Fast Firewood

[George]

White birches are a _lot_ lower density than yellow, which is a splendid firewood.

[George]

Baloney. You're splitting hairs. I'm sure you know what he's saying. After a few years you will be thinning and burning what was only seed when you purchased the land. Hardwood responds best to that kind of care and, since land is relatively cheap here, coppicing is not normally practiced.

Of course you will have to pay tax at three times or more the rate the state pays for wooded acres as the price of your stewardship, but, as liberals would say, that's what you get for being greedy and trying to keep something for yourself.

[Will]

Can't resist. :-)

Lived on the west coast for quite a while. Traveled the Island forests and coastal waterway areas quite a bit. Been through the gulf Islands -- just logged off rocks now -- and traveled through Desolation Sound and the interior of BC (and Alberta) quite extensively... Spent a fair bit of time walking "old growth" forests.

My old partner was a professional forester. Got him out to look at the "huge cedars" in my front yard - in a small burb just outside Vancouver. Had to hold him up - - he was laughing so hard about "saplings". They were only 30" across and about 90 feet high. Every time he came over after that he started giggling and smirking when he saw the trees. This was when I had just moved out there... :-)

He used to harvest old growth on Vancouver Island and the coast. He said most of the trees were 20 to 40 feet across near the base when he started cutting. Most of the cedar trees were about a millenia and older when he started in the trade. He pushed hard for conservation and a slower cut rate - everyone told him the forest would go on forever and thought him a raving lunatic. They had a "log the next hillside" mentality and could not imagine the end of the forestry trade. Now we have mostly second and third generation forests on the West coast. Most if us have never seen a forest of large trees. We see museums like Cathedral Grove and think it's a big forest... But the trees out there can be 2000 to 3000 years old - just darn few now.

You can still see some Big Old trees > Will wrote:

[Steven and Gail Peterson]

There is a way to do this, if you have acreage and water and nutrients. Plant trees and prune occasionally to promote growth of lower branches. Once they are big enough, around 6" or so, harvest the branches but leave the trunk and roots to grow another crop of branches. The roots are the engine for growth; the trunk just holds up the branches and provides transport for nutrients. It takes a while, at least 10 years, for the first crop of branches, but after that you can get sustained yield of fire wood, given enough producing trees. "Enough" depends on a number of factors. I don't have the links, but there are sustained forestry sites that explain.

Steve

[Steven and Gail Peterson]

Not the ones in my yard! Sparks are visible when you cut the wood. The chain has to be sharpened frequently. Chains don't last all that long. Also quite a bit of ash is left. But it burns long and hot.

Steve

[Leon]

Are you saying that your trees are about 36 times as tall as they are wide?

If these trees were proportionally as tall to width as your trees some would be over a quarter of a mile high. Those are some trees..

I would love to see those monsters I have always been amazed at their size.

[Leon]

Maybe a tree hugger got to your tree before you decided to cut it and drove some nails in. ;~)

[Virgle Griffith]

It was yellow poplar and dry. I have a 24' X 48' metal shed for storage. I started this winter with 17 cords of wood due to a storm taking down the trees. I had one chimney fire due to this. My problem was burning it too low at night. If you burn it hot there is no problem. I burn it during the day now and use good hard wood at night. I burn anything that grows in the woods. It all puts out heat just some better than others.

Virgle

[Will]

Not my trees no more. But... Western Red Cedars are big trees. These are (were) the dimensions measure on the front yard trees. Almost 3 feet across and about 90 feet high. The root systems spread wayyy out. Many times the width of the trunk. I know the root system had a diameter of at least 30 feet on those trees - because I dug into it a couple of times. (Did a calculation of 80 ft on the height when we bought the house.) He was quite insistent they were babies - said he could core them and give me an age - but at east 40 years and maybe as high as 80 years old. Said he didn't cut under-age trees due to high moral standards. :-))

Don't think so. It ain't proportional -- If that were true we would not have a problem with over harvesting. I forget the maximum heights on the Big Red Western Cedars - but 200 to 300 foot high isn't (ok wasn't unusual alright?) that unusual -- as I recall -- on old growth Western Red. we are talking about trees in the range of 800 years to over 2000 years old! eh? Most of the energy goes into the log I think.

Americans used to have the big western reds and cypress on the US west coast - but engineers just developed ever bigger chainsaws. Bless their hearts.

Used to take my hat off whenever I saw a barge load or a boom of the old growth go by. Like to pay my respects before I cut it up.

You should be able to find pictures of trees from Stanley Park and Cathedral Grove on the Internet.

Some of the foresters I worked with told me that at wholesale they could often price the logs at $20K to $40K (per log that is) -- this is clear cedar and cypress - so it's expensive -- and increasingly rare.

But I am sure there are West-coasters on the forum who can give more current information. :-)

[Tim Douglass]

Well..... For eleven years on the farm I did that with a barrel stove every night all winter. I would literally go for 4 months without ever having to light the fire - it always had coals to start from. It wasn't the world's most airtight stove, and the fuel was almost entirely pine, fir and tamarack (western larch), but it did exactly what you wanted from your airtight stove every single night. I guess results can vary, huh?

Tim Douglass

[George]

Trees with durable wood are able to last through an injury rather than rotting, often overgrowing the entire insult. Unfortunately, dust, dirt and other things get in there in the interim.

The Dutchman aside, the same probably pertains to the mesquite mentioned earlier. I know it does to cedar up here.

[fredfighter]

Vancouver.

Sounds about right. There is (or was) a stand of white pines in New Hampshire called the B-something (bradford?) pines. Planted around the time of the American Revolution I saw them when they were about

200 years old, they were approaching 200 feet tall and were about three or four feet in diameter at shoulder height.

They won't be. But I agree that would look way cool. To support the weight of the tree the cross-section of the trunk has to grow proportionate to the weight supported above that section, which is proprotionate to the volume of wood above. Thus trees become more squat in form as they grow tall and branch out in the canopy.

Also the maximum height of any given species is limited by ambient air presssure and humidity. But there is no physical limit on the girth of a tree. 'Mature' trees have reached their maximum height but continue to grow in girth. That's why I put 'mature' in quotes, a tree grows continuously until it dies. Indeed, trees are solar poswered, the more leaf/needle area a tree has the faster it grows. The giant Sequoias are among the world's fastest growing organisms, though the change from one year to the next is hardly noticeable since the trees are already so big that a few more tons of wood doesn't change the appearance much.

Also, at the risk of starting a flame-war I take exception to the use of the term 'harvest' in reference to cutting old-growth. 'Harvest' is appropriate only in regards to what one has planted. E.g. You reap what you have sown.

[Will]

Point taken - careless use of the language. "Forest-Raping" is more appropriate. Most people in the business used to say that quietly when the tree-huggers weren't about -- they all knew it was the truth. One time a _very_ highly placed executive answered the phone when I was in his office -- what I heard was: "G. here - we rape the forest". My jaw dropped! He just looked up when he hung up and said: "Caller ID - don't worry. H. was still laughing when he hung up. Besides - it's true right?" And we carried on business...

(Names withheld to protect the forest rapers. :-) )

[Charles Krug]

When the phrase "Fast Firewood" came up on the subject line, did anyone else think, "Bulldozer, tow chain, house . . ."

[Dave Hinz]

Well, "I wish I still had my backhoe", is that close enough?

[George E. Cawthon]

Absolutely, perceptions are colored by what is available locally. There is a lot of knowledge here of people living in very disparate forest regions. But here is still some Chevy vs. Ford arguments. As another person pointed out, wood gives the same amount of heat (generally) per pound of wood regardless of specie, yet some just won't accept that. However, the amount of heat per pound as Charlie pointed out is only one aspect of burning wood.

Beech may be great, but I believe I have never seen a beech tree and it isn't native in the west and it isn't planted as an ornamental where I live. All one has to do is look a a rainfall map and it will become clear that the native trees will be very different. I like people that talk about Seattle and Portland being very wet and rainy areas, and they are compared to some western areas. However, with annual precipitation of 35" they don't compare to most of the U.S. east of the Mississippi. We hear all the time about 6-12" of rain in less than a week, especially in the southeast. That's 1/3, 1/2, or the total average annual precipitation in many areas west of the Mississippi.

[George E. Cawthon]

Could be but you can't make that comparison in the west since yellow birch isn't native to the west. Paper birch is still denser than most confers.

[George E. Cawthon]

No he is not. Cedars have a very tapered stem. As it grow taller it also grows much wider. Cedars don't get much above 200 feet, so a 20' diameter would be a 1/10 ratio. Chances are you will never see a Western Red Cedar with a

20' diameter as a 10' diameter is considered large. I believe one the largest was 62' in diameter (on Vancouver Island) but trees of that diameter were never common and anything over 15' is often/usually hollow at the base.

[Leon]

Well what does 30 inches across and 90 feet tall mean? Seems that equates to 1/36th. I am familiar with cedars being wide at the bottom but his description seemed like pencil junipers.

[Will]

It was probably 3 to 4 feet at the base. As I recall I measured it at about eye height - around 6 foot. It was a sapling - remember? Who pays attention to these little details on a sapling? :-)

On the really big cedars the base goes up considerably higher.

Le>>