Wood Heat Thread ~ post pics

Thanks for the link -- the bark is a distinctive give away for ID'ing this tree

 

I'm going to guess that those folks are not mathematicians. 32 BTU's per cord? A pack of matches does better than that. The real number is more like 32 million BTU's per cord.

https://forestry.usu.edu/forest-products/wood-heating

 

Correct- You have a sharp eye -- I did not catch that miscue on that website. I was focused on finding a chart ranking various woods by their BTU content -highrst first. Just noticed as well, some web sites do not even mention Mandrone, which is way up there in rank. Guess it is because the wood is hard to find.

 

Should be ... "Million BTU's per cord"

 

Last night I hit a few small pieces of Locus that were mixed into a pile left over from last year. Gawd, that stuff stinks. It smells like it's soaked in diesel fuel or something.

 

Locust is called Yellow Gold here.

 

I have never noticed bad smell of locust, but then again I don't mess with it very often. Black Locust has thorns that up to 6 inches in length and go through tires with no problem. Black and Honey Locust do, however, have very high heat content -25 to 27 mil/BTU/ton. To me, though, not worth the trouble of the thorns. Honey Locust DOES NOT have the thorns.
Also, I think The black locust thorns contain some kind of a poison/irritant (I think) as every time I have been stuck with one, the area of the sticking became infected?
I could tell the story of my only hot air ballon ride when we were about to land in a thicket of Black Locust trees, if any one wants to hear it.
If you have not guessed --we have a lot of these trees in Mo.

 

I'm going off of the opinion of a woodworker buddy who identified it for me, I wasn't sure what it was. Once it gets burning, it will burn for a while but it needs a hot fire or it will just smolder and puke out a bunch of greasy soot. I like the Ash wood the best, it doesn't burn quiet as long as the red oak but it pumps out some heat.

 

I'll use/take ash if it is free or "in the way" of getting other better trees out of an area. It is sort of mediocre in my books. Good thing about ash, is that there is more and more of it becoming available as the "Emerald ash borer" is basically wiping most of these trees
As far as woodwork -it is great and finishes up very nice. I would guess 90-95 % of people cannot tell "finished" ash from finished Oak. Ash has a more consistent "lighter" color than oak and a less pronounced grain. If you add stain to ash it can be tough to ID from stained Oak . One more thing ash is much lighter in weight than oak.
Do not get me wrong -I have a couple pick-up loads of ash stacked in my pile right now, as this guy had some trees cut down and it was laying there all cut up. I took a bit of it, and it will be burned later this heating season.

 

3 months late I managed to fill my woodshed by the house from my back shop / storage area this weekend

we had about 1/2 a rick still in there we were burning , then I was bringing wheelbarrow loads over for the last couple weeks , glad to have that over with

about a 50/50 split of fir and madrone with a tiny bit of western red cedar and big leaf maple mixed in

 

Nothing like the threat of snow to motivate stacking. Finally started on the newest split wood from the old house.


3 hours later and more than halfway done.

 

Tried to finish the base for my wood shed before snow fall today. Mostly made it haha.

 

Nature brought me more firewood. Luckily no structural damage.

 

Close call

 

A strip of bark curled into a perfect arch, kind of neat looking.

 

Finally done. Almost 4 cord rough math.

 

Good we got plenty of wood.
Arctic Express will hit NC tonight. Low of 2 degrees tomorrow night.
My friend in Kansas has ice, and cold wind.

 

its -13C (8F) here right now with 14" of snow on the ground at sea level 50' from the ocean , wind chill to -25C (-13F)

 

Yeah, but the latitude you are at says "Normal".
I am in the south of the US.

We like it, wouldn't want it any other way.

 

no thats way cold for here , some years we don't even get snow