What type of wood is best for firewood?

[Puffingbilly413]

Re euc - yes, I took down a huge one just over two years ago.  Split it well and dried it outside on pallets under wriggly tin.  Been burning it all this winter and it is really dry (under 15% according to the moisture meter thing - I know that's only a guide but you can tell by handling as well that they're well dry).  When it was cut the sap was running freely off the saws so it was mega wet (end March I think it was) - but given the right conditions to dry it's fine (first burning was only after a year).

 

It lights well and burns well (spits a lot so stove best) with reasonable longevity albeit not as long as say oak or thorn.

[nath]

Whatever you do make sure you split the Euc whilst its green too

[Puffingbilly413]

2 minutes ago, Stubby said:

Yep . Lots of it .  Well done for getting it split as it goes off like concrete if you leave it . Stove only as it pops and bangs and spits . Good heat .

Agree with you there Stubby - I left a few knotty rounds that I couldn't be bothered with at the time and there were indeed like iron after a spell.  That said, when they'd dried up a bit after a year or so then I found they'd crack and you could smash them up with a wedge or maul.  No good for stacking then mind - I made up some cylindrical baskets out of some weldmesh fencing (about 6' tall by about 4' across) that I just chuck all the gnarly bits it and cover the top.

 

Just keep chucking in the top and when all is dry just snip a hatch in the bottom and pull out from there.  Think I saw the idea in that Norwegian wood book somewhere.

[Beardie]

I was staying with some friends over the winter and had a stove in the room. Found some dry elder under a sheet of corrugated iron round the back. It burned perfectly well, with none of the clouds of toxic smoke you're supposed to get.

[Big J]

I believe that a lot of what influences people to think that a firewood is good or bad is the kind of fire/stove they are burning it on. An open fire is always bad and will not flatter a lot of different species. Equally, many stoves now are so small that creating a fire large enough to burn efficiently is tricky. 

 

We've got a Jotul type stove that is enormous. 27" deep firebox and you can put logs into it that are frankly too heavy to handle, even when dry. It's not sophisticated, it's probably not spectacularly efficient, but it burns everything faultlessly. Even if it's not that dry. 

 

So in answer to the original question, and to echo other peoples sentiments, the best firewood is wood that is cheap and dry. Species isn't that important unless you have a fussy stove, but even then, the dryness of the wood is 100 times more important than the species. 

 

Also, get a massive stove if possible. Makes life much easier. You can still have little fires in a big stove, but you'll be thankful for it when you have extremely cold weather, or unsplitable lumps of wood that otherwise wouldn't fit. 

[gary112]

Same as you BigJ we got a big old jotul and it burns anything dry and no matter how cold we are warm

[gdh]

Agreed with big j, everyone assumes because we sell firewood we burn the best quality pieces. We don't - we have a 20inch/18kW log burner and burn everything from the short bits to stubs of branches we cut off and massive wedges from pointing gateposts, as long as it's reasonably dry it all burns fine and we rarely sweep our chimney in the 20 years we've had it.

[Woodworks]

5 hours ago, Big J said:

 

 

Also, get a massive stove if possible. Makes life much easier. You can still have little fires in a big stove, but you'll be thankful for it when you have extremely cold weather, or unsplitable lumps of wood that otherwise wouldn't fit. 

Sorry J but think this is poor advice for the majority of homes. A big stove at half tick is a dirty stove due to low firebox temps. Poor for the flue and dirty emissions and with the scrutiny stoves are rightly under at the moment just seems a bad plan anyway you look at it. Most stoves I see are in homes with central heating anyway. In this situation it seems best to have a small stove that will  suffice most of the time and turn up the heating for the coldest times.

 

Small stove worked hard would be my advice. 

[Radda]

I sell all sorts to my customers.  Its always dry, well seasoned timber, and they always come back.  A good mix is best as you get the best of both worlds.

[Big J]

2 hours ago, Woodworks said:

Sorry J but think this is poor advice for the majority of homes. A big stove at half tick is a dirty stove due to low firebox temps. Poor for the flue and dirty emissions and with the scrutiny stoves are rightly under at the moment just seems a bad plan anyway you look at it. Most stoves I see are in homes with central heating anyway. In this situation it seems best to have a small stove that will  suffice most of the time and turn up the heating for the coldest times.

 

Small stove worked hard would be my advice. 

 

Possibly for some homes. I do so often see huge rooms with minute stoves in them (that trend has become apparent as we've looked at hundreds and hundreds of house listings around Devon over the past few months). You'll see a 20-40 square metre room, often open plan to another room or a staircase and they've put a 5kw stove in. It serves no purpose other than as a decoration. 

 

I guess it comes down to whether you treat your stove as a luxury or as primary heating. For us, having the large stove allows us to do 95% of the years heating, but continue to gently heat into spring and in autumn also. A smaller stove would be no use to us, and we'd be burning thousands of litres of oil.