Burning Wood

Ken68

Just had a look at some old pallets and the softwood slats are nailed to HARDWOOD 3"x3", so would have thought them ideal for burning. Looks like beech.

punamulta

In scandinavia they have always used softwood, they developed these wood burning brick storage heaters as early as the 17th century, you burn the wood in the small firebox for an hour or so, the flue goes several times round inside the brick construction,, the bricks heat up to 140 deg or so and heat the room for up to 10 hours after you shut the damper. i still use mine, its fantastic.

link sorry not in english but pics tell it all,they must be fairly easy to build as the principle is simple.
http://www.tiilirakenne.fi/index.html

this site is in english and has state of the art softwood burners and info on the heat values of various woods http://www.tulikivi.com/www/homeeng.nsf/wwwframeset?OpenPage

from their site, they reckon pine is better than oak!

Effective thermal value of dry substance

Wood kWh/kg
Pine 5.3
Fir 5.2
Birch 5.3
Alder 5.2
Aspen 5.1
Oak 5.1

peat

The figures on thermal value are interesting but it is a bit simplistic to say that pine is better fuel than oak. The basic density of the materials must be considered.
Pine basic density .41
oak basic density .56
Therefore 1 cubic metre of pine would weigh 410kgs and produce 2173 kw
1 cubic metre of oak would weigh 560kgs and produce 2856 kw.
In practise moisture content is far more relevant than nominal thermal values of dry matter, you will never be dealing with totally dry matter.

punamulta

thanks for the density figures peat, i do notice the drying difference between this damp island compared to the extreme dry conditions back in finland, all the moisture is frozen out of the air once you get below -15 degC or so, this would make those dry wood heat values more relavent there.

We do find that birch needs little or no drying and burns very hot, so hot in fact i have to mix it with spruce or pine or risk setting my log house on fire.

Dora_the_Explorer_5

Interesting thread. OS advice for burning anything on an open fire: GET A FIREGUARD. Anything has the potential to spit when burning and you never know when, or if, it will do it, which is also why heathrugs were invented