Wood keeps you warm
Before driving to the country every weekend, I had a limited “tree knowledge”. I could distinguish between coniferous and deciduous trees, meaning between a pine tree and a birch for example. By using a wood stove, I learned in a hurry, which wood was a good source of heat and which was a lot ado about nothing.
Rule number 1 was never to use coniferous wood. The residue might cause a chimney fire. They are heavy with sap/resins which can form creosote (a black, glassy looking residue) inside the chimney and is a leading cause of chimney fires. ‘But isn’t there fire and heat inside a chimney anyway, why would that be dangerous’, you may ask? A chimney fire is a whole other animal. Think of a jet engine roaring, spewing and blasting flames out the end. That is what a chimney fire can be like! It can vibrate the flue pipes loose and even shake a chimney hard enough to loosen the brick mortar, exposing the house frame to super- heated gases! (see our woodstoves piece for more discusion).
Good wood with lots of heat are the hard woods, e.g.-oak, maple, ash, cherry and basswood. You can certainly burn soft woods (like birch and poplar, and I would encourage that if you are cleaning up downed trees), but after all these years, we do not bother anymore to cut up poplar. It burns quickly without enough heat for the effort. During a winter storm, a big branch of a tree came down that we cut up in the summer for firewood. The color of the wood was a golden brown and it was quite stringy. It burned well and left almost no ashes. The following year I took my tree book, compared the bark, the leaves and the shape of the tree and was astonished that it was an elm. Most of the elms in our area were harvested out in the 1800’s.
Before driving to the country every weekend, I had a limited “tree knowledge”. I could distinguish between coniferous and deciduous trees, meaning between a pine tree and a birch for example. By using a wood stove, I learned in a hurry, which wood was a good source of heat and which was a lot ado about nothing.
Rule number 1 was never to use coniferous wood. The residue might cause a chimney fire. They are heavy with sap/resins which can form creosote (a black, glassy looking residue) inside the chimney and is a leading cause of chimney fires. ‘But isn’t there fire and heat inside a chimney anyway, why would that be dangerous’, you may ask? A chimney fire is a whole other animal. Think of a jet engine roaring, spewing and blasting flames out the end. That is what a chimney fire can be like! It can vibrate the flue pipes loose and even shake a chimney hard enough to loosen the brick mortar, exposing the house frame to super- heated gases! (see our woodstoves piece for more discusion).
Good wood with lots of heat are the hard woods, e.g.-oak, maple, ash, cherry and basswood. You can certainly burn soft woods (like birch and poplar, and I would encourage that if you are cleaning up downed trees), but after all these years, we do not bother anymore to cut up poplar. It burns quickly without enough heat for the effort. During a winter storm, a big branch of a tree came down that we cut up in the summer for firewood. The color of the wood was a golden brown and it was quite stringy. It burned well and left almost no ashes. The following year I took my tree book, compared the bark, the leaves and the shape of the tree and was astonished that it was an elm. Most of the elms in our area were harvested out in the 1800’s.
We like to cut our firewood ourselves. It is good exercise and gives you a very good feeling. It seems almost wired into our DNA, the deep satisfaction of stacking wood for the winter. In the spring, we look around for which trees did not survive the winter. We cut them up and pile them along the field edges on the stone walls. In early summer we split the cut wood from the year before and put it into our firewood shed, so it can dry and be ready for the winter season.
Firewood should be 'seasoned' for a year or two. Stacking it off the ground helps it dry.
Firewood should be 'seasoned' for a year or two. Stacking it off the ground helps it dry.
Dry firewood is very important! The drier the wood, the more heat (btu’s) it yields and the less creosote it will form in the chimney. It is also much lighter to handle. Wet wood is saturated with water and it has to be boiled out by the fire, causing cooler gases, less heat, more smoke (pollutants) and more chimney residue (more frequent cleaning). How can you tell if your wood is dry enough? Look at the ends. Good dry wood will have cracks radiating out from the part closest to the tree’s original center.
We have a couple different length chain saws and a wood splitter to make the work easier for us.
Twice in thirty years, we had wood delivered. Do it early in May or June and put the split wood in a place where it can breathe!
We need three to four full cords of wood per winter. Without the wood stove, our fuel usage would probably be double. If you buy your wood, it usually will be cheaper to buy it by the full cord. If you need less, a face cord in our area can be bought. But terms and sizes vary locally. For us, a cord is 8' long x 4' high x 4' deep (3 ranks of 16" pieces well stacked). A face cord would be just one rank (about a third).
So check with the customs in your area. The dimensions and names may vary. They may be called a standing cord, kitchen cord, running cord, fencing cord, country cord, long cord, or even ricks. Make sure you know what you are buying. Ask if it is all hard woods and what types, how long has it been seasoned (a rough indication of dryness), how do you know it is a cord when they deliver it? One gentleman swore to me that the bed of his pick up truck was equal to exactly one cord, so I shouldn't worry. I guess he thought I couldn't do math. I took his tape measure and measured the truck bed. He would have shorted me by about one third!
For more on this topic, see our piece on a firewood shed.
We have a couple different length chain saws and a wood splitter to make the work easier for us.
Twice in thirty years, we had wood delivered. Do it early in May or June and put the split wood in a place where it can breathe!
We need three to four full cords of wood per winter. Without the wood stove, our fuel usage would probably be double. If you buy your wood, it usually will be cheaper to buy it by the full cord. If you need less, a face cord in our area can be bought. But terms and sizes vary locally. For us, a cord is 8' long x 4' high x 4' deep (3 ranks of 16" pieces well stacked). A face cord would be just one rank (about a third).
So check with the customs in your area. The dimensions and names may vary. They may be called a standing cord, kitchen cord, running cord, fencing cord, country cord, long cord, or even ricks. Make sure you know what you are buying. Ask if it is all hard woods and what types, how long has it been seasoned (a rough indication of dryness), how do you know it is a cord when they deliver it? One gentleman swore to me that the bed of his pick up truck was equal to exactly one cord, so I shouldn't worry. I guess he thought I couldn't do math. I took his tape measure and measured the truck bed. He would have shorted me by about one third!
For more on this topic, see our piece on a firewood shed.
