Beginner's Mind...

[Engineer]

Central Boiler 5648.

[SwampDonkey]

I use 3 half slabs of 20 inch from 10-12 inch trees. Or there might be some finer stuff that I will only use 4 chunks. Lasts (heat wise) 8-9 hours, fan usually runs steady for 5-6 and then intermittent the rest. Right now it is 75 F in here and I put wood in at 8:20 am and just now at 5:15 pm. Fan kicked in about 5 minutes after I came up stair from adding wood. Won't add any until midnight or 1 am depending when I come out of my evening nap. Outside temperature is +3 F as the sun sets.

[John Mc]

10 acres is not enough to heat entirely by wood in your area, from what the land produces, unless your house is super efficient.

In my part of Vermont, a rule of thumb for a reasonably productive piece of forestland is that you can get half a cord per year, per acre for firewood. This is not taking all the growth off that acre. It's a sustainable yield, and still leaves the best stuff for eventual harvest for higher value uses. With 10 acres, he probably isn't planning on a commercial harvest, though.

A typical well-insulated house here will burn 3 cords per year of seasoned hardwoods, if heating primarily with a woodstove. Depending on what shape his woodlot is in right now, he might make it OK harvesting off his own land if he gets a good efficient woodstove, and his house is reasonably tight and insulated.

[Jeff]

I've always been taught that in this part of Michigan, which has a pretty good dose of winter, that a 10 acre mixed hardwood woodlot is more then sufficient to be a sustainable firewood source for a home.

[ahlkey]

 
Jeff,  you should be fine with 10 acres of sustainable forest to heat your house and could even do it on less.  I have one brother who heats his ranch home of 2,000 sq ft in Wisconson on less than 8 acres using only Aspen!  This does assume that your woodlot is healthy, your house is at least a reasonable energy-efficient home and that you can get a modern energy efficient stove. Equally important is making sure that you get a stove that has long burn times, as who really likes getting up in morning to fire up!  I have  a Hearthstone model and typically it gets between 9-10 hours heating life before I cannot start from the coals.   Likewise, that you are willing to use both hardwood and softwood (whatever is available to you).   As mentioned already probably the most important thing to keep in mind is to burn dry seasoned wood as it all comes down to BTU output and without dry wood you will never be completely happy. 

[SwampDonkey]

Yes, 10 acres will last a long time as a firewood supply even up here and people burn 3-10 cord of wood a year. I burn 7.5 cords here in an old farmhouse that is pretty well insulated. We get 0.5 a cord per acre average for growth, on better sites it might be near 0.7 cord. Rock maple, yellow birch, beech, white ash sites are your best growing ground in this region.

[Banjo picker]

How about some of you southern foresters letting us know what can be averaged on good southern soil.     Tim

[maple flats]

My main woods for heating my house AND my maple syrup evaporator is about 13 acres wooded on a 15 acre parcel. I have been working on getting it properly thinned for 30 years. Starting in 2003 I started making maple syrup. The first season I only burned about 2/3 full cord in the evaporator. Year 2 about 2.5 cord and year 3 about 3 full cord. In 06 I burned 3 again. In 07 I burned 4 full cord and in 08 I used almost 6 full cord. These are all in the evaporator. My house uses about 3 full cord per year, every year. With all of this and some logging too, I still have not gotten all sections properly thinned. My land is good tree growing land but this is just to show that a woodlot that is overgrown can support more for several seasons before you get to the sustained yieldfigure. For this maple season I have about 8 full cord ready. I think I will be at my needed thinning in around 3 more seasons. On the logging done the first commercial thinning in '79 all went to the sawmill. Since 04 it has stayed on site, first in prep for and then beginning in 05 for my own sawmill. These figures since 05 are a little skewed because part of my evaporator wood has been slab from the sawmill, some from my woods and some from custom sawing of customer's logs. I did not keep a record of how much was incoming slab. Even though I think i will be catching up soon I am also adding an RO (reverse osmosis) to my maple operation hopefully next year which will cut wood consumption about 75% so I may still not need to get wood elsewhere, time will tell. I think many woods likely do not produce the volumn of wood mine does but most of this is still because of the process of improvement cutting on a thick growing woodlot. I suggest you get a state forester (or private if you prefer, but i used one from the state, but not until 2003) to help you decide what to cut.