Burning Pine is it really ok?

[marty319]

As I cut my own firewood all that's in the cutting areas around here is jackpine.there is a little bit of poplar.i burn 24/7 and 4-5 cords a year.pine around here is about 350 a cord.my truck ins for 2 months ,wood cutting permit and gas and oil for my truck and saws runs me about 400.i usually cut 5 cords every fall.if I had to heat with electricity I would be around 500 a month.the biggest bonus is at 68 years of age all the work is keeping me from seizing up lol.

 

[Isaac Carlson]

Everybody always told me not to burn pine when I was younger, and I have burned up a lot of it in bonfires only to regret it now.
Much of it would have made excellent shakes. I find myself in need of siding and shingles, but it is hard to find a good shingle tree.

Any wood is fine, as long as it is dry. Even the stuff that seems punky and wet will dry to be somewhat respectable.

 

[DonTee]

Not to get too far off topic here, but man, I need to learn how to make shingles and shakes. I’m always wanting to build another outbuilding, but the metal roof is expensive.

What kind of wood makes good shingles/shakes? Hemlock? Spruce maybe? Seems like white pine would rot too fast.

 

[bikedennis]

Cedar makes great long lasting shingles.

 

[DonTee]

I wish I had some cedar but I don’t. As far as softwood there is spruce, hemlock, larch, and pine (white and scotch) on my property.

 

[Isaac Carlson]

You can use whatever you have if it splits nice. Shakes dry out quickly, so rot isn't really a problem. I was going to split some out of maple this week, but it didn't split real straight, so it went through the splitter.

 

[DonTee]

A lot of my ash splits really straight. And I have a ton of it. I’m gonna try it.

I watched a show once where they showed how to make shakes. It was easy, but also more steps then I thought.
They started with rounds of some kind of wood (I forget what they used) and tied a band around it. Then they split it in like 1/100’s. Maybe it was more than that.

After that they untied the band and all the pieces came apart. They did many more shaping steps to make them perfect, but I don’t know that the extra steps would be necessary if you were making shakes for like a woodshed roof.

 

[Isaac Carlson]

There are a few different ways to do it. You can split a log in half, then half again, and again, and again. Always halves, to keep the pressure even between the pieces so it splits straight, until you get to the thickness you need.

Or....
You can split a shake off and then flip the block upside down and split another, flipping it over every time. This should give tapered shakes with most wood, but you need to make the shakes thick enough that they don't run out the side of the block and end up short/thin.

I have split oak shakes on the splitter using the half, half, half method. It works well. You need nice straight wood for shakes. I have 2 oak logs laying outside right now that I am going to gest to see if they will work. Some do and some don't. It depends on the tree.

For a woodshed roof, they don't have to be perfect.

The scraps make great kindling, especially the pine.

 

[cahaak]

I burn a fair amount of pine, primarily because I have had a number of them taken down in my yard and these are ~65 foot red pines, maybe 2' diameter at the bottom. It burns great. OF course, the density is low, so you need more volume of it, but it burns completely and doesn't leave much ash. Works best when I mix it in with some hardwoods. If dry it is no issue at all, just get a hot box initially and damp it down and just let it continue burning. It lights very easily, dries quickly... Of course, I would prefer black locust, but free from my own yard is the best.

 

[danthedewman1]

Dry pine is fine...wet pine will getcha though...

any wet wood will getcha, lived in alaska for 40 years we only burned spruce,,,no problems

 

[brenndatomu]

any wet wood will getcha, lived in alaska for 40 years we only burned spruce,,,no problems

True, but I think wet pine is easier to burn than many other woods though too

 

[RockyMtnGriz]

I think that calling something {just) "pine" is misleading. There are many different "pines" and they burn differently. In life I've burned at least yellow pine, ponderosa pine, digger pine, sugar pine - whatever that might have been, and these days I burn almost exclusively lodgepole pine - because it's what I have. Lodgepole for instance, is nearly free of the resins that some other pines have in abundance (and unlike some of the other "pines" I've used, it splits easy too).

Just seems like there's a lot of apples and oranges going on here.

 

[lml999]

^^That. You burn what you have. If it's dry and affordable, it's good.
Discussion only ensues when a choice can be made. If poplar is all you have, it's the best there is...

Or upholstered wooden desk chairs, which make a lot of smoke in a college dorm fireplace. This may or may not have happened in upstate NY one winter...or several winters...but if it did it made a lot of smoke.
(we were young. we were stupid...)

 

[brenndatomu]

make a lot of smoke in a college dorm

The fire, or...?

 

[joop]

had fireworks one year couldn't figure out why now i know thanks

DRY pine is great stuff. With the weird weather here lately I have been digging around in the woodpile looking for pine and wished I had more stacked separately as I would rather not burn better hardwood with the warm temps. I agree it's not good deep winter fuel and won't hold coals but if it's free and easy I will take it. Spruce is fun too as it can be like fireworks in the stove and I like the smell, helps with cabin fever.

 

[joop]

god in his infinite wisdom figured people in the southern states needed some nice burning oak,whilst everyone up north can have the scraps lol

Both, I actually prefer a 50/50 mix of pine and poplar over 100% of either.

Pine is often resinous and can produce soot when burned, burning poplar with it seems to combat this to some extent.

Now poplar should always have it's caveat, as there is at least a dozen sub species often denotes as poplar. In my case poplar is trembling Aspen, and good solid aspen makes pretty good firewood, partially rotten it does not. Other species like balsam poplar are garbage IMO.

The most extreme climates on this continent burn the most inferior woods for heating. I'm actually in the Northwest Territories right now and about 50% of the homes rely on some amount of wood heat. That wood of course is the short scruffy pine, swamp spruce and trembling Aspen trees covering the land scape. I also know they get winters colder than 99% of residents in North America see.

 

[EbS-P]

god in his infinite wisdom figured people in the southern states needed some nice burning oak,whilst everyone up north can have the scraps lol

Keep going south we have mostly pine!

Longleaf pine - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[joop]

so he just teases everyone on the ends of the continent lol

 

[EbS-P]

so he just teases everyone on the ends of the continent lol

I’ll take my pine over oak. Nearly the same but content if you have a sappy tree. Way less ash, like 1/4-1/3. Dries in one summer. And if this thread stays under the radar it is always free!

A good secondary combustion stove burns off all the soot. Got keep on top of a reload. And get the air turned down asap. And all I get in my flue is some fluffy black carbon nano tube looking stuff.

 

[joop]

bought 3 cords one year nice and dry no complaints .can't find the guy i bought it from closed up shop i guess

 

[stoveliker]

I’ll take my pine over oak. Nearly the same but content if you have a sappy tree. Way less ash, like 1/4-1/3. Dries in one summer. And if this thread stays under the radar it is always free!

A good secondary combustion stove burns off all the soot. Got keep on top of a reload. And get the air turned down asap. And all I get in my flue is some fluffy black carbon nano tube looking stuff.

View attachment 311755

you gotta have some electron microscopy eyes
I have pitch pine here (and a lot of oak, and unfortunately my pitch pine source just dried up - he brought a Drolet ...), and I've had splits that were full of fatwood...

Where did you find the numbers about BTU content? Pitch pine (by definition having a LOT of sap), is listed as around 17 million BTUs per cord

 

[St. Coemgen]

I believe the historical issues with pine was due to the sap.

In a fireplace the sap in pine would pop, crackle and throw embers into the house, onto the floor, so was a fire hazard.

And wet sap can create a lot of creosote.

But if the pine is dry, and burned in a wood stove, with a door, and burned hot, the sap issues should mostly go away. So, IMHO, pine is fine. I have not burned a lot of pine, but what I have burned is dry, and it gave me no issues. That is only anecdotal evidence on my part, so take it as such only. Try pine yourself. A little bit at a time. Till you get comfortable with this wood.

Hope this helps.

 

[EbS-P]

you gotta have some electron microscopy eyes
I have pitch pine here (and a lot of oak, and unfortunately my pitch pine source just dried up - he brought a Drolet ...), and I've had splits that were full of fatwood...

Where did you find the numbers about BTU content? Pitch pine (by definition having a LOT of sap), is listed as around 17 million BTUs per cord

Longleaf pine Vs. oak.

I decided to start the season burning my stack of longleaf pine. Last night was the biggest load in the firebox this season. It got plenty toasty. So I looked up some densities of Longleaf pine and loblolly pine and laurel oak. All readily available here in the coastal south. The dried density...

www.hearth.com

I did the math based on density and added the btu stock values calculators % for extra pitch

 

[stoveliker]

Hm. Well, my (anecdotal) experience does not suggest that (pitch) pine, even when splits are half-way transparent fatwood, burns as long (mind you, with a thermostat, so the argument that it blows out the same BTUs in a shorter time, is (almost) completely negated) as red oak.

Based on that (burn time) I get a smaller difference than 17 vs 24 (MBTU/cord), but it's not the same for me. Of course statistics is poor for burn time, and error margins high.

 

[Wildflush]

Pine is find if dried well. Most sellers including mine won’t sell it. My place said that customers think it is light (compared to hardwood) and burn it even though still too wet to burn safely increasing creosote.