OWB wood burning
Hmmm, in my experience of using an OWB in mild winter Oregon, my guess is that in cold winter Iowa you are going to burn everything that you can get your hands on, oak, scrap, hardwood, softwood, and whatever else. I mean it. Here were burn about 5 cords of mixed wood a year and every year we burn more than we think we would need, and every year about now we run low on dry seasoned wood. We burn and have burned these woods that grow here: willow, cottonwood, white and black oak, red and white alder, bigleaf and boxelder maple, Doug and grand fir, ponderosa pine, madrone, sycamore, chinkapin, apple, cherry, pear, plum, ash, cedar, and walnut. We also burn paper, scrap wood, junk mail, old furnature (I remove the plywood and strandboard first though, too much resin in that stuff), cardboard boxes, wet and green wood (I try to avoid these, but sometimes cannot help it; it all will burn in an OWB like yours). We usually burn a mix of seasoned and dry oak, madrone, alder, doug fir, and maple. Lately we have been buring grand fir (crappy for fuel) but a snag fell over in a storm last month, and it was dead and mostly dry.
We also have green wood in the racks for burning next year; pine (don't like it, but it was free), sycamore (ditto), and boxelder. I have racks to store 5 cords, and we have piles of wood out on the property (105 acres, 85 in timber) seasoning from windthrow, orchard pruning, thinning, and snags. This year we are going to make an effort to stack up a 2 year supply of firewood, and maybe we will get through a full cold season w/o having to hunt for more wood in winter. One guy on this list bought an OWB and piled up something like 80 cords... that is the way to do it. No questions about having enough for the winter or several winters. Keep the house whatever temperature you want for however many years you want. And laugh at the electric company.
I have found that the resinous woods like pine and fir smoke the most. Alder is probably my favorite. It is a medium light hardwood and smells good when it burns, and does not smoke a lot or build up a lot of creosote. Creosote will build up more if you burn bark, fir, pine, wet or green wood. Oak seems to coal up the most for us here. For the volume, oak, madrone, and hickory are 2x the heat value of light pine, willow, cottonwood, grand fir and the like. You will learn to go for the heavy hardwoods if you have an option. That oak there sounds like an energy money mine to me. I wood go after it. Have chainsaws, will travel...
