Juniper wood

[cowabunga dude]

Would you burn juniper wood in a fireplace?

Does it have too much resin in it?

Last week I burned three large piles of juniper wood that's been drying out since July. I put a match to some needles and the whole thing went up quick. Fire was 30 feet in the air.

That was just the branches, I still have a lot of big trunks, and more branches to cut. I don't have a fireplace but thought I might give it to a neighbor if it won't mess up their fireplace. I don't know a neighbor who has a fireplace, but could probably find one.

I don't want to get anyone else to cut the trees because they're close to the house, and it needs to be done carefully. One tree is going to be real tricky because of the house, c-band satellite antenna, and the power lines. I'll probably have the power company come out and trim the tops, they've done it before, to get them out of the power lines.

Will probably have at least a cord when cut.

If you want the wood and are willing to pay shipping I'll send it to you, plus a handling charge.

[Frank]

Would not burn in bulk in a fireplace because of high resin content. Leads to creosote buildup.

[rbowman]

Keep your chimney clean... In the southwest, you burn juniper because there isn't much else worth burning. Up here we burn pine, fir, and larch, again because there isn't much else. People in the east with hardwood coming out their ears sneer but you use what you've got.

Season it well and don't close the damper. Or, if you've got a source of better firewood, keep it for sitting around a fire in the back yard.

[Terry Coombs]

I'm one of those lucky ones ... we've got 12 acres of oak and other hardwoods . But I don't sneer , I grew up in Utahahaha where pine is the predominant fire wood .

[rbowman]

That's one of the things I miss about the east. There is a lot more diversity, and that's a good thing in the woods. Around here it makes species identification easy as long as you can tell a ponderosa pine from a douglas fir. Throw in a few larch but they're easy; their needles fall off.

There's a local Forest Service legend about a fast track easterner who was getting his career ticket punched by a year at Nine Mile. "what are all those dead pine trees?" he asked, looking up at a stand of larch in the fall.

[songbird]

...

no, bury it and let the fungi/worms have it.

we don't burn much at all (neither of us have much tolerance for smoke of any kind) and eventually broken down wood makes the best garden soil.

or use it as a brush pile to give critters a home.

songbird