russian olive firewood btu
Patricia in DE. Also, it tends to split easily while drying. Distribution: Native to eastern Europe and western and central Asia; naturalized throughout North America, Tree Size: 20-35 ft (6-10 m) tall, 1-1.5 ft (.3-.5 m) trunk diameter, Average Dried Weight: 43 lbs/ft3 (685 kg/m3), Specific Gravity (Basic, 12% MC): .55, .69, *Estimated hardness based upon specific gravity. Burning well-seasoned poplar and maple, with a couple sticks of red oak. I have burned Ailanthus for several years. Great site! I told him that wood had to dry before burning and he said its been drying all week long , it should be dry by now . Tree species with dense wood provide the best firewood, releasing more BTUs per volume of wood than species with less dense or lighter . Would it be possible to post the btu value of Monterey Pine? While we have quite a few woods available to us, what weve settled on for the fire place is a 50/50 mix of Oregon Ash and Black Locust. and keep the bedroom doors about a foot from closed to save heat. The wood is not easy to turn but looks great if you stick with it. Lodgepole can generate a BTU as high as 17.7, making it one of the higher burning pines. Around here it is about the most common tree taken down by tree services, so lots of firewood guys sell it because they get the wood dropped off in their yards for free. One BTU is the heat required to increase the temperature of one pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit. Split these sections into sticks. Great site. I picked up some cherry wood and have to say, Im very impressed. Your web site is very informative. We live in the foothills of North Carolina and heat with a Big Buck wood stove. I now have access to a great deal of Poplar. Many people despise Russian olive trees as they make it difficult for other trees to thrive. Russian olive does have a very strong and distinctive fragrance when sawn or sanded. IT IS USELESS FOR FIREWOOD BECAUSE OF THE LITTLE/NO HEAT OUTPUT, BUT MAINLY ITS TOO DANGEROUS TO BURN INDOORS, AS IT POPS AND EXPLODES AND THROWS SPARKS EVERYWHERE. Russian olive is usually a straight grain wood, but as it grows older, the trunk tends to grow extremely thick and stringy, making it almost impossible to spit with a maul. It burned very hot with big blue-yellow flames and gave the best aroma . The ash burns hot and fast with a nice flame, the black locust burns without a lot of flame but lasts much longer. Do You have Russian Olive on your land?Contact Amanda Kuenzi Maybe less in some places with more sun and less humidity, but still they take a long time. Love this site! It does get hotter than the Red Oak and leaves hot coals. It seems kinda light and when I pay 12.50/cord+driving for lodge poll pine I don't know if it is worth it. New member to this forum. Because of the air space between the pieces of wood, the amount of solid wood in a cord may be only 70-90 cubic feet, even though the volume of the stack is 128 cubic feet. THE EARLY SNOW STORM DAMAGED A LOT OF TREES HERE IN ORANGE COUNTY NY. cure time is at least 2 years covered,found a rating of 16 mil btus per cord but it was rated as poor firewood. Its quite nice really, light to handle, splits like nothing and puts off a nice blue flame at the coals. If the Russian olive woods content is still too high after a year, give it a few more months to season. For wood stoves I beleive ash,oak,hickory mix. We burn mostly old-growth sugar maple w some white ash, black cherry, beech and black maple thrown in. My wife and I are renovating an old NE farmhouse in Massachusetts. Here in suburban MD (1/2 way between DC and Balt. To get the most heat production out of . The issue is that Russian olive is hard to buy as firewood and difficult to process in large quantities as opposed to hackberry for example. Russian olive trees make dense, slow-burning firewood. Ensure that there are enough gaps between each log to allow them to air dry effectively. Please leave your comments or questions on those pages if you have experience or questions about those types of firewood. But as one reader noted, all species have roughly the same BTU potential per pound. See my page on donating wood samples for more info. Im still retrieving all the down stuff and will continue for a couple years, at least. Dogwood, apple and the smaller trees burn good but are only for small fires (late spring or early fall when you dont want a fire to last all day) If you are serious about heating your home with wood just stick to these trees for the max in BTUs..they burn hot and clean. hope this helped you. Persimmon is a good secret,burns hot and long. I have some Hemlock and I can get some Hickory. NO BUGS EITHER. If you can, sell it and save the $$$ to buy fresh 1 yr old wood later on from someone else. The average efficiency rating is around 19.9 million BTU per cord. Also, the top had some water damage that was lifting the very thin layer on the top. Mix some ash firewood in with your Russian olive and you will get a good heat source burning quickly. Some states have made the sale of Russian olive trees illegal, to prevent their spreading. Dont worry about the ashes your stove produces. Yule Logs & Firewood Science. So the math:5 cords @ $180 = $900 // 5 tonsCoal @ $75 = $375. The exception . I have pictures of him with an electric pole saw (hes deathly afraid of power equipment)cutting 2 diameter branches on the ground !!! The beech also burns to a good lasting coal . BTU value is about the same for all hard wood when equal weight of dry is burned. Fires made solely with this wood are difficult to start. This wood is ideal used for cooking, adding delicious flavor whether you love to grill, spit roast, or smoke. I farm a good bit of ground and we have about 350 acres of river bottom woods . But it does burn off a substantial amount of ash. The ones in the western hardwoods chart are for the west coast varieties. Brings back a lot of memories of cutting firewood with my grandpa. Hi! I live in Mn and it smells just like fresh cut oak. Comments:Originally brought to the United States in the late 1800s for windbreaks and erosion control (and as an ornamental tree). Live in S/W Missouri, and wood heat is our only source for 3,400 sq. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding. Support me directly through PatreonIf youve been helped by the Wood Database, consider saying thanks and helping to support the project. Although it does not grow to be large in diameter, with older varieties of the tree, splitting the trunk part of the tree can be pretty difficult. A lot of people dont burn it so it is plentiful. Hope to experiment with salmon. Be sure to let it season before burning to know how it should truly burn .Funny Story, I had a friend that cut a storm fallen red oak . my back yard, and all of northern california would like to respectfully disagree. Seasoning time is reduced if the tree has been dead for months. Douglas fir is Pseudotsuga, menzizii for the man who identified it. Cal., I really miss having Live Oak and Eucalypyus to burn. Color/Appearance: Color ranges from a light yellowish-brown to a darker golden brown, sometimes with a greenish hue. MY PREFERENCE would be the DR flywheel special.. Man that thing smokes with efficiency. Is it toxic? I dont have the ratings for that maple, but you can always weigh it and get a general idea that way. Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Live Edge Slabs, Cookies, Russian Olive, Epoxy River Table at the best online prices at eBay! In the wild, Russian olive trees have been known to smell very sweet and strong. Be sure and let us know how your test goes. 10. The small, more seasoned stuff burned with mid flame and burned very slow . If you tend to have respiratory allergies, beware and use dust protection when working with this wood. The black oaks just had too many leaves in that Nov and the snow was too heavy. Persimmon is one of the most dense wood around this area. Green Vs. Dry Wood - Firewood should be dried (seasoned) to 10% to 20% moisture content for best burning performance. A fast-lighting softwood kindling will help get the fire started much quicker. Russian olive trees generally have fairly short trunks and many gnarled branches. Does anyone have any experience with gum? Like the man said , if you got it free, its worth burning for heat. Once burning, the only thing youll need to think about is finding the marshmallows. This is a project Ive been working on. We collect it as down and dead firewood when we are cutting western juniper (J.occidentalis), mostly on B.L.M. My wife and I just purchased 12.5 acres of old growth hard wood forest in Pembroke, NY (Sugar Maple, Beech, Cherry, Ash to name a few) and will be on my way there today to give the Stihl a work out !!! There was a guy down the road whose stove completely melted when he filled it with all hedge. ), I am reduced to asking neighbors or builders if I can haul away their downed trees. Burning green wood is bad for any number of reasons, but especially so when the wood has a high sap content. I like to drag it out into the open on a log chain with the tractor. Walnut (black) rates at 21.50/cord, my information is provided by Pocket Reference by Thomas J Glover printed in September 2006 ( 18th edition ). Dont waste your time with Sweetgum wood. Wood heat seems to be medicinal especially on cold, wintry days. Your main consideration is that, to burn clean, any wood. Great info! My preferred woods for the Jotul are cherry, sugar maple, and Norwegian maple. There is some conflicting data between different sources due to different calculating variables. Its abundent where I live Northern MN. Save it, let it dry for 2 -3 years and youll be opening windows to let the cold air in in February . I have put together the best data I could find, but consider the figures to be approximate. It is a hardwood that can produce a lot of heat for a long time. Russian Olive RO 250. Likewise, wood that does not burn clean, including unseasoned wood, produces more creosote. as far as mulberry goes..i live in central nm and at some point in time someone started planting non bearing mulberry trees..the btu output is not even close to what the charts state above..our mulberry trees would be similar to burning elm wood..it grows verry fast and requires a lot of water..we dont even use it for cooking wood..of course most native wood in nm is verry hard because it takes hundreds of yrs to growthe growth rings are so small in some cases it takes a microscope to see them..some of the juniper trees we cut for firewood ive been told were around during the time of christ..so it naturaly is going to be extremely hard wood..ive been looking for the btu output for algarita..or desert holly..where i cut my firewood its not uncommon to find these trees from 5inches to two feet around..it takes at least a yr to season..ive seen gunstocks and stair rails made from itprety woodanyone know?? When Russian olive wood is first cut, it released an unpleasant, overwhelming odor. Creosote is a tar-like black substance deposited inside chimneys as the fire burns. I have found that when dried, it is very hard and not easy to carve but, when green, it is very easy to carve! OLIVE. I think you have inspired me to do a test some day of oak vs madrone in a camp fire.