Who's Burning?

[dorkweed]

I believe that I'm "officially" 2 years ahead in my CSS wood supply!!! 

 

I have this winter and next winters wood CSS (cut, split and stacked).  I'll get some pix for y'all shortly.

[Mopar1973Man]

Well now that I'll have a few days off from work I'm planing on knocking out the wood pile as much as possible. I might even make another run to New Meadows, ID for more. Who knows.
 

 

I believe that I'm "officially" 2 years ahead in my CSS wood supply!!!

 

I always get picked on by the locals that tell me, "Oh you only need 2-3 cords a winter" The first thing I ask them is do you have a furnace? Do you burn solely wood for heat? Do have someone at home all the time? For me wood is our only form of heat so every morning a fire is lit and kept burning all day long and stoked in the evening and most night left to burn out. Come December it get really cold typically and there is about a 1 month span where we move to the living room for sleeping. Just way too much wood is wasted on heating a pair of bedrooms. So for me like I mention before I burn about a 1/4 cord a week or 1 cord a month. Now you also got to add in the gust house now too when it get down right cold I got to heat it too. Then if I happen to be working in the shop I burn wood to heat it too. If I'm feeling cheap I might fire up the propane torpedo heater.

[dorkweed]

And you're burning mainly softwoods................not as many BTU's as the hardwoods I have in my stacks.....................Oak, maple, cherry, ash and even the box elder.

[Mopar1973Man]

No hardwood out here. But even the BTU content is kind of questionable at times. Like out here everyone wants red fir because of its high BTU content. But I can't burn it right now because the wood is so hot that you have choke way down on the air to keep from roasting to death and now creating huge amount of creosote. But now like right now I'm burning spruce and alpine fir which is lower in BTU content than red fir but now I can burn with the air open bit more and no smoke and have to clean the chimney way less.

[hex0rz]

Thats why its good to mix the wood up.

[Mopar1973Man]

Matter of fact I climbed up the roof yesterday and swept the chimney out. Just like I figured. The first 6" was all balled up with creosote necked down to about 3" hole. Push the brush through the ball and it was clear sailing all the way down to the bottom. I gave it 5 good strokes. Grabbed the flashlight it was clean as far as I could see down the pipe through the dust floating back up.

 

Then on top of that I split another 1.5 cords of rounds up and its drying out in the trailer for the moment. I'll get that stacked up here in the near future.

[dorkweed]

With the snow this AM, and me running out of pallets....................I think I'm  gonna have to break into the wood stack for the winter.  Didn't do too bad.............managed on "pallet wood" for a few weeks because it's been real mild here for most of October!!!

 

I'm gonna run out of pallet wood within the next reload or two.................................then it's load up the box on the deck with silver maple that's 2 years old CSS!!

[dorkweed]

The Downside To Burning Pallets

 

1.  Gotta be quick on reloads, because there's not many long lasting coals produced.

 

2.  Cutting/breaking the pallets up is harder work than CSSing........cutting, splitting and stacking!!

 

3.  Gotta watch that the stove doesn't go "nuclear" due to the "kiln dried" wood used in the pallets!!

 

4.  I have more nails in my firebox now than I do ash!!!

 

I'll keep burning them though as long as I can get them for free.

[Mopar1973Man]

Ahhh... Just pull the nails out of the ash and straighten again. (Recycle-Reuse!)

[dorkweed]

Don't tempt me!!!!  

[Texas CTD]

Built the first fall 2014 fire last night. It got down in the 30's, and it was nice and toasty inside.

[AH64ID]

I have to admire you guys with wood stoves, up until recently I thought it was the way to go... but now I am sold on pellet stoves. They burn wood, but start and operate with a thermostat :-)

 

Get up, turn up the thermostat, start coffee, shower, enjoy fire and head to work!!

 

I stacked 2 tons of pellets in the garage and it has the BTU content of 2.2 chords of pine, and the volume of less than 1 chord. With the efficiency of ~85% it should do quite nicely.

[JAG1]

I can understand the ease of use and having a cleaner house going from wood to pellets.

 

 

It boils down also as to weather you want your fuel from God or man

 

 

Somehow our Lord always gets the price right by supplying it for free, if your willing to cut, split, and load of course. I appreciate His willingness also, to make us work, as it keeps us a little healthier I suppose. Unless your like me..... I've been buying my wood lately. How lazy is that?! When it's free all around my little piece of land!

[Mopar1973Man]

Some how I see getting firewood the old fashion way cheaper. Seem like a lot of work and fuel to do this but really when I look at how much really its fairly cheap. So now with the BigTex trailer if I make 5 trips to the forest I've got 10 cords of wood. I can make two trips in one day if I push so say 5 days worth of harvesting. Maybe at the worst 1 to 1.5 tanks of diesel depending on how far I want to go. Wood can be split by hand or by machine. I might use 1 gallon of gasoline for 4-5 cords of splitting.  Bonus is the wood stove doesn't require any power to operate and will produce heat regardless. Also wood stove will burn anything you can fit in the door of the stove and has no requirement of a particular pellet. I can burn wood, paper, cardboard, and many other things in a wood stove. So I see my wood stove as a privacy measure were I can burn sensitive documents. I can cook from the top of it. Dispose of organic waste (paper, cardboard, etc.)  instead of filling a dumpster 5 miles away.

 

I would love to have the thermostat luxury of AH64ID. But that's just not a function of a wood stove.

[Wild and Free]

Just curious here...........

 

 

You mean besides the folks down in Fergusson MO????????????????????   

[AH64ID]

There are certainly advantages to both.

 

I rather enjoy gathering and CSS wood, but without being home all day it's hard to keep a fire going and that means a cold house our more propane.

 

Firewood is still cheaper, as long as you don't put a dollar amount on your time. Generally I see people with 9-5 jobs who don't put a dollar value on their time, and the folks who are self employed putting a dollar value on their time.

 

Without buying a trailer, or a bigger chainsaw, I would be approx $0.25/100K BTU's to gather wood.... so yep it's certainly lower on out of pocket expenses.

 

 

When the shop gets built it will have a wood stove in it, best of both worlds!!

[joecool911]

We are set up for wood. Splitter, saws, dumping trailer. It's a lot more expensive to use pellets. But it's better than electric heat or propane. Nice dry heat. We've got 30 or so 50 year old for trees on our property. We take one down a year and scrounge for the rest. This year we have maple, Apple, cedar, lilac, vine maple and fir. Non of which was paid for. My neighbor gave is 3' diameter bales of split cedar kindling. Like 1/4-1/2" x 16". Gave us 4 bales. Brake them in half over your knee 2-3 at a time and makes great starter wood. We use a propane push button torch to start and no paper. Load on some cedar firewood topped with some fir and we going.

We have 2 rentals that are all electric. Thinking about pellet stoves to increase the desirability and rent of the units. Only thing that bothers me is the routine maintenance. Will they do it?

[AH64ID]

. Will they do it?

 

No...

[joecool911]

Kinda what I was thinking. Maybe a propane stove? If we put in a woodstove we'd have no control over how seasoned the wood is and probably end up with burns on the carpet. Maybe just forget the whole thing.

Edited December 17, 2014 by joecool911

[Mopar1973Man]

There are certainly advantages to both.

 

I rather enjoy gathering and CSS wood, but without being home all day it's hard to keep a fire going and that means a cold house our more propane.

 

Firewood is still cheaper, as long as you don't put a dollar amount on your time. Generally I see people with 9-5 jobs who don't put a dollar value on their time, and the folks who are self employed putting a dollar value on their time.

 

Without buying a trailer, or a bigger chainsaw, I would be approx $0.25/100K BTU's to gather wood.... so yep it's certainly lower on out of pocket expenses.

 

 

When the shop gets built it will have a wood stove in it, best of both worlds!!

 

That's the problem we have here now. With a wood burning stove you have to be at home to keep the house warm. So during the day when I take off for work MoparMom can tend the fire rather easy. But now if we want to leave for Boise for a day or over night that's a problem because there is no other form of heat really. So during the winter time we are confined to the house for the most part. Would be nice to have a thermostat and walk away. But we don't so there is the downside to wood burning as a primary heat. I'm sure I could buy a few oil radiator heaters and place them around the house but that might get expensive fast. I'm sure the inverter won't like that long.

 

With how mild the weather this winter I'm going to be way ahead on firewood too. I'm out splitting up wood last few days being the weather is warm and dry so get the last few rounds split up and stacked. I'm attempting to clean up the wood splitting area.