Rob_the_Sparky

N.B. as you have to evaporate a lot more water with a wet wood you will struggle to maintain a high fire temperature.

Back to the original question: At home you can burn all woods without problem as long as the fire is kept hot. The problems occur when the fire is hot enough to turn the oils/tars in the wood into gas but not hot enough to ignite them. When that happens, as the gasses cool in the chimney these oils and tars condense on the inside of the chimney. Generally, as softwood has a higher proportion of tars/oils in them than hardwood you can get the problems you are seeing in your tent stove. The same thing can happen at home if the fire is not kept hot enough. It is not unique to softwood but it will happen faster as there is more tar/oil in it. This is not a good thing due to the blocking of the chimney but also as you are storing fuel in the chimney. If the chimney gets hot enough at a later date it can ignite this stored fuel and het presto you have a chimney fire. No fuel = no chimney fires. From an energy point of view, per unit mass of dry wood there is very little difference between types of wood. Hence, softwood makes a good firewood if handled right. Generally it is less dense so you need more of it in terms of volume and it can burn faster so better to leave it in larger chunks than hardwood. On the plus side it is cheaper as many people do not understand the above and it generally dries faster than a more dense wood.

Very pretty but as far as I can see it is a complicated/expensive way to save a small amount of time.

What seems to be going mostly under the radar is the amount of power it takes to run AI programmes. Data centres are already a huge consumer of electricity and this is going to get a lot larger if we are all using AI. In term of good/bad - it depends how it is used an how it is trained. Unfortunately there are plenty out there being trained on the internet and clearly everything on the internet is correct!! It reminds me of the classic of the Russians training dogs to run under tanks in WW2 then getting them to carry mines. The dogs were trained on Russian tanks and as a result they blew up Russian tanks! The ready access of AI tools on line with no control introduces massive problems with fake information being generated. Expect scams to become harder to spot as the scammers get good at using AI tools. Some of that is already happening and the tools to spot them is always going to lag behind the ability to generate the fakes.

The other good technique is to contact local businesses using this approach. Note: if you are after wood ready to burn that is very different from green/wet wood that has just been cut and will not be dry nor cut/split for burning. Green wood is unlikely to be ready to burn until next year now (without a kiln)

Also try contacting local companies, if you want regular supplies then, as above, you need to become a good tip site for a local company and they are best contacted directly. Some tips: Logs are processed into sizes ready to burn once dry, these are not going to be free as that takes work. If you are a going to be a tip site you need to be asking for wood not logs (arb arisings is the term used here). As above be flexible. Despite what the internet will tell you all wood burns(!) and releases the same amount of energy per unit weight when dry (when using a wood burner). Less dense wood does take more space but generally that is not so much of an issue (also soft wood generally dries quicker, which can be handy). In fact some softwoods are really good wood to burn once you figure out how to best split them (leave the faster burning woods in bigger chunks).

The only other thing I'd add is, are you after ready to burn logs or wood that can be processed (cut, split and dried) to become fuel for the wood burner. I can't advise at all if you are after logs as I process tree surgery waste (arb arisings) and that is what the tip site pages are about. As above if it is your first year I think I'd ensure I had somewhere dry for storage and then buy some logs as it is a bit late to just starting to process logs for this winter. A lot to learn about logs in your first year so keep it simple initially. P.S. I started in the bad old days with plastic wrapped logs from the supermarket that turned out to be as wet as you like. Whatever you get now should be better than that! (following that I got some logs from my Dad and since then have processed my own, never actually bought logs in any quantity...)

TBH getting rid of wood is never a problem if it will fit in the boot of a car. Lots of people out there happy to take wood and dry it.

I can see the problem, any wood needs drying and processing to become firewood but arb arisings are of a size that are much more readily handled and transported by non-professionals and it is not readily handled by wood processors either so not much commercial interest. Still if sawmill was local to me and I didn't have my arb arisings source I'd be interested in such wood. Anyone home processing needs a saw so as long as the sawmill is OK with it, wood can be cut before transport home in multiple trips.

wrt firewood: all wood has a similar amount of energy in it by weight (when dry) and all wood burns on a wood burner. I often hear (not here so much) that xyz is not a good for firewood but if you have it and have no other use for it then any wood will heat your house as firewood.

Same story for my 5.0 TVR, cheaper to insure than a 7 year old Ford S-Max!!! We should all just start driving V8s

Try a search on here, there are a number of threads along the sort of "how much" lines. I suspect that more info will be needed from what I've seen in those threads.

Agreed with the above but generally when it comes to drying there is no fixed time it takes. Longer unsplit rounds take longer (most of the drying occurs through the end grain if not split). Shorter, split wood is quicker to dry. Then you have the wood type on top of that. I have a chunk of willow on the wood pile from last year ~3' long and 8" round that is still growing!!! and yes I really need to get it split ASAP but thought it would have stopped long ago...

There are a few home firewood users on here (me included) but most people on here are pros so unlikely to get any bites on here for it. Maybe the tip site if worth a look though?

Does this old thread help any?