hard or soft..

[Tapmealot]

waht do you guys prefer using in your wood evaporators? hard or soft wood or both?

[caseyssugarshack93]

i mix in some soft pine slabs with my hard wood, i do a mixture

[KenWP]

Soft works well as it burns fast and hot. But you have to load a lot in. Hard wood gives off a lot of heat and works good in my preheater as it only takes wood 6 inchs long. My evaporator likes a good bed of coals in the fire also and hard wood provides them a lot better then the soft wood does.

[Dennis H.]

I mix softwood with hardwood. I do let the softwood dry at least a year and boy it that like rocket fuel. Now you do go thru more but man does that make the pan boil.

If you don't have any softwood to burn people are more than willing to give it to you because aleast around here no one wants to burn it in their home wood stoves, chimney fires.

[brookledge]

I burn some hard wood but mostly soft wood. This past year we had a microburst in town and I got an unbelievable amount of soft wood delivered to my sugarhouse. I also have a few guys who have woodmiser mill and ask me to take the slabs. I cut hardwood to heat my house and hot water in my wood furnace in the cellar.
To answer your question though I'd say burn what is best for your situation. I'd say use hardwood if you have to go and cut it. Talk to tree companies in your area, tell them that if they are in the area and cut down a pine and are looking for a place to get rid of it you will take it. Most tree companies who cut soft wood are glad to dump it close by. Hard wood they keep and turn into cord wood.
Keith

[3rdgen.maple]

Hardwood heats the house softwoods boil the syrup. That way all the dead wood in the forest gets used.

[StewieSugar]

Hardwoods (oak, hickory, sugar maple, ...) have about twice the energy (measured in BTUs) per cord of wood than softwoods (pine, basswood, ...), and they create a better bed of coals. If you're looking to save time cutting wood, hardwoods is the way to go.

However, the softwoods burn faster, so they will generally burn hotter. If you don't mind cutting twice as much wood, use softwood to get a better boil.

Personally, I'm not picky, so I use whatever is around.

[KenWP]

I have to heat the house with soft wood also as that's all I have almost. I have some elm and birch that I try and save for when I go to bed. The evaporator got fed little cedars most of the time untill I ran out and had to split wood for it. Dosn't really take a lot of wood to run it so you can split a days worth pretty fast anyways.

[Brent]

There are lots of studies around on the net to research. One I read by the Univ of Michigan I think, was a study on evaporator efficiency.

When they studied wood they found that almost all wood had the same energy available PER POUND. So in a given volume, heavier = more energy and that is hardwood.

It was also interesting that they found the calories per pound of bark was about 15% or so more PER POUND than the wood. So winter cutting, which leaves the bark on longer, will have a bit more energy than summer cut, that sheds its bark sooner.

One of the curious things they found was that the amount of time you leave the doors open when adding wood, and the style of the doors, made a huge impact on efficiency. Doulbe doors being best. Open one at a time and get it closed up fast. It took a few minutes to recover the heat levels after leaveing a big single or double doors open for a 'lazy' firing.

They even went to the trouble of putting a preheater on the air supply that they were blowing into the evaporator and found it added a lot of efficiency. They used a heat exchanger in the stack. They also blew all the air above and into the fire, not from below.