Best firewood?

chrisingham

Hey guys, hope you are all having a wonderful Monday. I have a question : What according to you is the best firewood? If you don't mind please let me know why you think it is the best ... just trying to see why something would be considered best as compared to others.

Much appreciated.

Drouin Tree Service

Redgum

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Drouin Tree Services | Excavator Hire - Drouin and SE Gippsland | Landclearing Melbourne

windthrown

Euc is good firewood. Burns hot and long. Basically the denser the wood, the better the fire. Euc, oak, Madrone (local species here), hickory, elm, ash, plum, apple, pear and beech are all are good for firewood. Doug fir is OK, as is the maple around here. Alder is light but great for cooking and smoking with. Other wood like cherry, holly, and hemlock are lighter and less desirable, but they burn.

Trees that I generally do not cut for firewood are sycamore, cedar, pine, and grand fir (AKA: piss fir). But if they are easy to get, they will all burn.

Here is a nice photo of a firewood pile that I robbed from another forum:

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glennak

Well as far as Eucs go there are huge differences. Red Gum is in the bottom of the good Eucs Sugar Gum, Red, Grey and yellow box have much higher heat /volume ratio. Many of the Mallee Eucalypts are even better. A lot of pines give more heat/weight but they don't weigh much so you need heaps and they leave lots of sot up your chimney which is a safty issue.
Search heat values of wood, or BTU wood, should find lots of tables.

Eric Frei

What about wattles, I know they're tough bastids to cut!

I'm in Brisbane, rarely need a fire here.

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Drouin Tree Service

Wattle is good to get it going but not as much red coals,Dry cypress burns very hot but not good for the chimney/flue unless its mixed with a bit of other stuff.

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Drouin Tree Services | Excavator Hire - Drouin and SE Gippsland | Landclearing Melbourne

glennak

Wattles are hard to cut because they store a lot of silica in their cell walls

chrisingham

Thanks for sharing guys.

@windthrown that pile of firewood sure is tempting

the big tree nut

well its depends on wat the fire is for as pine and other lightweight wood are great for getting its started and the denser are better for the slow burning, ash is the only wood that can burn green and burns well too, sweet chestnut is good but will spit so need a fire guard for that or get a burn holes in your carpet!

personally a mixture is always better then jsut one species

glennak

Yes Ash is incredible. I started the fire with an Ash I cut down that day left puddles in the ute. Then kept it going all night; nothing but wood ash left in the morning. Maybe thats how it got its name. Didn't give out a lot of heat as it was full of water.

windthrown

green wood = low heat.

We had to burn green wood one year becasue it was colder thsn S*-F* and we had run out of dry seasoned wood. We went through about 2 cords of green wet wood in a few weeks, but it got us over the cold snap. After that I went after dead standing snags, which seemed to be seasoned but wet, which was better than green and wet. It dried in a few weeks and was good to burn, and got us through that year. After that we made a pact to get at least 10 cords dry before winter, and have another 5 ready to replace it half way though. Ash was OK when burned green, as it burned. But we had limited amounts of ash. Most of it was Doug fir, alder and lighter woods. Later I went after Madrone and oak, the heavies. We had an OWB so it was better to burn the heavy and dense stuff.

chrisingham

Thanks for the recommendation guys. Very much appreciated. I am out on the hunt for the firewood now

glennak

Don't know what you have access to but birch is considered good wood over your way (not here) but ash or oak is better but free is best of all except Liquidambar (not worth picking up).

woodman6666

The best firewood is whatever you can get for free and close to home!

windthrown

I dunno about that. Green wet willow or cottonwood is just not worth it. Some guy here was advertizing 1,000 cords of free cottonwood, but no one wants it. I will not bother with cutting or hauling sycamore any more, or pine or grand fir. There are pleanty of other better woods out there that I can get for free here. Like doug fir, oak, maple, madrone, and alder. You have to watch out for oak here (Oregon white oak or California black oak), as once it hits the ground it rots really fast. Willow and pine will rot fast even off the ground.

sueann

We mostly just burn ironbark, it burns beautifully, we can get pretty cold here and have a combustion fire in the family room, an open fire in the lounge room.

rick

Currently burning some beautiful timber here, some type of Box I guess.

It's hard like Yellow Box, cuts like very hard Box (much harder than River Red Gum) has a relatively straight but very tight grain, pink/light red heart wood and burns lovely and hot with minimal ash.

Maybe Red Box, maybe dawsonii, but being a dead tree, who knows....

Drouin Tree Service

Im burning some of the 90 redgum railline sleepers ive collected

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Drouin Tree Services | Excavator Hire - Drouin and SE Gippsland | Landclearing Melbourne

rick

I have no idea what used to be used up this way, probably Ironbark.
The ARTC is pulling them all up ATM and replacing them with concrete ones, so I should see if I can score a few pallet loads for the border of SWMBO's dressage arena.

second-gen_monkey

we don't nessisarily need fire wood down here as a small space heater works fine when the worst low is still in the 50-60 farenheit range but during winter we offload a good deal of oak (doesnt really matter what kind most of the time, some like live some like white etc) and pine (for starting fires) again, customers make no diferntiation and most are set in their ways. we have one guy who gets ten cords of pine for every thirty of oak and rarely gets more than sixty total. i also know a man who swears by newspaper and iron wood, with a little grill fuel to start it good.

the big tree nut

very true and if its unknown try it and find out

the big tree nut

just paper alone will do if you know how to get it right

Tajfun Australia Pty Ltd

sugar gam:

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Firewood Processors and Forestry Equipment

glennak

Is that meant to be Sugar Gum? If so it is very good fire wood almost the same heat value/weight as box but fires up very quickly with a bit of air really good in slow combustion heaters. I found Swamp Mallet even better but it takes years to dry and it gives the chainsaws a hard time.

Tajfun Australia Pty Ltd

Yes ,it is a lot of diferent spicess out there to give you same amout of heat , .sugar gum is more eco friendly and live you with very litle ash and with big brother firewood processor can cut betven 5-10 ton with out sharpening your chain .

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Firewood Processors and Forestry Equipment

mtbfarms

Hedge. Is by far the best in my area. It burns very hot, lasts long and fairly easy to find. Just makes sure you cut it up green. If its dried out it is murder on saw chains.][\'nm

Tajfun Australia Pty Ltd

When you talking tuff and hard firewood think about ozie geedgee wood and iron bark. If you would like to cut dry hedge use one of tajfuns big brother range of firewood processors - no prblems Tajfun Australia

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Firewood Processors and Forestry Equipment

Dano

Really...

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Cheer's

Dano

http://www.treelove.com.au

dcarter

Ash is very, very conducive to splitting easy. Only the fall of an axe and splits perfectly.

Pine is plentiful where we live and easy to cut (soft), but I only burn it outside, the heavy sap load in southern yellow pines (longleaf, slash, loblolly, etc.) tend to "gum" up a chimney and not really good for indoor fireplaces.

Western pines like pinion, juniper (although not a pine), digger, ponderosa. Often have a tendency to "pop" throwing embers and snapping you awake if you're napping on the couch, lol.

Some southern oaks provide ample amounts of various size wood from kindling to large back logs all in one tree, but are often grainy and split in a twisting fashion, best use a log splitter unless your up for the workout.

As for burning green.... I have burnt green wood in fireplaces my entire life. All different types but mainly Oak, Ash, Poplar, Elm, Beach. I historically only burn dead/dry pine in the fireplace. I worked on a Fire Crew as a sawyer in the Northwest Rockies of USA and now live in SE USA, I have seen every wood I know of (except leadwood in S. Africa) burn while green. (I'm sure leadwood will burn green, I've just never seen it.)

One last thing: I have a degree in Forestry and haven't seen the science but remember from school that on average a tree cut at the stump and left whole will continue to evapotranspirate fuel moisture so rapidly that...in a nutshell, If you cut a tree down and leave it, it will dry out 60% faster than if you cut it down and immediately cut it into firewood. So, if you cut them and wait a couple months then cut into wood, it'll be drier if your planning on burning it in the same season.

Hope this info is useful, Mike

dcarter

Almost forgot, when southern yellow pines (see post above) develop a "slow resin movement" no one can verify why yet because they don't all do it, the ones that do develop it differently and at different stages of life and times of year...they turn into what we called lightered wood. This wood is very dense in sap, it almost looks like a crystallized sugary coating on the wood once cut and eats a chainsaw chain up, becuase it's so hard. It is a very nice fire starter. It is sold here commercially as fire starter sticks. A match or cig lighter only need be applied to a corner for 3-5 seconds and the entire length of the stick will spread and burn. It smells like kerosene when held to the nose. Very nice having it around to start a fire with.