Mostly Green Firewood - Am I Screwed?

[bussell]

Hey Guys,

I've got about a cord or so of mixed firewood (cherry, birch, soft maple, ash, pine, poplar) and its been curing for only 3 months or so.

I've got a few pallets so far, and intend to get a bunch more to supplement my supply of wood.

I knew before that green wood isn't as good as dry wood, but I figured it would be good enough. After doing some reading, however, I'm concerned that it might not work!

Will my firewood produce enough heat to not only burn, but also bring my pan to a boil?

I've heard Ash is fairly good green, so perhaps I could cut some more of that and use it. Has anyone used green Ash?

Thanks

[Haynes Forest Products]

Its always about the BTU and if you use them to heat the sap or to heat the green wood to get it to burn.

[killingworthmaple]

Last year I stopped by a local building site and asked for the cut off strap. They said sure I dropped off some syrup for them and I got lots of kiln dryed fast and hot burning wood. I got so much that I didn't use the fire wood I had cut. It saves the builder money from putting it in the dumpster and it's free.

[Fred Henderson]

You can use green wood and be ok. You will just use more of it because some of the BTU's has to go for drying it.

[vtsnowedin]

For a small rig like yours you should be able to scroung up plenty of dry project wood scraps and pallets as the others have said. Green ash does burn pretty well but I would look through your woods for dead and dry to add to the pile. One good sized dead pine tree would be plenty but be careful of widowmakers snapping off as your cutting it down.

[BarrelBoiler]

i take it you have some wooded area you can work. look for standing or leaning dead stuff hard or soft wood if you can find construction ends ro more pallets that will help too. ash and white birch burn pretty well greeen popple not so much even split small

that will be your key split samll people say wrist size i don't have huge wwrists but that would still be a 2x3 inch piece of wood i know my dad would be thinking about spliting that again but he did like playing with fire:)

get some drier burnables to go with what you have and mix things together
it'll work

[KenWP]

As long as you have dry and the green it will burn pretty good. The dry will burn up fast and the green will sort of burn slower. As long as you can keep a good flame you should be okay. If it was a large pan with long flues you would be in trouble as the flue gasses would not be hot enough campared to dry wood only.

[danno]

I thought you said you had green wood. If it's been under cover in an area that gets air movement/wind, you'll be ok with 3 month wood. Not as good as if it seasoned for a year, but much better than if you were just spltting it now. A good, cold, dry winter with good air circulation will dry it nicely.

[kinalfarm]

i dont know about where you are located but around here lumber mills burn piles of slab wood as big as my house every day just to get it out of the way. i can buy a bundle as big as my truck for 15 bucks and it burns supper hot. maybe check into that.

[wcproctor]

Two things, one split the wood small then it will dry fast, two drive around and look for someone building a new home or a addition and go dumpster diving and get the cut scraps. When you boil us 50/50 when you can then you will have btu's

[bussell]

Thanks, guys!

[Frank Ivy]

Some thoughts -

When green wood burns it produces just as many BTUs as seasoned wood. Problem is, a huge portion of those BTUs are used to increase the molecular energy of the water in the wood until it is above 212 F.

I've burned wood for years - green wood sucks. If you fill your burn chamber with the same amount of green and seasoned wood, you'll get, maybe 2-3 times more heat out of the seasoned wood. After green wood is about 60% burned down, you'll get good heat out of the coals, but at that point, it's time to add more wood.

3 Months is not enough for most species of wood. Better than nothing, I suppose.

Wood does not season much in the winter if your temps are below freezing - the water in the wood stays frozen in position, and there is not much sublimation.

So bottom line is - you'll be MUCH better off finding seasoned wood to burn now and waiting until next year to burn the green stuff.

Oh yeah - and ash can be burned green with good results.

[maple flats]

Frank Ivy is sort of right but he exagerates. The difference is not 2 or 3x more heat for dry but it is significant. In some years in the past I boiled with wood that was less than 2 weeks old. The pans still boiled but you will not get as fast a boil. It is best to have dry but in a pinch use whatever you have. When caught short on wood, fill the box even more often but add less. Keep the air inlet full open and criss cross the layers as you add. I find it best to keep the level at about 8" below the pans. As it burns down (5 minutes is good) add quickly to bring to same level. With dry wood you can go more like 6 or 7 minutes and add a little more at a time. By adding less each time you have more heat in the arch to dry the new. Wet wood will not burn, the fire needs to dry it first. This will hopefully teach you to have wood ready early next year. I have enough for 2010, 2011 and most of 2012. This is because I burned wet and learned my lesson.

[Frank Ivy]

Frank Ivy is sort of right but he exagerates.

I take issue with that.

If I load my house stove with seasoned oak, it will be at 800 degrees stove top within 20 minutes and stay above 600 for about 3 hours, above 400 for 8 hours.

If I load my house stove with green oak, I can't get the stove above 300 degrees.

Same is true of most wood types.

It's no exaggeration. Dry wood will put out at least twice the heat, and i'd guess 3 times the heat would not be out of range for some species.

If wood is really green - as in fresh cut, the only way you can burn it is to put it on an established fire, but all it does then is squelch the fire and take 2 hours to drive off all the water before it heats back up.

[TRAILGUY]

was burning dry wood split small in the house. Needed to refill and was thinning sugar bush of some green ash split larger. So filled the house and the wood shed. What a diffents less then 1/2 the heat

[PerryW]

My evaporator boils like heck with dry wood, but green wood, all I can get is a slow rolling boil.

Though I heard a blower helps out, and splitting is up small also helps.

[JuniperHillSugar]

I read this thread and had to review for my own purposes, I thought it might be helpful.

In basic terms:
It takes 80 units of heat to turn one unit of ice to water.
It takes 1 unit of heat to raise the same amount of water 1 degree (C).
It takes 540 units of heat to turn that same water from 100°C (212°F) to steam at 100°C (212°F).

In my mind, that says if I have green wood with frozen water (sap) in the wood it will take a very large amount of energy to turn that moisture from ice to steam, and sending that energy up the stack. This energy will not be able to be used to boil our sap, but instead the sap in the green wood.

I would suggest that this real difference between truly "green wood" and truly "dry wood" would be hard to "exaggerate". The real question might be what is "dry wood"?

I boiled last year with wood that I had to dig out of the snowbank, not dry by any definition. This year my sugar wood has been cut and split since June 2009 and it is not as dry as I would like it.

I would scrounge, beg and forage for waste wood as was suggested earlier in this thread. Standing dead wood, although potentially dangerous to cut, might be your best option.

[Dill]

Frank is right. In order to get green wood to burn, the water has to be boiled out of it first. Hence the hissing sound. Now White Ash you can burn the day you cut it. Beech is close second, maybe a month or 2. Then Cherry.
But if your area got smacked by the ice storm last year, poke around you should be able to find some dead stuff in the woods.

[Stickey]

I ran out of wood last year and found that the standing dead pine that I scrounged up worked pissah. Get the stuff thats still upright, not laying down. Somewhere I read that it takes 9 months to season wood properly. I'm sure it's subjective to species and conditions. Everyone has there own technique. My dad leaves his heaped in the field, bottom layer in the mud, drives me nuts. Oh well, to each his own.

[vtsnowedin]

Frank is right. In order to get green wood to burn, the water has to be boiled out of it first. Hence the hissing sound. Now White Ash you can burn the day you cut it. Beech is close second, maybe a month or 2. Then Cherry.
But if your area got smacked by the ice storm last year, poke around you should be able to find some dead stuff in the woods.
Beech second??? Not in my book, very heavy green and very good wood once dried out and lighter. The differnce between its green weight and the air dry weight is the amount of water you have to boil out of it before you get to boil any sap. So for say maple that weighs about 5200 per cord green and 4000 dry if you were burning a tenth of a cord per hour you would be burning 120 lbs of water or fourteen and a half gallons. If your rig boils off say sixty five gallons of water with dry wood you would probably be down to fifty or a little less.Your still boiling sixtyfive gallons only fifteen of them are in the firebox. As to the dry vs. green in the house the big difference you feel is from the rate of heat loss in the house out to the weather. The green wood just barely keeps up with the rate of loss so the house stays cold. Switch to dry which is giving thirty percent more and it easily meets the heat loss and the extra heat soon has you openning the windows.It seems like twice the heat but what it is is twice the margin over the minimum to hold a given temperature. Just an old woodchucks point of view from beside the wood furnace. :)

[JuniperHillSugar]

Firewood with water in it cannot burn until you have removed the water, because wood will not ignite at 212°F.

For the same reason, you could boil sap in a paper pan, because the sap will keep the paper below its combustion point.

For anyone who has melted out a soldered sap pan, the same theory applies.

It takes 540 times as much energy to turn one gallon (or pound) of water into steam, as it takes to raise that same amount of water just one degree.

The next discussion is heat transfer. If I burn two cords of dry softwood and all the heat races up the stack without being absorbed by the pan, then what good is it?

This hobby / addiction is really a great lesson in Physics.

[JuniperHillSugar]

PS. The old homestead has a wood furnace, with a woodstove as back-up!

We made sure not to drop the waterbottle out or bed or we'd have to thaw it out in the morning.

[Beans Maple]

There are only 2 hardwoods that will burn even marginally good green #1 is Hickory and #2 is White Ash. But don't be fooled...even mixing good dry softwood such as pine/hemlock will not make the green hardwood burn better. Go get some dry stuff.

[KenWP]

Around here lately I have had to go out side as late as 2 am to get a load of dry wood from the shed as the outside wood is to wet to warm the house. I can have it roaring as it burns and the stack gauge never shows hot. Lucky I have lots of inside wood.
I am amazed how much wood I can haul home from one lumber yard. I have had kindling and dry start up wood all winter and lots of it left for sugar season also.

[Frank Ivy]

It seems like twice the heat but what it is is twice the margin over the minimum to hold a given temperature. Just an old woodchucks point of view from beside the wood furnace. :)

Good sir! It's not a question of "feel."!!!

It's the thermometer on top of the stove.
Seasoned wood - pushes 800 easy - have to turn it down.
Green wood - can't get it to 300 loaded to the gils with the air set on high.

No "feelings" are relevant!

[3rdgen.maple]

Bussell you are not screwed. It may not be the ideal situation but if it is what it is burn it and make syrup.

[BarrelBoiler]

bussell you are not screwed the first year my sister made syrup she didn't have any wood to speak of ready we just went out and cut the dead and down stuff out of a 2 acre stand of 2-6 inch pine didn't leave much time to think but we MADE SYRUP so strike that match and Boil Brother, BOIL:D

[ebourassa]

IMHO green wood is better than no wood at all, green wood will produce syrup and no wood wont. Think of it as a lesson for next year, I usually cut all my wood for next year when i boil this year, works out good and their are always people over to help more when i boil then any other time of the year.
good luck you will be fine.

[3rdgen.maple]

30 post on wether or not he can burn green wood? I think we all need to get in the woods soon and start tapping.

[KenWP]

31 I think we all need an other hobby. There is post after post on when do you think we should tap also.

[wnybassman]

31 I think we all need an other hobby.

Don't matter. On the icefishing board I hang out on there is constant debate whether or not a 10" hole is needed to fish out of. Pages and pages, every year. Just the nature of an internet forum, that's all. ;)

[3rdgen.maple]

4 to 8 inch there is no need for a 10 inch hole...:D

[KenWP]

they catching whales with a 10 inch hole.

[Farmboy]

You can burn wet wood. It won't burn as good as seasoned wood but it is better than no wood. To get your fire going use plenty of paper old rags and waste oil. A propane torch helps too.