Possible to burn all night with soft wood?

[Streblerm]

Hardwood=deciduous
Softwood=Evergreen

Technically balsawood is hardwood. I burned some basswood and when dry it was almost like styrofoam. Still hard wood. And with big enough pieces it would leave some coals after 8hrs.

 

[sawjunky23]

Any fire with big chunks of wood and the air chocked way down will smolder for a buch of hours...you'll get a little heat and some pissed off neighbors.

I agree with this ^^^^. You can only cheat the laws of nature so much. Meat smokers do it with their grills, they call it the "minion method" you start a hot fire in the middle of unlit coals, the hot fire gradualy lights the other previosuly un-lit coals as it burns down. Unfortunatley the result is a long burning but low heat fire. You can get a fire to burn all night with soft wood but if it's cold in your house when you wake up whats the point. I would hunt for some better wood and mix it or try and find some coal.

 

[chucker]

technically speaking, aspen and popel are listed as hardwood in the foresters hand book! but trying to burn a "TECHNICALLY" for heat will probably produce as much heat(btu) per pound as aspen/popel of course technically speaking???

 

[ChoppyChoppy]

maybe in your neck of the woods! oak is king here and popel/aspen are pee-on woods!

No, not my neck of the woods, it's what it is. For the most part if it sheds leaves in fall it's a hardwood.

Poplar is used in all sorts of stuff from paper to sheathing to furniture... and even firewood.

 

[stihly dan]

I thought i read somewhere that pople was actually softwood. Not necessarily based on leaves.

 

[unclemoustache]

give your soft wood Cialis, last for 24 hours

I thought you were supposed to call your doctor if it lasted more than four??

 

[unclemoustache]

Hardwood=deciduous
Softwood=Evergreen

technically speaking, aspen and popel are listed as hardwood in the foresters hand book! but trying to burn a "TECHNICALLY" for heat will probably produce as much heat(btu) per pound as aspen/popel of course technically speaking???

I think there are two ways to classify hard/soft wood. The first way is as Streblerm said - conifers are soft, and leaves are hard.
The other way is more accurate in that it goes by the density of the wood. As a firewood seller, I would call poplar, willow, silver maple and other such woods 'soft.'

 

[turnkey4099]

Hard? Soft? The bottom line is sthat all wood, regardless of species produces approximately the same BTU per pound, i.e., a pound of balsa will produce the same BTU as a pound of oak. The only real difference as firewood is "how often will I need to load the stove?"

 

[Streblerm]

This is kind of like the cord vs rick/facecord argument. Science has a definition of hardwood vs softwood, not me. Technically it has nothing to do with leaves vs needles but rather how a tree reproduces. If it has a nut or a seed with a shell that falls to the ground it is a hardwood. If the seed doesn't have a shell and gets blown around and spread by the wind then it is a softwood. It just so happens that most all hardwood has leaves and pretty much all softwood has needles. The terms really have nothing to do with density which is confusing.

Calling a deciduous tree softwood is kind of like calling a small dog a cat.

 

[Jeffkrib]

I notice the word 'choke' being used earlier on in the discussion, do you guys in the states have control of the air going into the stove 'throttle' and flue control 'choke'. We only have control of air in on modern stoves in Aus since about 1988. With my modern stove using hard dry Iron bark I can get about 10hrs burn time. Doubt I'd get half that with pine..... My be I should send some of our timber over to the OP.

 

[Whitespider]

It probably also depends on the stove. My Blaze King is magic.

Ain't no magic
*

 

[GVS]

I agree with this ^^^^. You can only cheat the laws of nature so much. Meat smokers do it with their grills, they call it the "minion method" you start a hot fire in the middle of unlit coals, the hot fire gradualy lights the other previosuly un-lit coals as it burns down. Unfortunatley the result is a long burning but low heat fire. You can get a fire to burn all night with soft wood but if it's cold in your house when you wake up whats the point. I would hunt for some better wood and mix it or try and find some coal.

"Hunt for some better wood".Great if you can come up with some.If not,you burn what you have.

 

[Big_Al]

A couple of rounds or pack it full of whatever fits. We burn tamarack & red fir all winter, not much here for hardwood. You'll have to experiment with your stove and see what works best. If I pack ours full at midnight when we go to bed it still has good bed of coals at 8. It won't be putting out max heat but that's fine , usually have window cracked open anyway. I'm guessing that's running about 25-30%. It's an older Englander, box is 20x20.

 

[alleyyooper]

As a wood worker we have different definitions for hard and soft wood. Popple is considered a soft wood and in the old pot belly stove days and popple was cut like hay for pulp, tops were mostly free for the taking it was called gofer wood. throw a chunk in the stove and gofer another chunk.

I can have a nice bed of coals in my stove and fill it full of popple or bass wood shut the draft control tight and the damper to and the fire will burn away all night. Yes there is some build up but that is taken care of by doing a hot burn for an hour to bring the house back up to tempture 75F.

Al

 

[turnkey4099]

This is kind of like the cord vs rick/facecord argument. Science has a definition of hardwood vs softwood, not me. Technically it has nothing to do with leaves vs needles but rather how a tree reproduces. If it has a nut or a seed with a shell that falls to the ground it is a hardwood. If the seed doesn't have a shell and gets blown around and spread by the wind then it is a softwood. It just so happens that most all hardwood has leaves and pretty much all softwood has needles. The terms really have nothing to do with density which is confusing.

Calling a deciduous tree softwood is kind of like calling a small dog a cat.

Depends on if you are in a scientific discussion or discussing the merits of wood in the vernacular. They are two different things and most people know that.

 

[ChoppyChoppy]

I've never heard poplar called softwood. It's considered a hardwood for us as loggers.
Yes it's a fairly soft wood, but that's not what softwood or hardwood means.

We sell a fair bit of it as lumber and firewood. I sell it for $100 less a cord than birch (best firewood we have)

 

[turnkey4099]

"Hunt for some better wood".Great if you can come up with some.If not,you burn what you have.

Exactly. In my area Red Fir and Tamarack are the top grade. I soon discoverd that on a 'cost per BTU' willow beat everything else by a large margin. Why? It is a 100 mile minimum roundtrip to any place I can get red fir/tamarack, willow is usually less than 15 miles from the house. I can be out and back in half a day with 3/4 cord of willow vice all day for a 1/2 cord of the 'good stuff'. The trade-off is loading the stove more often but not really all that much more.

 

[svk]

Poplar/Aspen is technically a "soft hardwood" but I consider it a softwood. It produces less btu than any evergreen "softwood" except for balsam and white pine.

 

[benp]

Popple makes good lumber.

The deck of my scrounge wagon is popple and has held up well to a lot of use.

 

[sawjunky23]

"Hunt for some better wood".Great if you can come up with some.If not,you burn what you have.

I am not sure what wood is available in Idaho where the OP lives but his last statement was " maybe it's not possible with this wood?" I was simply sayin that you can only cheat so much.