Shoulder Season Classification

[BucksCoBernie]

This will be my first season burning and I am really looking forward to it. I have several different types of wood to burn this year and based on the post Ive been reading for the past year + I should burn different types at different times of the burning season.

I plan on burning the Sassafras I have ready to go during the early burning season and late months if i have any left.
I have some Mulberry and Maple ready to go for the colder months.
I also have some 6 month split cherry, black walnut and maple that I plan on using next year but might have to use if i underestimated my supply for this year...by the time i get to the point of using those splits they should be around 9-10+ months seasoned.

So besides the obvious 20 degree temps when do you determine to go with the hotter burning wood over the lower rated wood? Any rules of thumb with the outside air temps?

 

[flyingcow]

Looks like you got it all figured out. Have fun.

 

[SolarAndWood]

I burn "shoulder season" wood all season and save the denser wood for when we aren't there to load the stove for an extended period/overnights/etc.

 

[TreePapa]

Sorry, our winter never gets as cold as your shoulder season.

Peace,
- Sequoia

 

[Backwoods Savage]

BucksCoBernie, good luck on your first year of wood burning.

Do not discount that cherry. It has been split 6 months ago, it is probably ready to burn now and it is darned good wood. You might use that for your overnight fires.

Here, we burn the "junk" wood during the daytime hours and burn good wood at night. The heating season does not get into full swing until December here except for a few days here and there.

To be more specific on our "junk" wood. Knotty stuff that didn't split well, short stuff, maybe some that is beginning to show signs of turning punky etc. Our wood consists mainly of ash, cherry, elm and soft maple. The ash and cherry are the big guns right now with the elm and maple the faster burners. The wood we will be burning this winter has seasoned a minimum of six years so we do not worry that some won't be ready. That is a very nice position to be in.

 

[Tony H]

I also try to save the best wood for the overnight or longer burns . Most of the time I am around to load during the day so the maple and box elder work fine.
The biggest deal for me is the long burn on very cold nights in January where I need it to go 7 hours so I can get a good nights sleep with some nice coals left to get it roaring fast again in the morning.

 

[BucksCoBernie]

great info. thanks for the responses. so my understanding was a bit off.....I should burn the lower rated wood anytime during the day and keep the hotter stuff for the overnights. i guess the heat output difference between an 18btu rating and 22btu rating isnt really that much of a difference? just that the higher btu burns longer?

 

[WOODBUTCHER]

I save all my trash-punk wood, chunks, knots, y's, caps, odd balls and small diameter stuff for the beginning of the season and then burn the rest come mid March/April.
On January/Feb nights its BIG Splits of either Hickory, White Oak, Birch or Ash......or what ever I have on Hand. If I notice my wood bin consists of only of whimpy sized splits, I will go to the stack
and pull 2-3 big guns out of the pile for an overnight burn.


WoodButcher

 

[Backwoods Savage]

great info. thanks for the responses. so my understanding was a bit off.....I should burn the lower rated wood anytime during the day and keep the hotter stuff for the overnights. i guess the heat output difference between an 18btu rating and 22btu rating isnt really that much of a difference? just that the higher btu burns longer?

Bernie, you have it right. The difference in woods you probably won't notice when they are burning except that the lower rated woods will simply burn faster. So with the higher rated woods, you just won't put wood in the stove as often, therefore, great wood for overnight burns.

On the other hand, you can imagine what it was like many moons ago when women did all their cooking on top of a wood stove. As a young lad, I used to have to sort wood for cook stove vs. heating stove. Small stuff went into cooking stove but about the best we found for cooking (at least during warmer months) was pine. Yes, that dreaded stuff! We used lots of small pine because it burned fast and quick so that the stove didn't heat so much nor leave coals. Quick cook the meal and let it cool.

 

[CowboyAndy]

this year i have ash, poplar and aspen splits plus maple, ash and white birch 2" rounds that i will burn now through december. after that its exclusivly sugar maple 24/7 and about 3/4 cord of shagbark hickory for nighttime. my rule is that if its above freezing then the maple stays put.

 

[firefighterjake]

During the shoulder season I tend to burn the less-desirable woods -- softwood slabwood, poplar, etc. along with the chunks and odd-ball sized wood -- and I don't put in as much wood. The idea for me is that I only want a quick, hot fire to take off the chill . . . typically this is done when the evenings are cool, but not too cool (30-50), but the next day the weather should be up in the 60s or 70s (when I can take advantage of the passive solar heat coming through the windows to keep the house warm during the day.) Usually, after getting a coal bed established with the first load up I'll just do one (or maybe two) re-load(s) . . . and as I said, they're typically smaller loads with less desirable wood.

"Shoulder season" ends for me when I start to burn 24/7 and/or I start to select more desirable BTU wood and load up the firebox a bit fuller as I want more heat out of the stove. I'll still use some of the less desirable wood to restart the fire in the morning or when I'm kicking around in the evening or on a weekend, but in general if I'm gone for the day or sleeping through the night and want coals in the morning I'll go to the "better" stuff and load the stove to the gills -- and again this is usually sometime in late-October or early-November and by this point the temps during the day and night are usually right in the 30s-40s consistently with little warm-up during the day.

 

[peterc38]

Sorry, our winter never gets as cold as your shoulder season.

Peace,
- Sequoia

Our summer never gets as warm as your winter

 

[myzamboni]

my shoulder season is when i shrug my shoulders and think "might as well have a fire"