What You Should Know about Firewood

by Jane C. Web Marketing

Getting a wood burning stove perfectly suit for your home, it is just beginning, you have to think about the firewood for your stove. Sometimes, compared to choosing wood stove, getting firewood make people feel more frustrated, what types of firewood can be burned in stove? What is the best firewood? Where to get it? How to store it? Those questions make most of stove users crazy, thus we will talk about those questions and offer stove users instructions and tips for how to do.

1. What types of firewood can be burned in your stove?

I believe every stove user knows that burn best firewood means we can get more heat and burn less fuel, it also means our stove working in best state.

In general, we need two kinds of firewood, one is softwood, which can ignite easily and are usually used as kindling to start the fire. However, if you burn too much softwood in your stove, there will much creosote accumulated in your stovepipe, it may lead to a chimney fire, therefore, once your fire is established, don’t add softwood any more. Such as, pine, basswood, spruce, fir, hemlock, poplar and balsam, etc, all of them are nice softwood and can be used to get the fire started.

Once the fire is established, we don’t need softwood any more, we need hardwood to let the fire going. Almost all the stove users like hardwood, because of their density, they will talk longer time to burn and can be burned for a long time, so they can keep our home warm in longer. Nice hardwood include rowan, hawthorn, cedar, walnut, oak, maple, cheery, ash, ironwood, hickory, rock elm, yellow birch and sugar maple, you can choose some of them as your firewood and you can easily get from local supplier or forest.

2. Why shouldn’t burn wet or green firewood in your stove?

Generally speaking, green firewood needs at least 12 months to season, so don’t burn those firewood which are not enough dry in your stove, no matter it is a log burning stove or multi fuel burner. Because green and wet firewood contains too much moisture, if we burn them in the stove, all of the energy of the fire gets up to boil off the moisture in the wood, while those energy should be used to produce heat for our house. Furthermore, both of them are hard to light and generate much smoke when they are burning.

3. What is the best firewood (dimension)?

We had talked about what types of firewood we can burn in our log burning stove above, now we will talk about their dimension.

For those stove users who plan to split firewood yourselves, don’t forget to take the dimension of your firewood into consideration, include the length and thickness. In all, the length of firewood should depend on the size of your stove or fireplace, for most stoves, the ideal length is 18 inches, the ideal thickness is less 10 inches, if any log is thicker than 10 inches, it should be split in half or quarters.

4. Where to get firewood?

There are three ways to get firewood, the first way is buy firewood from online shops or local suppliers, the second way is cut down trees, spilt and store them yourself, the last way is get some free firewood. About how to get free firewood, you can refer to 11 ways to get free firewood. The second way is the best way, it can ensure you get the best firewood and won’t cost you too much money, you just need to ensure you have enough time to cut down trees, spilt and store them, you can do them, and you have a truck, besides, you need to prepare your firewood as early as possible, because they need at least 12 months to become season.

5. How to store firewood?

No matter you bought seasoned firewood, or get them yourselves, you have to think about those things about storing. I believe most of stove users will choose to store firewood outdoors, there are many details we need to pay attention, such as how to stack firewood, the distance between woodpile and your house, the cover if you don’t have a outdoor structure with shed, how to prevent woodpile pest infestation, etc.

About how to store firewood outdoors, there are two posts will offer you detailed steps, as followed:

Instructions about how to store firewood outdoors

How to prevent a woodpile fest infestation I

How to prevent a woodpile fest infestation II

This article covers many aspects about firewood, such as best types of firewood, how to get firewood, the dimension, how to store them, absolutely, it may ignore something, about wood stoves and firewood, you also can find what you want on Astove official blog.