Wood Heat Thread ~ post pics

Kingston, who have you been getting your wood from? My mother in-law might need some more and I didn't really like the stuff that we got for her. Seems like it was seasoned for too long and then cut/split. She lives in Bellingham as well.

 

When I have the chance, I prefer to buy it and cut it to stove length, then let it set until it end-checks in good shape, usually a couple of months. Then I'll follow the check lines with the splitting maul. The wood practically flies apart that way.

 

Reading the wood makes life so much easier when splitting

 

Soft wood pellets have more BTU's than hard wood. Both come in a 40# bag that fills the hopper the same. I prefer the hard wood. It burns cleaner and I get better heat control. I had the pellet burner set at three out of six, during the cold snap. Three is the highest setting I've ever used. Maintained low 70's

 

Yeah, it beats the hell out of fighting with knots or twists.
I've also found that the wood seems to split easier if you split with the logs upside down (butt-end facing up), but that might just be coincidence, or a figment of my imagination. Good straight-grained stuff it doesn't matter, but if it's got any knots upside down seems easier.

 

Madrone is definitely in the " split right away , or wait a year to split " category , it kind of twists as it grows and when it dries it twists some more

 

Pellets are a different story. They have a uniform density because they've been reduced to sawdust and then pressed together. A bag of pellets weighs 40lbs whether they're softwood or hardwood. The softwood pellets put out more BTU's per lb because they're more resinous than the hardwood pellets. The resins ignite and produce additional heat.
Regular logs don't have uniform density, but hardwoods are considerably more dense on average than softwoods are.

 

I'm a landscaper so i get paid to take wood away

 

Grind it into saw dust and run it through a pellet press=$$$$ WOW, what does that stove weigh?

 

Oh wow, never thought of that…

 

Pellets are sacrilege

 

Why?

 

Sounds like Beech. I hate splitting that. It twists when it grows and it's stringy as hell when you split it.

 

I'm just rattling your cage

Going to buy a bag of pellets and dumping it in a hopper just doesn't stir up the same nostalgia for me as cutting up a tree with a chainsaw , then splitting and stacking the wood does , call me old fashioned

 

Wood Pellets are the Pringles Potato Chips of the heating world.

 

I know what you're saying. I almost bought a outdoor wood burner ($10,000 depending on how much I did) I like the convenience, cleanliness, and economy of a pellet burner

 

Yeah , no doubt they are efficient

 

Some have a manual feeder

 

Yea but don't they still need the blower to get they heat out. That's how my parents pellet stove works.

 

When splitting on a stump, my favorite splitter is the 28 inch Fiskars. That's a dangerous length for splitting on the ground because a miss will put the axe close to your foot. For ground splitting I prefer the maul over the 36 inch Fiskars. The Fiskars always blows right through into the ground and my edge gets trashed quickly. The wider head of the maul seems to transfer a lot of it's energy outward and slows itself down faster. The wood handle feels nice in the hand and seems to absorb more of the shock and vibration.

My first Holz Hausen took much longer because I wasn't really sure how to do it but now it takes maybe 10-20% longer than traditional stacking.