Whats wrong with oak in a wood burner

[tree monkey]

weve encountered prob with oak,sycamore is the best in our stove topped off with hawthorne:)

[MikeTM150]

i've always found oak tends to need more air to burn nice and hot, then you feel ur loosing the heat up the chimney. I do wonder if the heat loss is only physcological as the extra air on the oak produces more heat, but its not very often we get oak so usually its mixed in with some other and burns nicely then!!!

 

Sycamore and ash i like, but as i've said it before, if it comes from some form of tree/plant/shrub and is seasoned i'll burn it!!!

[Logarithm]

Steve,I had the same problem,I would find blackened half burnt lumps of oak that I thought would of burnt out through the night but hadnt.This year Im only burning smaller pieces 3-4 inch (off- cuts from my Log saw) with the odd one around 6 inch and it burns loverly.Its not burning out too quick either and Im just topping up occasionally.Last year i was putting on oak 12-14 inch long mixed with abit of soft which was ok but this is working well for me.I know theres plenty of science that would cover this subject but I just want a bloody fire!

The picture of my fire is now and it smells great too!

[tommer9]

I'd still say has got a bit of water in it.... even if something is dead standing it just does not lose much water out the trunk... I've milled oak that has been dead, fallen over in a field for 20 years and still moist timber inside.

 

Preciseley.

I have had the same experience Rob.

[Spruce]

It's weird - softwood burns great, dries out in no time and costs a fraction of the price of hardwood. In fact, it seems to be almost free in the south of England yet you guys are all struggling to burn hardwood on your own fires while complaining that your customers don't want to buy softwood even though it's perfectly good.

[gensetsteve]

It's weird - softwood burns great, dries out in no time and costs a fraction of the price of hardwood. In fact, it seems to be almost free in the south of England yet you guys are all struggling to burn hardwood on your own fires while complaining that your customers don't want to buy softwood even though it's perfectly good.

 

Yes I dont think anyone will argue with you. Although nice seasoned beech does sit nicely in the middle. Burns easily lasts well and gives off good heat along with ash birch and sycamore. I have alot of bone dry pine and it does burn very quickly like 20 minutes and its gone. Beech 40 mins to an hour, oak 2 hrs +

[Spruce]

Yes I dont think anyone will argue with you. Although nice seasoned beech does sit nicely in the middle. Burns easily lasts well and gives off good heat along with ash birch and sycamore. I have alot of bone dry pine and it does burn very quickly like 20 minutes and its gone. Beech 40 mins to an hour, oak 2 hrs +

 

We find that you can use much bigger lumps of softwood without getting the smouldering-lump-blocking-the-grate syndrome which increases the reload interval a good bit. The way dry softwood will produce any amount of heat you want almost instantly suits us really well. Honestly, after several years of heating the house exclusively with a boiler stove I'd probably decline a load of hardwood even if it were offered to me at the same price as softwood. Given that the calorific value is about the same by dry weight I can't see any disadvantage to softwood other than having to get off my unpleasantly large backside a bit more often. This might even be a good thing!

[Treegeek]

Quercus has been a bit tempromental in my burner too but I have some stone dead bone dry larch though I'd try and seems very good to my suprise might look into this softwood milarky

[Big J]

I think fundamentally Oak is one of the most unforgiving timbers to burn when it hasn't been sufficiently seasoned. Others (especially cherry, in my experience) you can get away with when the MC approaches 30%, but oak will just sit in your stove and laugh at you!

 

We're well into the swing of things this winter now with our stove, past the 5 cubic metre mark, and so far the best by far has been elm. Nothing else has such a huge bed of embers and can be left for 12 hours and relit without kindling. 19% MC btw, felled and split green, stacked for 1 year.

[blazer]

I have used old oak hangups so dry after 20 yrs that burnt like softwood. I try and split 'n' stack before easter for the following winter and all is ok, in my logburner (stack hardly need cleaning).

 

I have used wet wood (wrong pile) that even with alot of extra air is slow to burn and noticed all the embers have burnt up, whereas if the wood is dry the ember level with dry oak is a constant if not building up during the evening.

 

Yep in theory stack oak for 2 yrs but I don't have the space so I find, getting all the oak in by easter and any ash later works for me.