Woodburners -- Have you burned Northern White Cedar?

[Cedar Eater]

I have an abundance of standing dead Northern White Cedar. It is light, dry, easy to harvest, and it burns HOT. I'm wondering if there are downsides to burning it in an evaporator. I know the smoke is unpleasant on the eyes, but other than that. TIA

[eagle lake sugar]

I've burned a lot of it the last couple years. I milled out a log home and used the slabs and ends in my evaporator. It burns fast and hot. Debark it if you can, there will be less ashes.

[Brookmaple]

Cedar is great for starting the fire in your arch, however you'll be stoking more often than with hardwood.

[motowbrowne]

Cedar is great for starting the fire in your arch, however you'll be stoking more often than with hardwood.

Personally, I prefer soft woods like cedar, pine, basswood, poplar, etc. Yes, you have to stoke more often, but it seems to burn cleaner and make sap disappear faster. I feel like with oak and other hardwoods I end up with a buildup of coals which prevents me from adding as much wood as I want to. Also, it's a good way to get rid of wood that I don't really want to burn in the woodstove, for the reasons you mentioned.

[pennslytucky]

i prefer the softer woods too. especially aspen. no coals at all and it burns so smoothly. the big benefit i see with the lack of a coal bed is easy shut down. a bed of coals takes hours to stop making heat, but aspen just goes out and quits

[Cedar Eater]

I've got plenty of popple, too, but the cedar seems to burn so much hotter in a campfire. I've just got a small round firebox (an old washing machine drum) so I'll be feeding wood every few minutes no matter what I use, so I need it to burn hot. Clean is a plus.