Help info about softwood :)

[Coximus]

The calorific value of most softwoods / kg is higher than most hardwoods....

 

The density is lower as others have said.....

 

The lower density means more pore and air space, = Larger surface are,

 

Therefore the wood will burn faster, and thus release more energy in a given time space, so would burn hotter aswell.

 

Overall softwood 90% for me, by burning hotter, a ) Im warm, b) cleaner chimney!

annual sweep gets about half a pint of crap, sweep recons i barely use the chimney....... its onl straight from Oct - March each year.

 

http://www.forestry.gov.uk/pdf/FC-BEC-InfoSheet-Wood-as-Fuel-TechSupp.pdf/$FILE/FC-BEC-InfoSheet-Wood-as-Fuel-TechSupp.pdf

Edited November 5, 2014 by Coximus

[CJM]

why not, everyone else does:001_tt2:

 

But it's hard as nails

 

But officially it is a soft wood just for the record

[aesmith]

Just like Balsa is a hardwood.

[StephF]

There is a great deal of confusion in the UK regarding the best wood to burn as well as woods to avoid. All wood is good to burn in a stove as long as it is dry. Even seemingly reliable sources of information sometimes get this completely wrong. You may read or be told that only hardwood logs are suitable and that you should not burn pine or conifer as these contain sap? or resins which tar up the chimney. This is rubbish. You may be told that there is more heat in hardwood than softwood. Again, not true. The calorific (heat) value of a kilo of softwood is almost identical to that of a kilo of hardwood, the softwood is just less dense so it takes up more space. You will have to put more pieces of a given softwood

into your stove than you will hardwood, but weight for weight, the heat output will be about the same. With this in mind you should pay at least a third less for a given volume of softwood over hardwood.

 

Well said, it makes up at least 70% our annual sales for woodburners, all the old wives tales are only applicable to burning wet wood on an open fire! not a modern woodburner & and seasoned softwood. What do people think they burn in north americal/canada or scandanavia and they invented wood burners...Morso etc

[Backpain]

I took what I thought was a big risk last year as I was running low on HW and all I could find was SW. I had absolutely no idea what the customers were going to say when I told them I only had mixed loads for the rest of the season. If you cast your mind back last years weather was extremely mild and wet. Fortunately out of at least 100 customers only 2 turned their nose up and said "my log burner only burns hardwood". But ultimately SW is more sustainable and burns perfectly well, so too does willow.

My favorite is Larch, absolutely love the stuff.

[Joy Yeomans]

anything dry, had some rain wet pine, been sat in the yard a while, decided not to sell it to customers as it looked a bit poor, so stacked it in the log store, within a week it was dry, it was only wet on the outside, burnt like rocket fuel. lovely, just looked horrible.!

[Lucan]

The softwood I sell is larch along with some winter felled pine. My 4.7 kW stove burning larch is currently keeping my open plan living room/kitchen and hallway to 20-22C all evening for total of 90p (based on what I charge) and it's currently 2C outside

[TimberCutterDartmoor]

Softwood please, hardwood does my head in.

 

Got bone dry DF at the moment, it is the business.

 

PS I'm going to print this thread off and give it to my customers. They all subscribe to the softwood is bad nonsense.

Edited November 5, 2014 by TimberCutterDartmoor

[Hotrod81]

Burning pine and willow at the moment. The heat that my stove is creating is unreal. Might throw on an ugly piece of elm now and again to give it some body. My customers seem pretty happy if I convince them that a mixed load is the way to go.

[kev7937]

You would naturally think of Yew as a hardwood, being as hard a timber as it is. However it is a coniferous tree, so just an extremely dense softwood.

 

I thought a conifer had to have cones.