Which wood?

Please Note that all woods burn better when seasoned and some burn better when split rather than as whole logs. In general the better woods for burning that you are most likely to come by (including non-native species) are:

Apple and pear – burning slowly and steadily with little flame but good heat. The scent is also pleasing.

Ash – the best burning wood providing plenty of heat (will also burn green)

Beech and hornbeam – good when well seasoned

Birch – good heat and a bright flame – burns quickly.

Blackthorn and hawthorn – very good – burn slowly but with good heat

Cherry – also burns slowly with good heat and a pleasant scent.

Cypress – burns well but fast when seasoned, and may spit

Hazel – good, but hazel has so many other uses hopefully you won’t have to burn it!

Holly – good when well seasoned

Horse Chestnut – good flame and heating power but spits a lot.

Larch – fairly good for heat but crackles and spits

Maple – good.

Oak – very old dry seasoned oak is excellent, burning slowly with a good heat

Pine – burns well with a bright flame but crackles and spits

Poplar – avoid all poplar wood – it burns very slowly with little heat – which is why poplar is used to make matchsticks.

Willow – very good – in fact there is growing interest in biomass production of coppiced willow as a fuel.

BURNING SEASONS WOOD is making wood fit for burning – by reducing its water content – usually by leaving it for a period of time in the right conditions. All wood contains water. Freshly-cut wood can be up to 45% water, while well-seasoned firewood generally has a 20–25% moisture content. Well seasoned firewood is easier to light, produces more heat, and burns cleaner.

BURNING GREEN UNSEASONS WOOD If you try to burn green wood, the heat produced by combustion must dry the wood before it will burn, using up a large percentage of the available energy in the process. This results in less heat delivered to your home, and gallons of acidic water in the form of creosote deposited in your chimney. This can eat through the chimney lining and cause significant damage. The problem is that as wet wood burns slowly, with little heat, the chimney flue does not get a chance to warm up. There is little draw (air moving up the chimney) which doesn’t help the combustion, and the flue remains a cold surface on which the creosote condenses. Dry wood will burn hot – heating up the flue, creating a fast draw, and shooting the smaller amount of vapours out of the chimney before they get a chance to condense.

SEASONSING WOOD: The first step to drive the water out of the wood is to cut it into lengths – let’s say about 12–18 inches long (or less if your fireplace/woodburning stove requires this). Tree branches and trunks contain thousands of microscopic tubes which carry water from the roots to the leaves, and these tubes can stay full of water for years after the tree has been felled (or pruned). Cutting the wood to shorter lengths opens these tubes to the atmosphere which increases evaporation. The second step is splitting any logs that are more than say six inches in diameter. This increases the surface area of the wood exposed to the elements and therefore also enhances drying. So the cutting and splitting of logs should be done as soon as possible after the wood is harvested – not just before you want to burn it. You can get mechanical splitters and attachments for a tractor, when you have large quantities to split, but they are not cheap.

It takes a bit of practice to start with, but once you’ve ‘got your eye in’ you should be impressively splitting each log first time every hit – and be able to keep this up for a few hours at a time without feeling exhausted. It’s a task I thoroughly enjoy – and have always referred to it as ‘earning my cow pie’!