Best wood for Woodburner

[flickrod]

What do you consider is the best wood to use on a woodburner?. Hardwoods i am told are the best,is Siver Birch any good as there is a lot of that about where i live?.

 

Thanks flickrod.

[Catweazle]

Silver birch is good for lighting the fire, make sure you store it off the ground as it rots quickly. Ash is the best all-round wood, easy to burn and split, lasts quite a while. there might be a lot available soon. Oak is good but more difficult to split, hornbeam is my favourite to keep the fire in overnight, but is difficult to split.

[gixer1]

Which wood?

So what sort of wood burns best? Well there is an old anonymous poem which answers this very question:

LOGS TO BURN

Logs to burn, logs to burn,

Logs to save the coal a turn

Here's a word to make you wise,

When you hear the woodman's cries.

Never heed his usual tale,

That he has good logs for sale,

But read these lines and really learn,

the proper kind of logs to burn.

OAK logs will warm you well,

If they're old and dry.

LARCH logs of pine wood smell,

But the sparks will fly.

BEECH logs for Christmas time,

YEW logs heat well.

SCOTCH logs it is a crime,

For anyone to sell.

BIRCH logs will burn too fast,

CHESTNUT scarce at all

HAWTHORN logs are good to last,

If you cut them in the fall

HOLLY logs will burn like wax

You should burn them green

ELM logs like smouldering flax

No flame to be seen

 

PEAR logs and APPLE logs,

they will scent your room.

CHERRY logs across the dogs,

Smell like flowers in bloom

But ASH logs, all smooth and grey,

burn them green or old;

Buy up all that come your way,

They're worth their weight in gold.

Note that all woods burn better when seasoned and some burn better when split rather than as whole logs. In general the better woods for burning that you are most likely to come by (including non-native species) are:

Apple and pear – burning slowly and steadily with little flame but good heat. The scent is also pleasing.

Ash – the best burning wood providing plenty of heat (will also burn green but you should not need to do this!)

Beech and hornbeam – good when well seasoned

Birch – good heat and a bright flame – burns quickly.

Blackthorn and hawthorn – very good – burn slowly but with good heat

Cherry – also burns slowly with good heat and a pleasant scent.

Cypress – burns well but fast when seasoned, and may spit

Hazel – good, but hazel has so many other uses hopefully you won’t have to burn it!

Holly – good when well seasoned

Horse Chestnut – good flame and heating power but spits a lot.

Larch – fairly good for heat but crackles and spits

Maple – good.

Oak – very old dry seasoned oak is excellent, burning slowly with a good heat

Pine – burns well with a bright flame but crackles and spits

Poplar – avoid all poplar wood – it burns very slowly with little heat – which is why poplar is used to make matchsticks.

Willow – very good – in fact there is growing interest in biomass production of coppiced willow as a fuel.

[kent]

Beech is the hottest burning i have tried. Sycamore and ash are more easily obtained round here. I hate cutting down ash at present though sometimes there aint an option as it grows big in very bad spots

[al4x]

Free wood is generally best

 

I have a supply of beech and ash and that tends to be what mine is fed, we have a stack of sycampre to thin out so I do burn it but it is no where near as good both heat wise and the length of time it lasts.

[guest1957]

Anything with a moisture content below 20% that you can get at a price that makes it cost effective. I wouldn't waste your time with kiln-dried wood as it is very expensive and naturally seasoned wood can be just as good.

 

Properly seasoned softwood burns well, but burns faster so expect to pay less per cubic metre than hardwood.

[mick miller]

al4x has it right, FREE is the magic number when it comes to wood burners!

[kent]

It aint realy worthwhile paying the going rates for logs, better to burn smokeless then- its £25-£30 a bulk bag (like hardcore and sand comes in when delivered on hyab) here or about £5 for a teeny weeny net bag in the shops

[Mick Shaw]

Ash is best.....

[landrover]

have a look here http://www.rural-smallholdings.co.uk/running-smallholding/wood-burning-guide/

[ferguson_tom]

Anything that is free and not been treated it all burns, but harder the wood the better. Most of the time you do not want the burner running at full temperature anyway so have it damped down to a nice radiator sort of temperature. Try not to use willow unless its been stored dry for a couple of years as that is normally very wet but fine once dry.

[JDog]

There is going to be a lot of ash wood available for the next few years due to ash die back disease.

[aister]

MDF or worktop off cuts

[henry d]

Ash and Birch are my faves as easily obtainable and burn well. Not tried willow, masses of it here, but as it takes ages to season I won`t be using it much.

[billytheghillie]

stocks of berettas and browning

[njc110381]

Despite all the reading I did on the subject and being warned away from it I have a shed full of poplar at the moment. It's actually ok. Not up to the standard of beech, ash or oak but it keeps the house warm.

 

As mentioned above it was free and free is good! Given the choice I like beech, it burns very long and hot in my experience but at the moment there's none going spare.

[.philmypower.]

It's what they use to make matches.

I like ash as its easy to split and burns hot. But any wood is good, as long as its seasoned properly.

[Pheasant Feeder]

I tend to use a mix of what I can obtain, currently a mix of silver birch and oak. Silver birch is quite easy to get going and burns quite quickly whilst the oak is slower burning, so I tend to start off with SB and then move on to oak.

[39TDS]

I have run my fires on Leylandii for years.

Burns very hot as long as it is dry and practically zero ash.

Spits a bit but as it isn't an open fire that doesn't matter.

Left outside a couple of years first (that way there's no sticky resin) then kept under a tarp for a while then split and stacked under cover.

Usually somewhere around 17% moisture or less when I burn it.

Downside is that it won't stay in for as long as hardwood. Although massive logs on my newest fire are staying in well. I guess the other fires are not so airtight when shut down.

 

 

Leylandii because it is free and I have lots of it. Burn around 25 tons a year, maybe more.

Edited December 3, 2012 by 39TDS

[DSPUK]

have to agree with Aister

 

MDF and kitchen units and work tops burn a treat - fed my Clearview with it and boiler and rad's got really hot - It did smell outside but I didn't care as I was always sitting in front of it while burning it - Never had a Flue problem with it and it was all free heat. - I burnt anything that would go on it - plastic -cardboard - kitchen scraps - Leylandii - Popular - pine - Roof truss off cut's - oak floor off cut's and anything else that came my way --- I do miss that big log burner. - My Hunter 4 is so small.

 

Dave

[hillmouse]

Never try to use lime. It's like trying to split rubber and on the fire it just sits there, goes black and thats about it. You get warmer trying to split it and swearing and poking it.

 

Larch is exciting on an open fire.

[39TDS]

MDF and chipboard give off nasties when burnt. Can't remember the name for them but they deffo cause cancer.

Dioxins

[flickrod]

Where do you get your logs? do you wander around the woods with a chainsaw? I want to be self suficiant if possible and want to know the correct procedure for collecting them.

[al4x]

get permission from the farmer simple as

[FalconFN]

We have no other heating so we get through tons of wood a year most of it comes from one free source but it there isn't any available I have had to go to a local sawmill and buy lengths of oak offcuts - last year my total fuel spend was 7 pounds. Don't wander into a wood and start cutting up logs or you'll find yourself in trouble, if you do a bit of research you can find a decent source nearby.