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Community => Coffee Lounge => Topic started by: deepinthewoods on December 08, 2012, 01:20:52 pm

Title: wood burner management tips?
Post by: deepinthewoods on December 08, 2012, 01:20:52 pm

following a previous suggestion i thought it might be useful to have a thread for these sometimes cantankerous bits of kit!
 
currently, i am using some 10inch thick bits of rhodedendron ponticum as my overnighting logs, ive had good results with that, thick bits of laurel can work but must be well seasoned.
 
any others??

Title: Re: wood burner management tips?
Post by: Possum on December 08, 2012, 05:04:04 pm

See SallyintNorth's reply to "Cold in the old days"!

Title: .
Post by: RUSTYME on December 08, 2012, 05:10:54 pm

Nah , she's talking horse s**t again ! ;-)

Title: Re: wood burner management tips?
Post by: Fleecewife on December 08, 2012, 05:16:08 pm

We've been using some hefty chunks of hawthorn to keep the fire in overnight.  It just seems to smoulder but is still going in the morning.  Ancient oak can work too -
 
Another trick would be to drink a large glass of water just before bed so you have to get up in the night and can put another log in the burner

Title: Re: wood burner management tips?
Post by: deepinthewoods on December 08, 2012, 05:17:08 pm

Quote from: Possum on December 08, 2012, 05:04:04 pm

See SallyintNorth's reply to "Cold in the old days"!

 
i did, and maks, hence this thread.,... ;D
 
 
fw, does that work with cider??? :D

Title: .
Post by: RUSTYME on December 08, 2012, 05:18:45 pm

A bit dodgy that , i'd pee the bed !

Title: Re: wood burner management tips?
Post by: Possum on December 08, 2012, 05:33:05 pm

Sorry about that DITW. Brain obviously not in gear!

Title: Re: wood burner management tips?
Post by: MAK on December 08, 2012, 05:43:00 pm

I have pulled up a few loads of chestnut roots - trunks having been cut MANY years ago. Intense heat with some air flowing and long lasting overnight.
I think any root and any bits of trunk that have a large knot from a branch work if you don't have any of the wood mentioned above.
What about saw dust ? I have a mass of it but have not used any yet.
As for dung - best buy me a orse.

Title: Re: wood burner management tips?
Post by: deepinthewoods on December 08, 2012, 05:51:41 pm

now sawdust burning is a very interesting topic, ive a friend who is building a sawdust burning 'engine' to run his bedford RL (green godess)  all i know so far is, that you need a stainless steel grid with air holes in it, in the bottom, to keep it going. i believe dick strawbridge built one and ran a car on it. it works by generating combustible fumes. this is from memory and may not be entirely accurate!!
 
i too have piles of the stuff. i hate wasting anything and need to find a use other than longterm compost for it.
 
earlier in the year during the phytoptera clearance i got my hands on half a dozen winched out oak and rhody rootballs, im saving them for properly cold weather, i suspect this winter will be as harsh as the one 2 years ago.

Title: .
Post by: RUSTYME on December 08, 2012, 06:19:26 pm

There are a fair few web sites covering that subject Dave .
I made a charcoal maker out of an oil drum using the same principle , burning volatile gases .
It does work and the heat that it produces is unbelievable . The drawback was you go through oil drums like they are going out of fashion .
You can also make little cookers out of tin cans and use the same process , either with charcoal or wood chips or sawdust .  They work very well and cook perfectly . Not as much heat produced so the tins last much longer .
I have seen a transit using this system . A bit different to the norm , but it worked .
Wood gas or charcoal gas i think they call it .

Title: Re: wood burner management tips?
Post by: jaykay on December 08, 2012, 07:11:14 pm

I think FW's technique would work even better with cider or bitter  :D

Title: Re: wood burner management tips?
Post by: colliewoman on December 08, 2012, 07:23:00 pm

I use a lump of dead elm to keep my burner in overnight :thumbsup:

Title: Re: wood burner management tips?
Post by: MAK on December 08, 2012, 08:31:28 pm

I was keeping the saw dust for smoking food and have chucked wood chip becuase it has chainsaw oil on it. Now I have so much saw dust I'll give it a try on the log burner - last thing at night when there is nilch except cinders in the pan. 22 degrees in the house now - luxury  ;D

Title: Re: wood burner management tips?
Post by: jaykay on December 08, 2012, 09:20:10 pm

I wonder if you could compress the sawdust into 'bricks' to burn?

Title: Re: wood burner management tips?
Post by: MAK on December 08, 2012, 09:41:15 pm

Compress saw dust? Good idea.
When we moved in to this house we found a metal unit to compress something - maybe newspaper, wood chip or saw dust. The old boy who lived here did lots of serious wood work so maybe saw dust from long planks he made could have been compressed.
how would I bind the wood dust together? Soak in water, compress then dry?

Title: Re: wood burner management tips?
Post by: jaykay on December 08, 2012, 11:11:55 pm

Quote

Soak in water, compress then dry?

That's what I'd try first.

Title: Re: wood burner management tips?
Post by: SallyintNorth on December 09, 2012, 03:31:20 am

In my experience, sawdust is a fire lighter, not a slow burner.

BH collects up the chips, shavings and dust when he's been doing woodwork, chopping or sawing, and it lives in a container next to the fire.  When you want to lift a fire that's down to the embers, a shovel of sawdust does a great job. 

A local woodworking company makes compressed sawdust rings - they have an water extractor thingy, bung in a bales' worth of sawdust and out comes a small sackful of rings.  They're about the size of a large jamjar lid, 1/2" thick.  I use two or three when starting a fire, or again they will lift a fire that's down to a deep red glow.

I do know of people who use compressed sawdust bricks - but I'd expect them to burn up pretty quickly, certainly quicker than an equivalent volume ash log, for instance.

Another good fire lifter is dried orange peel.  We put our peel on top of the woodburner (on a trivet or it would burn on the top! :o), then when you want to lift a fire, an orange-worth of peel will give you a firelighter effect.

There's a lot to know about different woods.  A big thick ash log should keep most fires in all night.  Larch won't, it's a fast burner.  I think I remember that beech is at the fast end, oak at the longer slower burn end of the spectrum.  If I'd been able to do another stint at Tinkers' Bubble, the characteristics of the different woods was on my list of things to learn about - they knew so much, those folks. 

And yes, horse poo will keep a fire in overnight!   :D  And help you restart it in the morning, too.

Title: Re: wood burner management tips?
Post by: doganjo on December 09, 2012, 11:23:05 am

I have one of those paper brick makers.  You can use anything that burns in them, to make logs.  You soak the paper in a bucket after tearing into strips, then squeeze the moisture out and leave the bricks somewhere to dry out.  It's a bit of a palaver but they do burn well.  I would think you could use a mixture of paper and sawdust.

Title: Re: wood burner management tips?
Post by: mab on December 09, 2012, 11:17:00 pm

here's a silly woodburner question: what's the difference between seasoning wood and drying it?

One person tells me it's the same thing and the wood just needs to be dry; and another says that wood will still season even when lying in the mud and will burn better than green wood even if wet.

This is a key question for me as, due to a shortage of dry storage, a lot of my firewood is stored in wet-ish places.

marcus

Title: Re: wood burner management tips?
Post by: deepinthewoods on December 10, 2012, 07:45:46 am

seasoned is the same as dry, but refers to the internal moisture content. yes wood will still season in a wet place but it will take longer and of course you will still have to burn off the wet outside. ideally store wood undercover in a dry place, but i have piles of stuff sawn to 6ft lying in the woods, if neccesary this year i can bring it in for a week or two but ideally it will be next years supply.

Title: Re: wood burner management tips?
Post by: nicandem on December 10, 2012, 08:37:09 am

this may not be completely scientific but how I remember what wood is best for fires is




Beech-wood fires burn bright and clear
If the logs are kept a year;
Store your beech for Christmastide
With new-cut holly laid beside;
Chestnut's only good, they say,
If for years 'tis stored away;
Birch and fir-wood burn too fast
Blaze too bright and do not last;
Flames from larch will shoot up high,
Dangerously the sparks will fly;
But ash-wood green and ash-wood brown
Are fit for a Queen with a golden crown.

Oaken logs, if dry and old,
Keep away the winter's cold;
Poplar gives a bitter smoke,
Fills your eyes and makes you choke;
Elm-wood burns like churchyard mould,
E'en the very flames are cold;
It is by the Irish said;
Hawthorn bakes the sweetest bread,
Apple-wood will scent the room,
Pear-wood smells like flowers in bloom;
But ash-wood wet and ash-wood dry
A King may warm his slippers by.

Anon.




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Title: Re: wood burner management tips?
Post by: FiB on December 10, 2012, 09:02:10 am

Nice tip re orange peel - and I bet is smells lovely!  Not yet managed to keep out Prity boiler stove(Middle of the house moster that does everything, £400)   in overnight - not least cause it has the most primative air controls in the world so hard to damp down.  The clearview (little living room stove £1K!!) will stay in overnight with almost anything hard ... so from my experience its as much about the stove and air control as anything else... 
 
On the seasoning/drying  we had a load of wood delivered last year that had been chopped and seasoned , then 'stored' outside - it was as bad a green (>40% moisture) but after a few months undercover was OK to burn after a few nights in the house.  I recon seasoning outside not undercover is OK as long as its whole (before choping and splitting, bark on and will therefore take a year or 2 longer) .  MAK,  recomend a moisture meter if you havnt got one - takes a lot of the guess work out of it.

Title: Re: wood burner management tips?
Post by: MAK on December 11, 2012, 10:41:28 pm

Yes I think it is a matter of getting to grips with the peculiar air intake controls of one's stove. I have 3 different air intakes on our stove - one of which is difficult to adjust with little fine control. It does seem that the draw up the chimney is another variable as my basic physics would make me think that a high airflow (wind) across a chimney stack will increase the pressure difference ( draw) across the length of the chimney. Bernouli's law I think ( ? spelling).
Fortunately we have a very large hanger that is well designed for drying wood. The bottom metre of all 3 sides that protect from prevailling winds is absent to allow the wind to blow through. It is usual here to stack green wood outside for 2-3 years then to move it under the hanger for a year. Oh and we do have hot summers.
Chucking a nice dry root on the fire now  ;D

Title: Re: wood burner management tips?
Post by: mab on December 14, 2012, 01:04:03 pm

Ah OK, so I need to work on getting more dry areas for storing firewood.

I've only managed to keep the stove going one night so far this year - that might be due to damp wood, but also 'cos my stove here has a flue-pipe rather than a brick chimney; - I had an almost identical parkray in the bungalow I was in last year, but it's brick-build chimney would draw like a vacuum cleaner even from cold, which made keeping the fire going much easier; -this tin flue pipe goes cold as soon as the fire dies down and stops drawing effectively  :( .

Title: Re: wood burner management tips?
Post by: MAK on December 14, 2012, 10:45:20 pm

Wood drying - The hangar is open to the East south and the sides do not go down to the ground. The wind can blow thru the hangar but on winter days the rain can be blown in a good 2-3 meters so we don't stack to near the open side of the hangar. Next years wood is still down the lane on the edge of the wood but will go under after we have had a bit of warm and dry weather in the spring.
(http://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-96Xdp7xnWYk/UMoYXuJgn2I/AAAAAAAAC4s/I47t1jJwcVY/s720/P1010024.JPG)

Title: Re: wood burner management tips?
Post by: cleopatra on December 15, 2012, 06:44:57 pm

im not sure if seasoned wood is just dry wood? i think its the sap that needs to dry, not water.
the first year we were here we cut wood and kept it under cover til winter and although it looked dry inside it was still green and burnt badly with little heat.
we have since cut trees down and left in situ for 2 or 3 years as wev been busy. the weight of the wood is about 25% of the original weight and although we only brought it under cover in sept, and its still a touch damp on the outside, its very dry inside and burns really hot. so you can season outside, but different woods need different amounts of time. our woods are a mixed bunch so some were a tad soft after 3 years but are handy when starting the fire.

Title: Re: wood burner management tips?
Post by: Small Farmer on December 15, 2012, 10:38:47 pm

Roughly speaking green wood can be over 50% water and that generally halves when seasoned for long enough. Kiln dried gets down to perhaps 15% (or live somewhere where the sun shines in summer) and pellets/briquettes should be under 10%.


If the fire is really hot adding some green wood won't be a problem, but if the chimney temperature falls too much you'll lose a lot of efficiency and get nasty condensates.