I have a fairly large pile of redwood boards left over from our old decks. There are a few pieces I may plane down to recycle into something usable, but most of it is just short bits and pieces.
It would all make great firewood for our woodstove, but I'm concerned about burning lumber that has had a few coats of deck stain applied over the years. The majority of the stain has weathered away, but I don't want to cause any problems in our woodstove or chimney.
Would these boards be safe to burn in my woodstove?
Well, since you are sure they aren't CCA... I'd just burn the bastards. As xronger said, probably not the best thing to burn... but unless you live next to effi, I wouldn't worry about it too much.
Truth be told, when I replaced my deck, most of the old one ended up in the fireplace the winter before. I didn't worry about it though, as it hadn't been stained in at least 15 years.
Nope, none of the deck boards are treated. I take that stuff to the dump.
Any stain left on these boards is primarily on the surface. There is very little, if any, of the stain that hasn't weathered away already.
I have already run several of the larger boards through my planer and made some really nice shelves. But, most of the pieces are full of nails and/or are too small to be of much use.
I've thought about gluing up the boards into panels I can do something with, but I don't know what I would do with them? :) It's a lot of work to go through without an end project in mind.
I suppose I could cut/plane the boards to remove any surface stain, and feel safe burning it. But again, that's an aweful lot of work and it's kind of rough on the planer knives.
Primarily it will be hard to burn--redwood is pretty fire resistant as wood goes. If use it w/ other stuff you can manage to burn it up, but by itself it won't work very well in all likelihood.
It would be easier, more productive and greatly lower your heating cost to just buy a pulp cord of logs for $45.00 then cut them up. Should work out to about 14 to $15.00 a face cord. Can't say what it would do to the chimney liner or the air for that matter.
Right. People who say don't burn it as it is too much trouble aren't looking at the big picture. A pile of cut-offs to be gotten rid of, a house needs heat, what is sensible. BURN IT. I burn a lot of construction wood that I wouldn't walk across the street to pick up but I need to get rid of it anyhow, might as well get -some- use out of it.
There isn't enough heat in redwood to be worthwhile. I would have to be really desparate for firewood before I would burn redwood. (But then, I have more good wood than I know what to do with...)
Right that mixed in with other woods it will burn just fine. Forget the less heat or any other negative. One big positive is that it is easier to haul away a bucket of ashes than a ripped up deck.
The stain shouldn't cause any problems. Shouldn't be enough left on the boards. Just for peace of mind, burn a a clean load of fast burning wood, spruce, pine, etc., every four or five loads to keep the creosote build up to a minimal level.
The answer is yes if we are assuming this is untreated redwood. There are few volatiles left from the stain after weathering. Burning it will have no effect on the stove.
OTOH. Redwood is so light, it will burn very quickly. I would think of other uses. By short you probably mean less than 4' but maybe more than 18". Uses for whatever goes in the ground -- stakes, edging, posts etc.
Hate to see redwood burned! Maybe you could trade it for some pine or fir.
The redwood deck boards are leftover from a mobile home we recently sold. We will be doing some landscape work soon, so I need to get the pile cleaned up. I'd rather not have to pay to have it disposed of or ground into mulch. Unfortunately, most of the wood is not good enough to reuse for anything. Firewood seemed like a good use for it.
We built our own home and have a LOT of T&G cedar cut-offs from installing our ceilings. These are the reject boards that had knots, splits, broken tongues/grooves, etc. We cut them into equal size pieces that will fit in our woodstove, and have about a full cord of wood there. It burns fast, but it still provides lots of heat when we want it.
George,
The redwood is untreated. In fact, only the decking and railing have stain on them. The underlying posts and joists are mostly unstained.
I had hoped to pull the deck boards up intact and remove the nails. Unfortunately, I apparently used spiral shank nails when I built the deck, and there was no way they were coming out! The boards split, cracked in half, or the nail heads popped off before those nails were coming out. The mobile home was going to be moved in a few days, so I had to take the decks down in a hurry. I eventually had to cut the deck apart with my reciprocating saw. With 24" joist spacing, this meant most of the pieces are about 22" long.
Yeah, me too... No one around here even carries redwood anymore.
I planed down some of the wider boards and made some really nice little shelves for our bathroom. Despite 13 years as a deck, some planing, sanding, and three coats of spar urethane produced some really great looking shelves.
Sadly, most of the wood is partially decayed or is not real attractive. I ran about 30 of the boards through my planer yesterday, and only 2 were attractive enough to keep. I cut the remainder into firewood.
That would be 8 foot logs (100" actually) stacked (measured) 4' wide by 4' high. One pulp cord should yield about 3 face cord (8' X 4') if cut to 16" lengths and split. I usually order 10 to 15 pulp cord and invite everybody over for a logging party. I live in a national forest and propane is expensive, so I heat primarily with wood. I order more than I need for the year so that I've always got well seasoned wood to burn. This works out for me to be about $215 to heat with wood for the winter and maybe $275 for propane. Get them from either a logging company or from the Amish in the area.
Actually, that is just a "cord" -- 4 x 4 x 8 no matter how the wood is cut to fit that. People around here may call it a pulp cord simply because cutting them 8' long is the simplest way.
Wish I could still burn in my stove, but my wife says it bothers her asthma too much, so I took the stove out. Was cheap to heat when we used it, but work to get the wood. Damned gas furnace is ok but it sure is expensive.
You get 10-15 cords a year and burn most of it? and you buy it for $215? I looked in the paper this morning and a cord here costs a minimum of $125. If you can heat with $275 propane, why do you need so much wood? shouldn't be using more than 4-5 cords a year at the most.
No, I burn 10 to 15 face cord, not full cords. One cord (or pulp cord) yields about 3 to 4 face cord, but let's use 3. At $45.00 per pulp cord of un-cut logs, that would be $15.00 per face cord. 15 face cord would work out to $225.00. A face cord (some refer to it as a cord) would be about 16'' wide stacked 8' long x 4' high. A full cord would be 4' wide x 8' long x 4' high. ( man, too early in the morn' for math).This year I figure I am going to burn 12 face cord, that would be right around your 4 cord estimate. I've always got excess out there aging. I like to cut them about 16 inches. Some will tell you they get 5 face cord per full cord, but man! those would have to be short. The $275 for propane is cheap, the furnace only kicks in during the wee hours of the morning, if I'm gone, or the MS is messing with me. This year, I pre-paid it so it was only $1.07 a gallon. If I were to pay someone to bring me face cords of split wood 16" wide, around here it would be about $55.00 down state it would cost about what you pay. People are paying, not so much for the wood, but rather the labor that goes into it. Out here in the boonies it's a lot cheaper. I'm heating 2000 square ft and it's burning pretty much 20/7, 24/7 if I get up at night to pee. Doing that, one must keep that chimney clean and well maintained. There are plenty of logging companies here that do maintenance cutting. They don't have to truck it far and are glad to sell the hardwoods that can't go to the lumber mills.
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