Wet stuff

[mike_belben]

Show of hands here.. How many of you like green firewood?


I have gotten my 3rd REQUEST for green wood.  Now in massachusetts if you were selling green wood for the current burning season you were a crook.  Here in middle TN, if your tearing through too much wood, its too dry. (Im saying thats the customer  mentality. Oh and beware the hickory as it can melt your stove is another.  I admit it does turn a flu red better than any other ive seen.)

This gentleman is heating a big uninsulated shop in a huge homemade air compressor stove which is common here.  He has plenty of firewood up but its all seasoned.  I am sending over a few ricks of green to slow down his consumption.  And no, he isnt a idiot and im sure he is aware the lack of insulation is the cause for the rapid heat loss, but at 63 and soon to close shop, hes saying its cheaper to throw in green wood and catch the coals every morning than it is to insulate or come out to load the stove with dry wood late at night.  If his last load is at 5pm, the stove is cold next morning.  Basically green wood is a tool to lower the peak temp and extend the length of burn time.  It works well in the shoulder season, efficient or not. 

Again, ive heard this atleast 3x. I want green firewood for this season.

[rjwoelk]

Green wood works only if you got lots of air flow, like wide open fireplace. My supplier cuts and splits wood for a company that rebags it. They claim between 20 and 30 percent according to testing at a lab, is were you get the best heat and burn.
Like you said Mike too dry no heat and gone.

[barbender]

Some people up here will complain if their wood is too dry. The preference seems to be "medium dry". I've been considering a FW kiln, but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of folks consideredit too dry. I'd probably have to leave it sitting out in the rain for a few weeks after it came out of the kiln🙄

[Corley5]

Popular mix here is half bug killed ash and half green sugar maple/beech. 

[mike_belben]

I havent run the kiln since last year.. It was built back when i felt selling green wood was a crime and i didnt have anything else going into winter.  So i was trying to cut dry and sell all at once which was a fools errand, my specialty. Cut tree, 2 days in the kiln and into the stove was acceptable.

  I will say, the photos of kiln crated wood made the phone ring.  It turned out i could sell every stick, green or not so there wasnt much further need but it was a great advertisement.  Now i know who wants what and that sorting is the name of the game.  

[Busysawyer]

The boiler I have is designed to burn unsplit logs. The boiler is new to me so I've spen the last few weeks experimenting with different fuels.  So far split and seasoned hardwood firewood is looking like about half the burn time I'm getting with green logs. When I burn nice dry seasoned firewood I get about a ten foot tall blowtorch flame shooting out the chimeny. 

 

[maple flats]

I'm not sure on that picture if that is what's happening or not. It certainly is a short stack and possible the flame is traveling the entire distance, but it brings to mind my evaporator. That used to have a ball of flame out the stack, even though the stack was 18' tall, but it was not a flame going that far. It was a fire running out of oxygen in the evaporator and then igniting the hot wood gas when it got to new oxygen. I solved that by adding high pressure over the fire, thru nozzles aimed down into the fire. Now I burn less wood and get no flame out the stack all while boiling about 20% faster (more gal/hr evaporation) For this to work it must be high pressure air, not high volume, the blower needs to have paddles rather than a squirrel cage.
Is it possible your flame is just igniting at the top of the stack? Looking close you can usually figure that out. Get up so your eye level is a foot or so above the stack  (and back far enough to be safe) and look very closely where the flame starts. If it is a flame all of the way into the stack it is likely coming all the way out, if there is a slight space with no flame, it is re-igniting in the air. To see this more easily light a kitchen match and look closely at the flame, it does not start at the tip of the match but rather a short distance above it.

[Busysawyer]

Mapleflats, it does both at times but only when I burn "good" wood. Sometimes a solid flame,  sometimes just burning the gasses above.  Sometimes it will just flicker a flame off and on ten ft abive the stack. I also get crazy amounts of smoke when it reaches temp and the blower shuts off. I'm going to sell all of my seasoned split wood and just burn my milling waste and logs.

[hedgerow]

If my hedge or locust wood is too dry it will make my Garn surge the first 10 minutes or so when you first start it up. I usually mix a little green wood in the mix and it keeps the surging down. 

[Southside]

You need to set up a couple of hot dog forks on the top there - heat for the shop and lunch in one convenient package.   ;D

[mike_belben]

When youre poor you sell all the nicest stuff you can to make it through the day and what junk is left is yours.  Hence i am burning all the green trimmings and cutoffs and stuff to keep a shackish cabin that my dog and some plumbing lives in from freezing up.   Its a homemade little propane tank stove that works great for what it is but only fits small pieces.  

The biggest issue i have is when i run out of dry wood and dont catch enough coals.  Getting just green wood to light and throw heat is a big challenge, takes tons of kindling.  Sometimes the stove is full of smoldering chunks and hardly flame from the coals.  No room for more kindling yet something has to dry this out to get it running again.  

Dawn bottle with 70% red diesel and 30% atf.  Its the perfect recipe for squirting in where nothing more will fit and getting her ripping again.  The atf retards the ignition of the HHO so that you can squirt it right into the fire and have a slow and steady flame rise rather than a gaseous flash.  Flame will not follow it outside the stove even if you spill.   I also toss in the paper cup full of pan drainings from frying oil.  Smells nice. 

[Pclem]

Some people up here will complain if their wood is too dry. The preference seems to be "medium dry". I've been considering a FW kiln, but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of folks consideredit too dry. I'd probably have to leave it sitting out in the rain for a few weeks after it came out of the kiln🙄

I've yet to have a complaint about wood that is too dry. Kiln dried is going to cater to your fireplace users, not furnace heaters trying to keep the heat costs down. If the customers are going to complain about that, I say move on to someone who appreciates dry wood. They can always find mediocre wood anywhere else. The fireplace wood is where you guys are going to be able to set YOUR cost. It's just not possible with furnace wood to get the margins unless you're big time volume.

[Pulphook]

Let's talk "burning" that green, unseasoned wood. And before you flame away, think about how those BTUs get out of the combustion.
Whether you're burning a boiler or wood stove, before ANY heat gets out the moisture has to be eliminated; no magic, just physics.
Any wood heater is the same--try to burn unseasoned wood ( maybe except ash ) there's no combustion or heat until the wet in the sticks is gone.
And, yes we sometime will mix green on top of live coals. So when you see ( your boilers OR wood stoves ) pouring heavy creosoted black smoke out the flue it's either a startup fire or inefficient burning using unseasoned or dead wood.
It's why many wood stove burners need roof ladders to clean their chimneys too often. And why some OWBs don't burn clean. Some.
JMNSHO

[mike_belben]

If you periodically run youre flue up to 800F or so youll never need to clean another chimney again, everything will burn off.  Just keep tabs on wall and framing temps.  


I have burned every kind of fuel you can think of.  Cold burns leave junk in the chimney regardless of what it is.

[doctorb]

I would not suggest attempting to burn green wood in a gasification stove.  When I do have wood that is not fully seasoned, I tend to place the greener pieces at the top of the firewood stack in the firebox, giving them plenty of heat and time to dry further before they are burned.  As the gasifiers depend upon the coal bed for combustion of the gas/smoke from the initial burn, wet wood simply makes that process much more difficult.  I am sure those that are commenting on this thread about their experience burning wet wood are doing so in non-gasification stoves.

[lxskllr]

Not a fan of green wood. I just use a regular stove, and green wood doesn't burn nice. Unfortunately, that's what I've had in years past. I try to get things going with decent wood, and use green to extend it once the fire's going. Given a choice, I'll take well seasoned every time.

[Busysawyer]

So far the most smoke ive seen out of my boiler comes from dried walnut edging and slabs.  Blows black smoke, my neighbors probably thought I was burning trash. Second worst is split seasoned hardwoods. White smoke but lots of it. Green logs hardly any smoke. When I had an indoor wood burner green wood was terrible,  lots of wood and little heat.

[KEC]

My strategy for getting long burn times, like at night, is to use my densest woods, pieces that are large is diameter. But I don't want it green, maybe just not real dry.

[Klunker]

Let's talk "burning" that green, unseasoned wood. And before you flame away, think about how those BTUs get out of the combustion.
Whether you're burning a boiler or wood stove, before ANY heat gets out the moisture has to be eliminated; no magic, just physics.
Any wood heater is the same--try to burn unseasoned wood ( maybe except ash ) there's no combustion or heat until the wet in the sticks is gone.
And, yes we sometime will mix green on top of live coals. So when you see ( your boilers OR wood stoves ) pouring heavy creosoted black smoke out the flue it's either a startup fire or inefficient burning using unseasoned or dead wood.
It's why many wood stove burners need roof ladders to clean their chimneys too often. And why some OWBs don't burn clean. Some.
JMNSHO

This is my way of thinking.
The guy with the flame shooting out of the top of his heater has a poorly designed heater.
Imagine all the BTU's he is wasting with that flame.
Ideally if you want to capture all the heat from the wood your burning and send as little as possible out the chimney.
I only burn dry very good hardwood, the vast majority is  Sugar Maple, Shagbark Hickory and the best available in my area Ironwood. If I drop a red maple for what ever reason I leave it in the woods to rot.
To me burning green wood is foolish, but I use a different type of wood burner than most so my situation is different.

[mike_belben]

To me burning seasoned wood is expensive, since i can sell it for top rate and burn the green junk myself.  

[Dave Shepard]

We all have different situations. I have a poorly insulated house, an old, inefficient oil burner, and need something like 250,000,000 btus of energy to keep the place warm. I don't have the money for oil. I do have a non-gasifier owb. I can burn almost any wood I can scrounge, ice covered fresh pine slabs are about zero net gain. They will burn, but only make enough heat to dry themselves out. I'm burning hazard tree removals dumped by my highway crew behind my boiler. Every Sunday I split a cord to get through the week. One can sit around and worry about the ideal way to burn wood. Meanwhile, I'll be warm, using what I've got, even if it isn't ideal. 

Ash, hard maple, some dead, some green. 





It all burns. 

[PA_Walnut]

Around here, hickory and locust are the ticket--burn long and hot, so coveted for heat.

[brianJ]

Interesting.  Science says the dryer the wood the more BTU's available.  But each set up works differently and eventually our guys discover their own good system.    

What about hardwood that is spalted?  How much heat does that have?   Like 95% of normal?   

 I got a pile of left over pulp wood logs the boss gave me.   Harvested in spring of 17 and mud filled.  These are red oak sugar maple ash & cherry.  Luckily most of the bark is peeling off.   The few Ive cut so far are spalted but not punky.    Does anyone have experience with that?    Does that wood have enough BTU's you would sell it?  

[thecfarm]

Dave,lucky you. I would like to have wood dropped at at my place.  I have to go out in the woods and get mine.
I won't mention the dead white pine,or the dead fir,or the dead cedar I burn. I just got to a hemlock that has been on the ground for years. Not much for limbs on it. White pine on the ground works for me too. One reason is these trees are in the way sometimes. These trees can be an easy 18 inches across. Not going to drive over them with a tractor. Ptobably burning the same type of wood as you are. I don't burn much hardwood,unless it's a tree that I don't like,or has blown over.
I like it when some people see my wood pile and tell me I can't burn that. :  I use to burn alot of wood that "cannot be burned" in a wood stove. Yes,it required me to fill it more and a bigger wood pile. But that is why I got the OWB. Smothers the fire out and I have a controlled burn now.

[Klunker]

We all have different situations. I have a poorly insulated house, an old, inefficient oil burner, and need something like 250,000,000 btus of energy to keep the place warm. I don't have the money for oil. I do have a non-gasifier owb. I can burn almost any wood I can scrounge, ice covered fresh pine slabs are about zero net gain. They will burn, but only make enough heat to dry themselves out. I'm burning hazard tree removals dumped by my highway crew behind my boiler. Every Sunday I split a cord to get through the week. One can sit around and worry about the ideal way to burn wood. Meanwhile, I'll be warm, using what I've got, even if it isn't ideal.

Ash, hard maple, some dead, some green.





It all burns.

WOW, a cord a week! I use about a cord in a little less than 2 months, but again I only burn dry quality hardwood in a very efficient heater and have a very well insulated air tight house.
At some point don't you think you should work at make you home more energy efficient? A little insulation here, some sealing of air leaks?
For $100 I can get an energy audit on my home. The guy helped find some small air leaks and improved my energy efficiency. I'll bet that for less than a grand you could make a significant improvement. I used free styrofoam chunks that came as packing to help insulate my work shop attic. If nothing else cut down on the amount of work you have to do just to stay warm.