Persistent myth: "Pine is unsafe/useless as fuel wood"

[blackjack99574]

About the only complaint I have as a seller is that pine is not much fun to cut, split, and stack. The pine tar makes things a bit rough, and I have seen knotty pine stall out splitters.

But, if I had very little else but conifers, I'd burn it and learn to work with it. I used to make scads of furniture and trim carpentry using southern yellow pine. That stuff is amazingly strong. The bench holding this MS660 with the full wrap handle is made with it:

Nice handlebars. Where'd you get em? I had one like that but ended up selling them due to excessive vibration transmitted to my hands.

 

[Wood Doctor]

Nice handlebars. Where'd you get em? I had one like that but ended up selling them due to excessive vibration transmitted to my hands.

That full-wrap handle is a Weber-Custom that I bought about two years ago. The Pic shows it mounted to an MS660. Hardly used, it's for sale, together with long mounting screws for the bottom. PM if interested. I never noticed lots of vibration on this one. It's designed for the MS650 and 660.

 

[jockeydeuce]

Like a few have said, I don't think all pines are the same. Here the only pine we have is lodgepole. For the past 30 years we've been pounded with the Mountain pine Beetle and although the wood has been pretty much all logged now, for the past two decades pretty much everyone that burns wood has been heating their homes with dead pine.....I haven't seen any extra creosote with it than any other wood.

Interesting reading through this thread.

 

[CR888]

Yesterday I brought home some pine logs and noodled them into 1-2" boards. The noodles get used to start the fireplace, the boards get split into kindling. I am spoiled rotten with hardwoods, kinda get sick of dealing with them. Some soft pine that you can pick up without breaking your back and can cut so fast your saw turns into a hot saw is kinda nice and refreshing.

 

[fearofpavement]

Around here in middle Georgia, you can't even give pine away. Some people will burn it in campfires or fire rings but other than that, we either chip it or push it in a pile and burn it. If it was the only wood I had available, I'd heat the house with it, but it's not so I don't burn any.

 

[kingOFgEEEks]

Plenty of hardwood here in PA, but this pine takes the chill off just fine, and my chimney is just fine.

 

[Locust Cutter]

I don't usually look for pine, but have burned a decent bot in my Pacific Energy T-6 stove. While not a CAT stove, the re-burn chamber on top, which is filled with a fiberglass like material does a good job of burning up most of the smoke. Once I have a fresh load of wood burning solidly and solid secondary burn, I usually see in between no to only trace amounts of smoke. having burned various pines and some Cedar, I've seen no impact whatsoever on my chimney. I usually gets cleaned every other year and if a dry measuring cup of material comes out, I'm surprised. I actually like having some coniferous wood on hand to get a quick hot fire going, before switching to Locust and Hedge, just for the additional ease of starting and lack of flue maintenance.

Bu, most of my city customers want NOTHING to do with pine because they *Know* that it'll cause a chimney fire. It's their loss.

 

[Clemsonfor]

I am very curious as to other peoples' experiences regarding this misinformation and the locales from which such folks hail. I understand that when one lives among a bunch of fine hardwoods, the pine tends to get chipped or burned in an outdoor fire circle. I have lived that reality myself.
In my own (completely unscientific!) extensive field studies, I've found that insufficiently cured hardwoods leave a much heavier layer of creosote in solid fuel chimneys than any SPF species do. That has seemed to hold true without regards to the particular wood burning appliance in use or the specifics of the chimney system install.!

I hear this all the time as well. I was born raised and still live in South Carolina. I was born on the coast and lived several other places through out the state. Folks say that all over this state. Pine is easy to get especially since we have so much of it and there is not competition for it. But we also have lots of quality hardwood so I don't spend any effort really to load up on pine which takes just as much labor for me to aquire as oak or hickory. Now if my buddy cuts down one in his yard and bucks it and offers to help load it for me to get rid of it I say sure thing I will be by with the trailer to get it.

This has been documented scientifically. There is a technical paper authored by several agencies, I think its primary author was Georgia forestry commission but also the US Forest Service. Experiment ts were run with a wood stove and Southern Yellow Pine green and dry and with hardwood green and dry. Proven 100% that green hardwood is the worst offender...I beleive even more so than green pine. If anyone is interested I will find and link the paper here.

I am a forester and ran across this paper in my research days while I was in school.

 

[Lightning Performance]

I hear this all the time as well. I was born raised and still live in South Carolina. I was born on the coast and lived several other places through out the state. Folks say that all over this state. Pine is easy to get especially since we have so much of it and there is not competition for it. But we also have lots of quality hardwood so I don't spend any effort really to load up on pine which takes just as much labor for me to aquire as oak or hickory. Now if my buddy cuts down one in his yard and bucks it and offers to help load it for me to get rid of it I say sure thing I will be by with the trailer to get it.

This has been documented scientifically. There is a technical paper authored by several agencies, I think its primary author was Georgia forestry commission but also the US Forest Service. Experiment ts were run with a wood stove and Southern Yellow Pine green and dry and with hardwood green and dry. Proven 100% that green hardwood is the worst offender...I beleive even more so than green pine. If anyone is interested I will find and link the paper here.

I am a forester and ran across this paper in my research days while I was in school.

Good thread.
I agree. Sugar when wet does not burn. Tar and pitch does burn wet or dry IMO. The cambium of hardwoods is the worst offender like semi-wet locust with bark (stinks bad to), wet white oak and wet maple with bark is the worst of the worst. Anything above 35% moisture is just like pissing in the wind or on the fire. Jersey, we have everything here.

 

[Jimmy in NC]

I hear this all the time as well. I was born raised and still live in South Carolina. I was born on the coast and lived several other places through out the state. Folks say that all over this state. Pine is easy to get especially since we have so much of it and there is not competition for it. But we also have lots of quality hardwood so I don't spend any effort really to load up on pine which takes just as much labor for me to aquire as oak or hickory. Now if my buddy cuts down one in his yard and bucks it and offers to help load it for me to get rid of it I say sure thing I will be by with the trailer to get it.

This has been documented scientifically. There is a technical paper authored by several agencies, I think its primary author was Georgia forestry commission but also the US Forest Service. Experiment ts were run with a wood stove and Southern Yellow Pine green and dry and with hardwood green and dry. Proven 100% that green hardwood is the worst offender...I beleive even more so than green pine. If anyone is interested I will find and link the paper here.

I am a forester and ran across this paper in my research days while I was in school.

If you find it I'd love to read it...not questioning it at all.. just love to see it.

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

 

[Clemsonfor]

If you find it I'd love to read it...not questioning it at all.. just love to see it.

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

Hold on....I will get it linked. Hopefully by the end of the day. I will try to remember er it on my work desktop for ease of things.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

 

[Clemsonfor]

Ok it was written looking at the utilization of beetle kill pine for firewood usage from the energy crisis in the late 70s early 80s. Paper was published in 1982. Titled:
Creosote Production From Beetle Infested Timber

http://www.gatrees.org/resources/publications/research-papers/

It's paper number GFRP25
It's the first one in the list from 1982. And I listed the title above.

 

[SteveinUT]

I have very few wood options living in the mountains of southern Utah. Pine, spruce, fir, juniper and aspen. Maybe the occasional cottonwood. EVERYONE here burns pitchy wood. I'd love to burn oak, maple, etc., but it ain't here, and I'm not importing the stuff all the way out west.

 

[ken morgan]

interesting read. Imust admit I had always believed this to be true as well. but hardwoods do burn longer, so I guess daytime burning of SPF would be OK when I am awake to load it.

 

[Al Smith]

The only pines around here are yard trees ,transplants . Most people burn it only for camp fires . It doesn't smoke too bad if it's dried out .
I have a little bit left from half a dump truck full one of the trimmers dropped off .I just give it away to anybody who wants it .I don't . I have an over abundance of hickory,ash and oak .

 

[B440]

I burn pine. I take the free stuff for kindling because people give it away here. But for the effort (cut/split/stack) I have to make, I choose hardwoods because there's more BTUs in them.

 

[ken morgan]

i burned only pine in 2014-2016 as thats all I had a first. then I got hooked up with a wood burning stove club in 2015 over hear and got me a bunch of Oak, but had to wait for it to dry. been on the hunt ever since for hardwood only and last year burnt a a mix. pine in the day and hardwoods at night as I still had several cords of pine that I had cut and split. next winter will be hardwoods only except for my kindling which I will stick with pine as its easy to start the stove with. I was all happy as I was worried about creosote buildup and climbed the roof multiple times each winter to sweep the stove pipe just in case. Was looking forward to less buildup next year but it seems that might not be the case, if that Georgia forestry publication has any merit.

 

[Lightning Performance]

My new stove, twenty years old but nice, burns anything clean. It has a top double row burner and a fresh air curtain on the door glass. Forget to close the start up air intake on the ash door and you might roast this one.

Dovre 400

 

[treesmith]

From UK...

Beechwood fires burn bright and clear
If the logs are kept a year
Store your beech for Christmastide
With new holly laid beside
Chestnuts only good they say
If for years tis stayed away
Birch and firwood burn too fast
Blaze too bright and do not last
Flames from larch will shoot up high
Dangerously the sparks will fly
But Ashwood green and Ashwood brown
Are fit for a Queen with a golden crown

Oaken logs, if dry and old
Keep away the winters cold
Poplar gives a bitter smoke
Fills your eyes and makes you choke
Elmwood burns like churchyard mould
Even the very flames burn cold
Hawthorn bakes the sweetest bread
So it is in Ireland said
Applewood will scent the room
Pears wood smells like a flower in bloom
But Ashwood wet and Ashwood dry
A King may warm his slippers by.


Aussies think I'm nuts because I hunt out ash (fraxinus) and ignore green gum, clean, splits easy, dries quick and dense enough to be worthwhile, dead gum is great but tough to work sometimes


UK has three native conifers, only one of which is a pine, the other two are to make English long bows and Gin


I'd happily burn ash (fraxinus) for the rest of my life, nice to grow, cut, split and burn, grows fast enough to harvest and has lowest moisture content as far as I know of UK species


In Oz now and everything is harder, heavier, denser and hydraulic splitters

 

[treesmith]

Burned exclusively softwood in the hills in Scotland for a while, it was light, dry and fast burning and the shed emptied really quickly. The woodburner was too big and it was a draughty old stone cottage though which didn't help keep heat in, we got softwood because no one wanted it, chimney fires and not enough heat were reasons. Lots of people burnt coal, heating oil systems and also peat in places

Every customer would want to keep all the logs too from tree work

Anyone burned peat? Love that stuff, smells great