Splitting firewood in August for this winter-or bite the bullet and buy?

[Al_Smith]

  Not me .I suppose there's at least three years stacked up maybe more .

[johncinquo]

I have gotten behind in my wood in years past, but that never happens any more.  Friends always need trees taken down.  Storms knock down a few every year. I have 2-3 years worth of wood done in advance without even trying. 
When I was behind, I only took dead and dry trees out of the woods.  Many are standing dead and are pretty dry already.  Dead trees on the ground have to dry off from the moisture of being on the ground, but being dead they are usually pretty dry down to the center.  With enough woods you never have to cut down live trees and wait for the wood to completely dry.  Its almost like someone intended for you to burn it, and has it stacked in a nice vertical pile, just waiting for you to cut it down.   :D

[biker250]

Hey guys, bringing back a thread from the dead, but my wife & I will be installing an indoor wood stove in the next few weeks, and I'm scrambling to find some dead wood on the ground that's still solid that I can burn this winter.  If I can't find enough and have to burn some green wood, how can I minimize the creosote buildup?  Thanks.

[jdonovan]

If I can't find enough and have to burn some green wood, how can I minimize the creosote buildup? 

buy someone else's already dry wood, or clean the chimney multiple times during the season.

green wood = creosote, and there is not much you really can do about that.

[Logging logginglogging]

I'm willing to put in the labor and I'll do exactly as suggested.  Last year, over the winter, while having a difficult time getting some wet wood to burn, I promised myself I wouldn't let this happen again!  :D :D

Well, here we are, and it's happening again.....This time I mean it though.  I figure I'll go through 3 cord in the winter (we still use heat so we're not fully heating with wood) so I need to split and stack a MINIMUM of 6 cord soon!  That way I'll have next winter's wood dry when the time comes.  I'll do as suggested and save the oak for that. 

I can't say it's an excuse, but I bought a new tractor and sold my old one, and the new one didn't have hydraulics on it.  I finally got around to adding a 4 spool valve which I will use for my splitter.  I haven't plumbed it in yet but have the parts on order, so once that is plumbed in, I will be able to use my splitter. 
I know I could be splitting by hand, and probably should be given my age and energy, but once you start using a splitter it's hard to go back to the maul. 

I do have a good area to stack single rows of firewood and also have a good source for free pallets.  I'll make a couple trips to stock up on pallets.

Pallets also burn hot...... get some of those an break them up and mix them in.

[Logging logginglogging]

I'm shooting myself in the foot here too.  I have a bit of wood to start splitting, and have only two cords or so of green stuff split so far.  Looks like I'll be sifting through the pile for dead trees and Ash I took down. 

I had to scavenge dead standing all last winter cause i was buildnig my house in the fall.... This year I got my wood in mid summer and cut / split and stacked in a very sunny location all summer.
I am excited to not have to scavenge every single day and night this winter. I also did enough wood for most of next year I beleive so i should have very very nice stuff starting next year. Once spring comes around ill be back at it. Its nice doing work i dont mind doing as oposed to building 24/7 cause of the stupid banks nd their time lines.

[Logging logginglogging]

Hey guys, bringing back a thread from the dead, but my wife & I will be installing an indoor wood stove in the next few weeks, and I'm scrambling to find some dead wood on the ground that's still solid that I can burn this winter.  If I can't find enough and have to burn some green wood, how can I minimize the creosote buildup?  Thanks.

Look for dead standing stuff if you can , Cherry that has been dead long enough for the bark to come off burns good. Its a lot dryer than stuff that has been laying on the ground. But you do what you have to do.....
I remember cutting stuff on the ground in winter months thinking it was still solid because it was frozen only to find out aftar i hauled it out of the woods on foot it would unthaw and be rotten once the heat got to it.

[John Mc]

Stuff that has actually been in contact with the ground is likely not very dry, and/or rotten.  Better to find standing dead, or stuff that has fallen but has been held up off the ground, if you can.

I'd stay away from Oak, unless it's already dry. It takes a long time to dry (it's worth gathering and keeping for next year). 

White Ash is at the other end of the spectrum:  it has one of the lowest moisture content when green of any commonly burned hardwood. In a pinch, that's what people around here look for to burn if they're forced to burn green wood.  Even white ash when green is not ideal, but it's better than some other options.

You still have time to get at least some drying done, and the more you get done, the better and cleaner it will burn, even if it's not to where you'd really like it.

Suggestions for getting as much drying as you can on what you've got: 

• Split it shorter and thinner than you normally would.  The smaller the piece, the quicker it dries
• stack in single rows, spaced well apart, with the cut ends facing into the sun & prevailing wind (if you have to choose facing into either sun or wind, I'd go with wind, if you have any breeze at all) You want to maximize the sunlight/heat to drive off the moisture, and the wind to carry away hat was driven off (if it's not carried away, it will slow the removal of moisture form the wood
• Do NOT cover the sides of the stack - you want the sun and wind to work on it. You don't want to seal in the moisture.  If you have time, cover the stack only when it's going to rain. One of the reasons old metal roofing or a sheet of scrap plywood are popular covers is that they do not drape down over the sides, so minimize the amount of moisture trapped around the wood
• Once your pile freezes up, you are not going to drive out much more moisture unless you get a good warm spell.  Yes, you'll lose some surface moisture, but he interior moisture will not move much within the wood

Burning tips:

• In general, you want a hot fire to avoid creosote formation.  Wet/green wood makes this much harder to achieve.
• When starting a fire from scratch, start up with good dry wood to get things going. You can mix in some greener stuff after its well established and the stove is heated up. In a wood stove, burning wood in "batches" is generally cleaner and more efficient than adding a stick, letting it burn a bit, then adding another... However, burning a batch of green wood can be tough.  If you dump in too much green at once, you'll cool the fire as all the moisture soaks up the BTUs (and vaporizing water takes a LOT of BTUs)
• Mix in some dry wood with your green wood.  Though most wood stoves caution against burning a charge of old 2x4's and other kiln dried lumber (for fear of overheating the stove ... a little bit of moisture is a good thing)  adding in some 2x4s or other scraps, or mixing in dried firewood with green can help keep a good hot fire going.  If you can't have ll your firewood be under 20% MC, having the mix in a charge of wood in the stove be there can help a lot.
• Split your greener wood thin. In addition to drying better, exposing more surface area helps it burn better.
• Don't choke your stove's air supply way down -- this results burn a slow smoldery fire. This will form creosote even with well-seasoned wood.  It's better to err on the side of a little too much air than not enough (this is true from an efficiency sake on any wood fire, but is especially important with green wood.
• Don't pack your firebox full when burning green wood.  In general, burning wood requires more combustion space than burning fossil fuels.  You have to allow room for the moisture to expand. Green wood needs more "room" than well seasoned wood (This is why a well-designed wood chip boiler's combustion chamber is much larger than that in a boiler designed for fuel oil or propane)

Sorry for yet another long ramble ... writing succinctly just isn't one of my strengths.

John Mc

[thecfarm]

Do you clean your own chimmey? I would check it every few weeks,meaning clean it. If you burn green wood.You can tell if it needed or not. I burn mostly dead wood. The standing stuff is better,but depends on how long it's been standing and what kind. I find that pine will get real dry standing,but the maple will get punky and not dry. I find the red oak,the sap wood will rot off and make for some nice wood.Some of the dead stuff may give you too much heat too, a fire that you can not control. I have a OWB and it smothers the fire out.You probaly will struggle with the fire this year. But there is always next year.What kind did you get?

[biker250]

Thanks for the replies guys.  We are completely new to wood burning, so I'm trying to absorb the vast amount of knowledge needed to do it right the first time.  What do I need to get in order to clean my own chimney?  We're getting a Pacific Energy Summit wood stove.  We have about 100 acres of woods, so finding wood is not a problem, I'm just not sure if it'll be dry enough.  As to what type of wood, it'll vary, but no pine. 

[thecfarm]

What kind of chimmey you have? It is a lined one with the orange tile or a stainless steel one? I think it makes a diffeance on the brushes that can be used.

[John Mc]

A good resource for wood-burning tips:  www.woodheat.org

BTW... it is a complete myth that burning pine causes creosote build-up.  Burning green wood or burning slow, smoldering fires (starving the fire for oxygen) causes creosote.  Sometimes people get this with pine because it can be easier to light when only partially dried (prompting people to burn green or semi-seasoned pine), and because when dry, it tends to burn fast and hot (prompting people to choke off the air supply in an effort to make it last like hardwood)

If you dry the pine to an appropriate moisture content, and operate your stove properly (and the stove/chimney is a good installation), the only problems pine will cause you is more trips to feed the stove, since it doesn't have anywhere close to the BTU content of the "prime" hardwood firewood species.

[biker250]

We haven't purchased anything yet, just got a quote on a whole setup.  The chimney pipe is the double wall stainless with some sort of super duper insulation between the 2 pipes.  Been told it is far & above better than any triple wall.  And at $400 for 8', it better be.

[thecfarm]

I would ask where ever you are buying the chimney from what they recommend to clean it with. I would think a certain brush with long rods to screw together would do it. Give some thought to where your chimney is going too. I use to have a wood stove in the house. We had this house built. The flues were set up with the oil flue up by the peak,than the fireplace flue and than the wood stove flue. When I went to clean the wood stove flue I said Oh s... Everything should of been reversed. The wood stove should of been up by the peak. Would of been real easy to clean without another ladder to put on the roof and no reaching. I was surprised the guy doing the chimney did not mention that. I never thought of it until it was too late. I did have enough smarts to have the oil tank fill put in a good place to keep the snow cleared away to have it filled.

[biker250]

Good point, thanks.  Our chimney will be pretty close to the peak, but hadn't thought about making sure I'll be able to reach it without a ladder.  Our 4/12 roof pitch will help any efforts, though.

[Slabs]

A bit of totally useless information:

It takes one BTU to elevate one pound(about one pint) of water one degree farenheit.
It takes 970 BTU to change one pound of water into water vapor.
Water evaporates at almost any temperature, even below freezing(sublimation).
100% saturated wood is 50% water by weight.

I can't remember the source of these figures but the saturation is probably from Vermont Castings.

If you're covering the woodracks with plastic, clear plastic tends to percipitate water on the underside and black plastic not quite so much.  Moreover, black plastic seems to last quite a bit longet possibly because of a greater tolerance to ultraviolet.

I prefer my wood seasoned a minimum of 1 year.  Got maybe four years racked up now just because it became available.  Yeah, some of it will deteriorate before it's burned but My wood cutting days are limited.

Y'all enjoy and keep warm.

[John Mc]

While water will evaporate at any temperature (or at least any temperature that humans are likely to encounter in nature), any migration through the interior of the wood is slowed dramatically when the wood is frozen solid. In these circumstances, most of what you'll lose to sublimation is surface moisture, or moisture that is very close to the surface.

[36 coupe]

Since you are near Worcester and the Emerald Ash Beetle you may as well cut any white ash you have or buy some.

[jdonovan]

It takes one BTU to elevate one pound(about one pint) of water one degree farenheit.
It takes 970 BTU to change one pound of water into water vapor.
Water evaporates at almost any temperature, even below freezing(sublimation).
100% saturated wood is 50% water by weight.

Depending on moisture, when burning less than fully dried wood you can use upwards of 20-25% of the energy just to drive off the moisture.

[biker250]

I'm not really worried about losing energy to evaporate water as I have a virtually unlimited supply of green wood that I could cut.  I'm only worried about keeping the creosote at bay....being a first time wood burner, it's all new to me and I want to make sure I know what I'm doing when it comes to creosote due to all the bad things I've heard about it....it almost has me scared.  haha

[Holmes]

Since you are near Worcester and the Emerald Ash Beetle you may as well cut any white ash you have or buy some.

We have around here the Asian Long horned beetle. It is an invasive and shows no preference for hardwood tree type. The towns that have it are having all the trees cut down, chipped and destroyed. No fire wood is allowed.

[Al_Smith]

You're probabley better off as has already been mentioned to not load the fire box up as much .You keep a hot fire with the stack temp up to about 300 degrees you'll get less creosote .

Creosote is hard to avoid though especially on a long flue because the farther away it is from the fire the more it collects.

[John Mc]

I'm not really worried about losing energy to evaporate water as I have a virtually unlimited supply of green wood that I could cut.  I'm only worried about keeping the creosote at bay....being a first time wood burner, it's all new to me and I want to make sure I know what I'm doing when it comes to creosote due to all the bad things I've heard about it....it almost has me scared.  haha

Even if you have unlimited free wood, you still need to think about loss of energy. That energy is what is making the fire burn hot. When you take too much away, the fire cools.

I burn seasoned wood, though I did have one season where I got behind and it was not optimal.  I basically ended up with a bit more build-up when I cleaned the chimney at the end of the year.

Don't get scared off.  It is manageable, you just may want to give your chimney an extra cleaning partway through the year, and next year, get an earlier start.

[Slabs]

I'm only worried about keeping the creosote at bay....being a first time wood burner, it's all new to me and I want to make sure I know what I'm doing when it comes to creosote due to all the bad things I've heard about it....it almost has me scared.  haha

I forgot to mention my experiences with liquid creosote puking out of the plenum at the base of the stack.  That stuff is wicked and resists strong alkalis and bleach for cleanup.  All from using inadequately dried wood.