Fast Firewood

[Steven and Gail Peterson]

Yes, but the wood has very high silica content and will dull a saw chain quickly. Just a nuisance.

Steve

[Tim Douglass]

Of course not, but the original post was about quick growing firewood trees, and the general response was that oak and hickory grow to slowly to be considered quick-growing - as though there weren't any other options if you are interested in firewood soon as opposed to the best firewood possible. I have never burned either oak or hickory except as the result of some unfortunate breakdown in woodworking skills, so I can't even make a useful comparison, I simply point out that if you want to grow trees to make heat there are a lot of fast-growing options that will do the job.

Tim Douglass

[fredfighter]

If you cut it when its green it cuts pretty easy--most woods do. Locust gets pretty hard as it cures.

[Doug Miller]

With all due respect ... you're talking nonsense. There is NO species of tree that grows fast enough that you can plant one (as the OP was asking) and get firewood, good *or* bad, quickly -- even the rapid-growing hybrid poplars take ten years before they reach firewood thickness (and they'll never be firewood quality). The *only* way to get quick firewood is from trees that have already been growing for a number of years. Anyone who thinks he can plant and grow his own firewood is dreaming.

-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

Nobody ever left footprints in the sands of time by sitting on his butt. And who wants to leave buttprints in the sands of time?

[Leon]

Would a tree that grows to 35' with a 30" trunk in 10 years be fast enough? I had a Chinese Tallow taken out in March that I have been burning all this winter. 2, 7 to 9" diameter logs typically burned hot and all evening. These trees grow wild in the Gulf Coast states.

[Tim Douglass]

The OP never specified what he considered a "short amount of time". When talking about growing trees I consider 10-15 years a short amount of time, so that is the framework I'm using. I know many people who are cutting trees for firewood that they have planted - I even know loggers who are cutting timber on ground that they clear cut before in their career. So it is not a dream that you can plant and grow your own firewood, it just takes a few years. If I had 5 acres in a temperate and wet climate (like the Puget Sound basin) I could easily start with bare ground and within 5 years be getting enough small thinnings off of the trees I planted to at least provide a substantial percentage of my firewood needs. From 10 years on I could cut all the wood I needed and never run short - forever. Yeah, the wood would be alder, but I heated a house with it for a lot of years and it does the job.

Tim Douglass

[Mark & Juanita]

Not wood, but have you considered a corn stove? There are corn-burning stoves that produce good heat similar to the pellet stoves. Corn produces

7000 BTU/lb. Since corn weighs 56 lbs per bushel, a good midwest yield of 200 bushel (conservative) per acre would yield 78.6 million BTU per acre each year from the shelled corn. You could also harvest the cobs and stalks for additional fuel (realizing that somewhere you are going to have to put some of those nutrients back into the soil). A sophisticated operation could utilize a dual system, with one burning the kernels, the other, if you could locate the equipment to pelletize the stalks could burn the straw as pellets.

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ The absence of accidents does not mean the presence of safety Army General Richard Cody

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[George E. Cawthon]

You've certainly burned a lot of different woods. I also heated mostly with a wood stove for about 20 years, but I live in the west. We burn just about everything, and in contrast to most discussions of terrible woods, it all burns, some fast, some more slowly. We don't burn many hard woods; birch is about the best. Quaking aspen is suppose to be bad, but it burns ok. But the most available woods are pine (Ponderosa and lodgepole), white fir, Douglas fir, spruce, and tamarack in some places. But heck, even cedar is good for kindling and for fast fires in the early autumn and late spring.

You don't like softwoods because of creosote, my wife doesn't like maple (from decorative trees) because it burns to hot, and my inlaws don't like it because it makes too much ash.

It all burns!

[George E. Cawthon]

You'll probably regret that.

[George E. Cawthon]

Not true. I consider it the best of the available woods (not that much of it available) here for holding a fire. But in much of the west, the most common native woods burned are Doug fir and ponderosa pine.

[Silvan]

Not anymore. These days, most outfits sell them back to companies that buy and/or make pallets so they can be re-used. Wood doesn't grow on trees you know. It's a valuable commodity that can't just be tossed in the landfill anymore.

(And wood *doesn't* grow *on* trees. :)

[George E. Cawthon]

I'm with you Luigi. I can barely part with the smallest piece of milled hardwood. Most of the silver maple and birch I have burned was reaction wood (limbs) up to 10" diameter. Still I feel bad about burning any of it.

[Silvan]

I'd start here. The National Arbor Day Foundation has been experimenting with stands of fuel wood that they use for heating. Their stands are sheared off, and re-grow new tops within 6-7 years, but they are chipping them rather than sectioning and splitting them I think. Not a lot of detail here, but it's a place to start:

'm sure they'd be happy to provide more information if you asked.

(Or not. They never respond to any of my email, and I'm a contributing member, dammit. Oh well.)

[George E. Cawthon]

Depends on what you mean. Buy 10 acres of forest that hasn't been logged in 20-30 years and you will have firewood forever.

Yeah there are easier ways, see above.

Sure dense woods are the best, they just aren't native in abundance everywhere. But Poplar is commonly burned in some areas.

Not necessarily, some trees only live about 30 years. Of course you have already dismissed Lombardy poplar, but their average life span is only 25-35 years. We had a neighbor down the street plant a row on one side of their lot and cut everyone of them in about 20 years when they had bases of

18" to 24" and were well over 100' tall. Birch grows fast. I cut my clump birch (actually paper birch) after 20 years and after fighting a fungus disease for several years. It had three major trunks and yielded a lot of wood with many blocks in the 10-8" diameter.

[P van Rijckevorsel]

Actually, silica content of black locust is zero PvR

Steven and Gail Peterson schreef

[P van Rijckevorsel]

George E. Cawthon schreef

hasn't been logged in 20-30 years and you will have firewood forever.

*** In that case you are not growing your own firewood but harvesting wood that has grown over the past 20-30 years. Also, "forever" will depend on your rate of consumption.

[Charlie Self]

George E. Cawthon responds:

Gotta agree with that last. But my bias is a simple one: back when I was using wood for heat, I wanted to be able to load up a nearly airtight stove, shut the vents most of the way down, and get up in the morning to a reasonably warm house. Poplar, regardless of type, won't do it. Pine won't do it...pines are the softwoods I dislike most for resin content and creosote production. I've let them dry out for three or four years, though, and found them superb for quick heat.

Another point I guess none of us has made that I saw: quick heat. If you've got a large area to heat from a dead or near dead stove, poplar, pine and similar lightweight woods are great because they burn fast, produce their heat in a much shorter period than do most oaks, hickory, etc.

IMO, though, hickory (and by extension, pecan) is the best U.S. firewood. The best part of that: it's a nearly hateful wood for woodworking.

Charlie Self "I think we agree, the past is over." George W. Bush

[Mike Marlow]

It's interesting to see, as this discussion has opened up, that people from different parts of the country have different views on the same pieces of wood. I'm in the Northeast and birch is not as common by a long shot, as maple and beech and some of the others. It's a wood that a lot of people like to cook over outdoors and like I said, one that a lot of people like for their fireplaces, but other hardwoods are preferred over birch for the most part, around here.

[SawDust (Pat)]

Thinking back a number of years. In my area, poplar was being planted to replace what had been harvested. That was the choice because it was one of the quickest growing species.

Two quick thoughts...

1) Birch is supposed to have the highest BTU output when used as firewood. Not sure about poplar. You might want to check that aspect.

2) Local borg charges an arm and a leg for S4S Poplar. Not sure why. I can't imagine trying to stain it. Price is very close to S4S Maple. Might be better off selling it, than burning it...

Pat

[Mike Marlow]

The birch that grows around here (white birch?) gets punky *really* fast. Faster than beech. In fact most of it does not come off the stump all that great.