J-RO said:
Just as the title says what is the best firewood to burn and wat is the best way to season? Will be looking at getting my wood for next year soon and im new to the whole wood cutting and seasoning process so i need some advice, will be buying uncut and unsplit and doing it all myself to help save money. Any advice would be great thx.
Welcome to the forum J-RO.
To the regular posters, I apologize for using some of the same photos over and over but feel they do serve a purpose, so here goes.
First picture is wood that was cut during winter of 2008-2009. It was split and stacked in April 2009. We are burning some of that wood now but there is more than enough yet to burn for the entire winter next year. This wood was left uncovered until early winter of 2009 and then covered with old galvanized roofing (that is the second picture).
This picture shows a wood pile covered during winter. Using the galvanized roofing keeps one from having to struggle with those terrible plastic tarps.
This picture is wood that was cut in 2009-2010 and split in March 2010. There is enough wood there for 2 years burning.
What is the best wood? That all depends upon what types of wood is available in your area. It would do no good to recommend some type of wood as best if that is not available to you.
The best advice I can give you is to get your wood
now. Do not wait! Get it split as soon as possible. Then stack it in single rows perhaps 4' high. Stack it so the wind hits the sides of the wood piles. Also, do not stack the wood on the ground. If you look at the pictures you'll notice we just cut some young trees in the woods, lay those down and stack the wood on top. Of course one could use landscape timbers, RR ties, or anything else. Some use pallets but personally I do not like them at all but if you like them, use them.
We believe most of the time wood is best left uncovered during the first summer. This allows for better evaporation of the moisture, which is what drying wood is all about. We cover before the snow flies. I can understand that in some area it is best to cover the wood right after stacking. Yet in other areas and even in some "wet" areas, many folks never cover their wood and get along just fine.
Most of the time when we stack we stack in 3 rows but our wood has plenty of time to dry and we've had no problems. It is said that the middle row won't dry as well. However, we stack our wood 4 1/2' high and by fall all three rows will be down to 4' or less which leads me to believe all the rows have dried about the same.
However you do, please realize that most wood requires a good year to dry enough to burn well. It can be burned sooner, but with some problems; mainly poor fires and creosote in the chimney. Some wood, like oak, requires longer to season. We usually give oak 3 years before we burn it. It appears in some of the drier states the oak will dry sooner. For us, usually longer is better. We hear much about the moisture meters but so far I have no faith in them. If you can stack your wood for 2 years or more you should have no problems burning it and it will burn well.
In addition to drying the wood, we realize that wood cutting, splitting and stacking all takes some hard labor. As we've seen many times on this forum there are times when people have some bad things happen, like an injury or sickness. If you have 2-3 years wood on hand ready to burn, then if something like that befalls you, there is not a problem because you will already have wood to burn and will not have to rely on buying wood or having someone put up your wood. A nice wood pile is much better than money in the bank!