you have 2 stoves if your heating 3000 + sq feet. A split level house or modulars, not no much. But often there is baseboard someplace, some have propane (very expensive). And cold floors means cold house. :D

[stavebuyer]

BTU whatever. You can't fit a ton of dry poplar in your Tacoma but denser species you can. You might heat the same theoretical volume of water one degree but who cares. Real world application denser species are more efficient as the tons of dry matter means less filling of the stove and different species have differing burning characteristics. All BTUs are not the same. I can crank up my torpedo heater and put out 210,000 btu in an hour and the shop will be 90 and below freezing by morning or I can fill the woodstove with hickory at a low draft and putting out 30,000 btu/hour for 7 hours and the shop remain comfortable. Identical BTU input.  Shop was either too hot or too cold with the fast-burning kerosene torpedo heater. 210=210 except in real life where it's not even close. I'll keep my Hickory.

[cutterboy]

Bringing up another load of wood for the kitchen cook stove. Going to fill the wood box in the garage. This has to be done about once a week.



 

 

 

 

[Magicman]

I broke down and brought up another wheelbarrow of wood yesterday.   

[SwampDonkey]

Yes, denser wood has more BTU, less volume. I've never claimed any different. But I know how different wood heating appliances works to, wood species be damned. I sure don't need a fire all day or night with aspen and fir, that goes for maple or hophornbeam as well, morning coals be darned when they don't turn a furnace fan. Better sit in front of the furnace door to feel it if the fan ain't on. Hickory and hornbeam is more BTU per cord than most firewoods.  The thing with firewood versus oil, you still have the radiant heat, the fire is still there. The oil burner is off, nothing to radiate heat. Night and day between heating with wood and that with oil. Oil is off and on, dead stop. You can't turn burning wood off and on. I've got lots of aspen and fir to thin out and thus to burn. Never heard tell of 85F degrees being cold. Burning it is better than letting the wood rot, that would just be foolishness. Nothing will change my attitude on that. Some places list ash as better firewood than sugar maple, up there with oak. Up here, ash firewood is considered the lesser species compared to sugar maple, yellow birch and beech. No one will buy the stuff at all. Beech actually isn't that far below hickory for btu's.

[Al_Smith]

I'll keep my Hickory.

It's good stuff .I'm down to maybe a half a cord and it's not all dry . Not much talked about because it doesn't grow every where .Pops and snaps but it puts out the heat .I had intentions of getting more but the daily tasks of life got in my way this year ..I'm a wuss in weather like this ,too danged cold to freeze my behind off going to the woods .2 below with gusts today .

[SwampDonkey]

14F here today. Won't burn much wood, by 10:00 am again the fire will be left to burn out, start up at 5:00 pm or so, good for the night. If it were going to go down real cold, I would shove some wood in around 1:00 am.  80F+ is just fine, I'd actually prefer 75F, but no on off switch to wood fire. Don't worry I'll never freeze at 80F. :D

[Al_Smith]

I had mentioned previously of a standing dead shagbark I didn't have time to drop this fall  .Well it just so happened evidenly a day or so ago the wind did it for me ..Mrs Smith had heard a mighty thump while I was snoring away in my chair and there it was,90-100 feet of it 30 inches on the butt end .Plus right in line with my splitter .Easy enough ,cut it into 12 feet logs and drag it out with the tractor . Now if it would just warm up about 20-25 degrees I'll get right on it . A hickory  is another  one that's not rot resistant .This one has been dead so long the wood will be bone dry .

[SwampDonkey]

Two years ago, a 24 inch sugar maple broke off that was sitting along the road to the woodlot. Wouldn't be more than 80 foot. Once I seen it on the ground I saw that the back side of it had some dead wood on the trunk. Probably rubbed years ago yarding wood out by it. Can't rule out beavers either, they dam that brook near there. On the edge of neighbor's land. Which one could easily make the case that it was on the crown reserve. But by the time I saw it on the ground it had been manufactured into fire wood, leaving the rotten section behind. I'd say it had been maybe 2 days since I drove past there.  There's actually a few 20" or more sized trees right around there, it's near a brook, so was never cut much.

[Magicman]

 

 
Yuppers, I gots Snow on da deck, 22° and dropping, and plenty of firewood brought up.  Here, hold my Purple Drank 'cause I gots this.   


 
Even built ah Snowman.....

[Old Greenhorn]

Jeepers Lyn, Looking t your snow man I will never again be able to say you didn't do the least you could do. That's a monumental effort right there. :D :D