Best Woodstove Fire

After lots of experimenting, we’ve figured out how to create the best woodstove fire.

For a half century, our stoves kept us warm during winter’s chill. We’ve burned all sorts of wood, ranging from rather low-heat cottonwood to heat-dense black locust. We prefer using a mix of wood from different species to create and maintain the best warming fire.

Sources

The Internet is packed with charts giving the relative heat value of wood based on species. These are great resources that help choose the best wood species. All the charts assume that every species is dried to about the same moisture contact to make accurate comparisons. When given a choice it’s generally the best use of time and storage space to choose dense woods that have high heat value. But we make great use of lower-value woods like pine and cottonwood.

Curing

No matter the species, wood needs to be cured to make efficient firewood. We cut and split our wood and store it out of the rain for at least two years.

Trees Felled

In August 2020 a derecho’s 140 mile an hour wind felled 47 trees on our property. It made a mess. We hated losing shade and privacy but converted the downed trees into cordwood that’s kept us warm for the past four winters. The wind knocked down   Douglas Fir, Black and Red Oak, Mulberry, Black Cherry, White Pine, Hackberry and American Elm. We use them all in slightly different ways.

Different Woods

Here’s how different types of wood burn and how to take advantage of their different characteristics.

Woods with Pitch

Pine and Douglas Fir: These softwoods contain pitch. Highly flammable turpentine is made from pine pitch. It burns like crazy. We split our White Pine into kindling. Finely split shavings are easy to light with a match even without using paper. Once the fire is going, we avoid burning smoky pine.

Our Douglas Fir is denser and harder than pine and holds more heat per pound. It also contains pitch. So, when starting a fire on a cold morning we put a large chunk of Douglas Fir in the woodstove, lean pine shavings against it, and strike a match. Soon the shavings are burning hot enough to ignite the Fir’s pitch and get a hot fire started.

Putting too much kindling or pitch-filled wood in a stove can be dangerous. It burns very hot with a yellow flame and some smoke. So, we don’t load the firebox with the stuff.

Hardwoods

Oak, Cherry, Hackberry, and Elm: These hardwoods lack pitch but are loaded with heat released during combustion. We put these woods on our chunk of burning Douglas Fir and keep adding them all day. They create a mellow burn that releases heat more slowly than softwoods. The Engineering Toolbox has excellent information on relative values of wood heat.

Relative Heat Values

Here are some relative heat values of the woods we burn.

Species               BTU’s Per Cord               Cord Weight

Red Oak                             24 million                         3760

Black Cherry                      20    ..                               3520

White Pine                         14.3 ..                               2240

Douglas Fir                        26.4 ..                               2970

Cottonwood                       15.8..                                2272

Benefits of woodstoves

Burning wood saves money and provides ultra-comfortable heat, but it takes plenty of work to find, cut, split, move, and stack it.  Then it has to cure and be moved close to the stove.  To us, the work and patience have been well worth it, especially on frigid snowy nights.