Once again, white pine is my favorite wood.

Dave Shepard · December 08, 2014, 10:08:29 PM

There are many reasons white pine is my favorite wood, and now I can add it to my favorite firewood list, at least in my OWB. My routine is to cut a bunch of pine slabs, and at the moment, a bunch of reject boards and timbers, to 42". I stack as much as I can on the forks of my tractor, about 40 cubic feet. I always have little pieces left over, I call these the giblets. I run the lift of wood down to my house and dump it in front of the OWB. At night, usually between 9:00 and 10:00, I fill the boiler with full length pieces of wood. I put in as much as I can, without really stacking it in too tight. In the morning, there is still usually about a third of a charge in there, so I don't add any right away. With the Central Classic, you are supposed to stir everything up good and make sure you don't have any cold spots in the corners under the ash. You can do that first thing in the morning, but I usually wait until late afternoon when it's burned down. This is when I throw the giblets in. The giblets carry the fire until the night feeding. The pine just burns up. No muss, no fuss. Stir the ash once a day and forget it. Usually, I can walk down to the boiler, fill it, and be back up by the garage before the lights go off, and they are on a five minute timer. I have burned about three Kubota buckets of ash and cherry, and I think that is the reason I have any ash at all in the boiler, the pine just turns to charcoal, then disappears. The ash firewood chunks wanted to bridge up on me. I couldn't really fill the boiler all the way to the back, as then I couldn't work the fire very well. The ash didn't want to burn well until there was a deep ash bed, and that also messed with trying to do my daily ash stirring. I think from now on, I'll sell the ash to pay the electric bill, after all, it's got to cost at least another $20 a month to run those circulators. :D

This is an atypical load, all 5"x18" rafter rejects. Normally, there is a lot of slab wood and junk lumber as well. This stuff really lasted a long time, about 20 hours on a full charge, and it was down to 9° last night.

WDH · December 08, 2014, 10:11:37 PM

I seems to me from your post that you need to spend more time stirring you ash.

Dave Shepard · December 08, 2014, 10:13:32 PM

Believe me, my ash has been stirring, but not around the wood boiler. :D

WDH · December 08, 2014, 10:16:19 PM

:D :D :D :D

WmFritz · December 08, 2014, 10:51:04 PM

Glad you got it up and running, Dave. You shouldn't see much of the oil man this winter.

bandmiller2 · December 09, 2014, 07:11:24 AM

There is a lot of heat in pine, and it will burn cleanly if not choked down too much. Always pleasing to glean heat from what is considered waste. Frank C.

thecfarm · December 09, 2014, 07:17:04 AM

All the right size and ready to go. ;D I used just about all white pine last year in my OWB. But I had to split mine. Glad it is all working out for you.

DeerMeadowFarm · December 09, 2014, 07:33:09 AM

Using "waste" to heat your home has got to be pretty satisfying!

brendonv · December 09, 2014, 10:07:49 AM

Jealous of your wood boiler!

I like pine in my garage wood stove. Like you I save most of my slabs and trims. Light a fire when in working in garage and it's quick and hot heat. Perfect the amount of time to wrench on a truck or whatever.

Dave Shepard · December 14, 2014, 09:28:29 PM

I'm getting away with one feeding a day now, about to go home and take care of it, actually. I don't know how many cubic feet it takes to fill it up, 20 maybe? There will be about a 1/3 of a load in there in the morning, and it will go until 10:00 tonight. One day when it was a little colder, it was down to 163, but by the time I had loaded it up, it was roaring away, and you would never know in the house that it hadn't maintained the temp.

bandmiller2 · December 16, 2014, 08:08:25 AM

Dave, would you get better fuel economy and burn if you fed your furnace three times a day.? Morning before work, home from work and before bed.Thats what I always did. Now that I'am retired I feed a little and often and seem to use less wood with a cleaner burn. Frank C.

Dave Shepard · December 16, 2014, 11:17:33 AM

Maybe, but then my slab pile wouldn't be shrinking as fast. ;)

Dave Shepard · March 19, 2015, 11:58:42 PM

I've been burning ash for the last three weeks or so, and have run out. Fortunately I've been sawing some pine, so I've got some more slabs to burn. Really prefer pine. It takes more volume, but the recovery is much faster with pine than with hardwood. I just need a 40,000 cubic foot woodshed. :D

doctorb · March 20, 2015, 08:38:34 AM

:D :D

I am sure that the recovery is quicker, because that stuff burns so hot. But is the time for recovery a huge factor? Did your water temp dip so low that you had heating difficulties?

Dave Shepard · March 20, 2015, 10:26:24 AM

Yes. I was down to 120 two nights ago when I filled with ash and it took all night to recover. I normally don't let that happen.

thecfarm · March 20, 2015, 10:46:33 AM

Burned all my white pine for the season. I have finally started to get low on my dead standing pine. I have more than enough ugly white pine that will not make good saw logs to thin out to last me a few seasons.

spyder68 · March 21, 2015, 11:45:17 AM

Quote from: Dave Shepard on December 08, 2014, 10:13:32 PM
Believe me, my ash has been stirring, but not around the wood boiler. :D

Hey Dave you are from Alford. My great great grandfather came to Michigan from Alford in 1860. I am going to take a trip this summer to check out my roots.

jwilly3879 · March 23, 2015, 04:42:01 PM

Can't give EWP away around here, too many hardwood snobs. We were looking for someone to haul away the blocks from the landing where we cut back the logs. Finally found someone, even offered to load his truck.

thecfarm · March 23, 2015, 05:24:50 PM

EWP is hard to burn in a regular wood stove. I tried it. Really have to mix it in with hardwood. First you have a real hot fire,than nothing. Does really good in my OWB. One reason why I brought it. I have had people that want me to come get thier EWP,but I have so much wood to burn,I don't need to go after it. Plus it's kinda hard to pick up a piece that is 2 feet across too.

bandmiller2 · March 23, 2015, 09:29:36 PM

Pine can be a SOB to split, I use a monster maul on most, the tough ones I make a slice with the chain saw for the wedge to start. If you don't make a slice with the saw the wedge will pop right out when you hit it. Frank C.

Dave Shepard · March 23, 2015, 10:18:34 PM

So far it's all been slabwood, so splitting hasn't been a problem. I do have about 5,000 feet of top logs that I am going to burn. I have four options. Quarter them on the sawmill and chainsaw to length. Chunk them up short enough to toss in unsplit, probably not going to do that as I won't be able to get a good load, although warm weather is coming. Cut to 32" or less and use my slow splitter to halve them. Build a 5' stroke splitter out of a pair of cylinders I have off of a dump wagon. I'll probably do that, but not until later in the summer. Probably going to go the 32" and split route.

thecfarm · March 24, 2015, 06:12:19 AM

I only have a splitter that does 2 foot wood. It does a mighty fine job on the ones that have them big knots. bandmiller2 is right about trying to split that stuff by hand. Most times it just splits off to the side when it comes to a knot. I have split cords of that stuff.