The joys of Poplar

[wahoowad]

Last year I burned a lot of different species of wood, half the time not even knowing what it was. I scrounged a little of everything, burnt what seemed dry, and put the rest up for this year. This Summer I got picky and focused exclusively on scrounging oak and hickory (never did score any maple) and am close to having put up a good supply for next year.

This burning season I have really seen the benefit of having softer varieties like Poplar and Pine available for starter and/or quick fires. My oak does so much better when it goes on top of a good bed of poplar coals. Now I realize I need to go find some Poplar and put up a decent supply of that too to start fires with next season. I missed the opportunity to stack Poplar in with my oak/hickory piles but at least I'll have some. I accidentally learned the benefit of mixing it in last year when I didn't know better, but it has worked well for me. Each load of my inside woodbox always has a few split of Poplar to get the next fire going.

Anybody else stack their wood differently, by species and not mixing them in? Any pros/cons to mixed or separate stacks?

 

[BrotherBart]

I stack the pine and poplar seperately so I can just go to that stack for weather like we are having now and heat the place up pretty guick to take the chill off. In fact with these EPA suckers the pine is giving some pretty nice burn times.

 

[philaphire]

Not that I'm burning yet - i don't even have a stove! But I'm hoping to change that by next year. In the meantime, I'm working on my wood pile for then and folks I've talked too who've been burning for years, recommended that if possible keep the "soft" woods and "hard" woods separate for exactly the reason you mention. They tell me that oak, apple, and other super dense woods will burn easier when placed into a stove up to temp than a cold one. Makes sense to me - everyone seems to agree that the softer woods burn fast and hot. I've got about 1 1/2 cords of willow, oak, & apple already and my goal is to use the willow at start up, then load the stove with the oak/apple and then sit back and enjoy the HEAT. I'm sure more experienced opinions are to follow which is why hearth.com rocks!

 

[Robbie]

Good ideas, good thoughts. I've got a bit of poplar laid back for starting some fires.

Philaphire, what patience you must have, what focus, to not have a stove and still cut wood........all the time knowing and having a plan for next year.

I hope you get you a fine stove and have a perfect season next year for your wood stove.



Robbie

 

[philaphire]

Good ideas, good thoughts. I've got a bit of popular laid back for starting some fires.

Philaphire, what patience you must have, what focus, to not have a stove and still cut wood........all the time knowing and having a plan for next year.

I hope you get you a fine stove and have a perfect season next year for your wood stove.



Robbie

thanks for the warm wish (pun intended)...not sure if it's patience so much as economics. thankfully my wood is free, unfortunately, a new stove isn't so I want to minimize my investment cost which means burning next year - a cord of "seasoned" wood delivered runs in the $200 range. So, with natural gas prices low and "el nino" predicted (it was 66 today!) I'm hoping this is a great year to wait. we just moved into our house in June and had some fixing up to do so that was enough $ money spent for now.....not that I havne't frequented the stove shop a few times and have a couple quotes that I mull over regularly!

 

[colsmith]

We have a lot of poplar trees which we have just been ignoring so far, as they are mostly healthy, but eventually I suppose we will burn some of them. We have a lot of old apple and pear trees and those are what we are starting on for our homegrown wood, they are almost 50 years old and reaching the end of their life cycles.

Robbie, please compliment my focus as well. We got our wood stove installed Feb. 27th, and had all our firewood for March, April, and May accumulated last year. All free scrounged wood - we were lucky to find some (we think) bass and ash cut to firewood length, dried, stacked by someone's trash in the city. We got that a year ago. That was our main source of burning wood for the few months last season. We also collected a lot of mulberry and cut and collected alleged box elder (seems like something else) plus willow that we are burning this season. If you want to be frugal, you have to scrounge ahead, I mean plan ahead. I was interested in the prices of firewood, I wish more people would post theirs. I haven't bought any yet (hope not to) but am curious as to the price. We aren't getting any younger and I suppose eventually both of us will have bad backs at the same time. Hubby was asking if we should buy a wood splitter, I said no, I still like splitting wood. Plus hauling the wood around is as hard as splitting it, if not worse . . .

 

[Robbie]

Some Like It Hot, you are doing so good !

Really, you should be very proud of yourself. Scrounged wood seems to be hard to get around where I live, lots of people are thinking the same thing I am............I'm always a day late. :red:

Robbie.

 

[DeanBrown3D]

Another joy of poplar is that its just about the easiest wood to split out there, at least the poplar I have split. It almost splits itself as I approach with a maul! its the only wood I can split faster by hand than on my splitter.

-D

 

[suematteva]

I stack the poplar separate...this years already went up the chimney..into the soft maple now..

 

[Corey]

Poplar is OK, you will never stack the proper ratio in a pile with hardwoods, so I just keep mine separate. Also, IMHO, I wouldn't go out of my way to get poplar. If you have it, it is good for fire starter and days when you just want to take the chill out of a room. But, really, some small splits of oak or other hardwood, say about 2x2" or 2x4" will light just as fast or faster and do the same thing.

If you have to burn the gas to get a cord of wood, it might as well be the highest BTU possible.

Corey

 

[PAJerry]

I've found that mixing some pine in when starting a fire makes the apple and ash that I use take off a lot faster and gets the stove up to temp in a hurry. Corey is right about the smaller pieces - they work just as well, if you have them. I have a cord of slab wood coming tomorrow. I think that for a smaller stove like mine it might just be the ticket, but I plan to stack it up and cover it for use if my current supply doesn't last the winter.

 

[wahoowad]

I was wishing for some poplar to put up for next year when I started this thread. Today I noticed a standing dead pine and she's now a pile of splits. The ants inside it were not happy but they have a year to move out!

 

[PAJerry]

Thanks for the thumbs-up on the slab wood Dylan. This being our first full season with the stove, we have become addicted to a nice, warm house after keeping it at 62-65 for many years. My wife is in love with the stove - tends the fire, cleans out the ashes when I'm working, etc. Seems like slab wood is available here all the time since there are a lot of sawmills in the area. The price is about half of cord wood so if it works well it could be a real bargain.

 

[suematteva]

Some places it is a law that the slab wood can only stay around so long at the mills due to fire hazard..many are chipping and selling for other purpose...it is great stuff..if you can find people with the portable sawmills another good source..