Worst firewood you’ve ever burnt?

[InTheNorth]

My Wife LOVES Cedar.
I don’t consider it a long burn wood, and sure don’t go out of my way to fill wood sheds with it.

But Cedar has some redeeming qualities, it has got to be about the Best kindling wood that I have ever used, it Smells GOOD, and Seasons Fast.

We had 3 large Cedars taken down from our yard, I kept some for milling projects, and about 1.25 cords became firewood. Better to make BTU’s than Bills out of it, paying to have it hauled away.

We burned it while watching TV, and were around to load the stove more often, burned it rather than the Better wood, when it was convenient to. It burns a bit quickly, but puts out decent heat, and burs very clean, with very little ash.

We don’t see much hardwood around here, my Wife’s cousin gave us some well seasoned Black Walnut, I have no idea where it came from, probably a yard tree, I will take Cedar over that garbage any day. It didn’t seem to put out any more heat than Cedar, didn’t seem to burn much longer, but the ASH, OMG, that stuff seemed to produce a greater volume of Ash, than the volume of wood loaded into the stove, I would take cottonwood over Black Walnut in the future, and that is sayin something, I’m no fan of Spongewood


Doug

Cedar is great when all you have is wet hardwood to burn....I split the hardwood into smaller splits and mix with dry cedar and can still stay warm. The creosote builds up fast but the next time I burn straight cedar and let the stove temp rise to 800 F and all the creosote burns off. Cedar does make awesome kindling indeed

 

[sb47]

Cedar is great when all you have is wet hardwood to burn....I split the hardwood into smaller splits and mix with dry cedar and can still stay warm. The creosote builds up fast but the next time I burn straight cedar and let the stove temp rise to 800 F and all the creosote burns off. Cedar does make awesome kindling indeed

Cedar burns fast but it also burns very hot. I just spent a weekend at my nephew's new house in Bandera Tx and he has 5 acers of cedar that he wants to clean up. Most if it is very thick and a lot of the lower limbs are dead but still on the trees. That stuff lights fast and burns fast but burns very hot. I have used cedar as starter wood for years. I also love the smell it puts off. People also use cedar to smoke bath to kill bacteria. It's a good wood to burn at Christmas time because of the pleasant sent it puts off.

 

[H-Ranch]

I somehow ended up with a small load of large diameter willow rounds several years ago. They were super dry and very light. Trying to split them was like trying to split a sandbox - the maul head just disappeared and nothing happened. I managed to get them all into small enough chunks to fit through the OWB door and burned them little by little with real wood. I could not wait to be done with that stuff. Probably should have just tossed it in the woods but i guess i didn't want to risk a new bud somehow taking root and ending up with a whole tree like that!

 

[Karrl]

Worst wood I’ve burnt around here is tree of heaven very little heat and it smells not good. After that probably box elder, if it’s a little punky when you split it it’ll be rotten by the time you want to burn it. I don’t even bother with willow, it’s rots quicker than you can season it.

I really like cedar for starting fires and the smell. Plus it’ll clean your chimney out if you burn a box of it. I also enjoy mixing in black walnut when I can. Great smell and I get to feel fancy burning all that HVBW

 

[johnsayen]

My Wife LOVES Cedar.
I don’t consider it a long burn wood, and sure don’t go out of my way to fill wood sheds with it.

But Cedar has some redeeming qualities, it has got to be about the Best kindling wood that I have ever used, it Smells GOOD, and Seasons Fast.

We had 3 large Cedars taken down from our yard, I kept some for milling projects, and about 1.25 cords became firewood. Better to make BTU’s than Bills out of it, paying to have it hauled away.

We burned it while watching TV, and were around to load the stove more often, burned it rather than the Better wood, when it was convenient to. It burns a bit quickly, but puts out decent heat, and burs very clean, with very little ash.

We don’t see much hardwood around here, my Wife’s cousin gave us some well seasoned Black Walnut, I have no idea where it came from, probably a yard tree, I will take Cedar over that garbage any day. It didn’t seem to put out any more heat than Cedar, didn’t seem to burn much longer, but the ASH, OMG, that stuff seemed to produce a greater volume of Ash, than the volume of wood loaded into the stove, I would take cottonwood over Black Walnut in the future, and that is sayin something, I’m no fan of Spongewood


Doug

I love cedar for kindling too. I don’t like burning it as a primary wood. Too valuable as kindling and burns hot and fast.

 

[cookies]

cherry and gum are the worst here, cherry pops and your lucky if gum dosent wet or dry rot before you burn it and the wood is always sopping wet when you cut it.

 

[Husky Man]

I love cedar for kindling too. I don’t like burning it as a primary wood. Too valuable as kindling and burns hot and fast.

When we had those 85-110’ Cedars taken down, we had no shortage of Cedar for kindling, I set aside the straightest grained pieces for kindling, a couple years worth, and still had 1.25 cords of firewood size pieces left to burn.

I still have about half a dozen 7-8’ long logs 22-28” diameter that I am thinking about using for log picnic tables or other projects. That would undoubtedly leave some firewood, and those may just end up becoming BTU’s in the end, I just haven’t had much time for projects the last 2 years


Doug

 

[Harmon]

I'll burn some cottonwood but if you get the bark off it it dries down better. Usually split and de-bark a cord or so for smoking or grilling fish (salmon mostly) and invariably some winds up in the woodstove. the smoke smells real nice without bark, and with bark it smells BAD. This is the Black Cottonwood / Balsam Poplar / hybrids thereof continuum

The worst firewood ever was mostly human error it was the only moose hunt I ever went on. Some fellers for the tree company an I drove up to Fairbanks for a meat harvest one January. We were on a budget so decided to camp. Anchorage to Fairbanks is about 300 miles, the sun goes down at 2:30 - 3:00 that time of year, it was -20F, so we are settin up tents in the dark and lookin to get a fire going and all the beer is frozen, and I dont remember which one of us fires up a saw and drops a couple what look like dead spruce, there are thousands of them, we get out some liquid fire starter and get a blaze going. The juice burns off and nothing. try it a few more times. Realize we have cut some larches (some say tamarack) which is a conifer that loses its needles every fall and they grow back in the spring. We were trying to burn a green, frozen tree. Finally found some dead spruce, and the next night a hotel.

 

[calamari]

I vote for Eucalyptus (Blue Gum)as being the worst firewood. It's hard with twisted grain that requires a hydraulic splitter if the rounds are very big. It smells like medicine in the wood box and coal when you burn it. Stinks squared. Puts out heat OK but the process getting that result is not worth it in my view.

 

[Bearcreek]

I got some red oak going right now and some pine tops about a month old. This pine doesn’t burn worth a crap, but I’m sure there’s worse….any stories?

What kind of pine? There are huge differences between different types of pine. Eastern or Western White pine, Red/Norway pine, and Ponderosa are generally not worth the time to cut and split. Lodgepole pine I've been quite happy with. I know some of the southeastern pines like Southern Yellow are supposed to be good. I've taken down plenty of those but never used them for firewood.

Worst firewood I've ever used was poorly seasoned White Fir. It was the only thing I had at the time. Beat burning nothing but man did it suck.

When I lived in Ohio and did tree work full time I had my pick of the very best wood. Most customers weren't willing to pay extra for premium, so I sold the "good" stuff (ash, red maple, red oak, pig hickory, beech, etc) and kept the premium, (shag hickory, locust, sugar maple). Never even tried to burn the junk wood there. Willow, cottonwood, silver maple, Norway Spruce, Red Pine, Norway maple, Tulip, etc. got dumped in the swamp behind my shop.

 

[brewmonster]

We have a tree up here the locals call "bam" or "bambagilia"....I believe it is a hybrid poplar or maybe jack's hybrid. They grow about a 100 feet tall and then the top almost always falls off usually on someone's cabin or something. They are very wet inside when cut and never seem to dry out but rot instead. If you burn them they burn faster than cedar making little heat and leave a weeks worth of ashes with just one stove full. Cut down probably more than a hundred on my property over the years and still have huge piles that I should probably burn this year. I always believe God doesn't make anything without a purpose but failed to ever found any from this tree. This year my dislike for them turned to love when I realized after they die and fall down and rot for several years an incredible tasting mushroom named herricuum ramosum grows on them and one can easily gather 10 plus pounds in an hour or so.

Balm-of -Gilead tree. Populus balsamifera. In the poplar family, obviously. Glad you found some virtue in them.

 

[Brushwacker]

I think a lot of good wood is getting criticized here cause it wasn't dry when used, but expected to be. Sometimes you have a bad experience cause you never learned the characteristic of that species.
I find Black walnut pretty decent burning wood dry . More ashes then some species but not bad. When the bark sticks to it , it tends to absorb a lot of moisture from the ground or even humidity in the air and it doesn't burn thorough and hot like it does dry after most the bark is gone. It might take an extra 6 months or so to fully season then some of the oaks also.
Silver Maple may not be one of the hottest in btu's but it burns clean, cuts and splits easy, drys fast compared to most. Plenty of heat out of it for fall and spring, and great for clean burning kindling and fast heat during the winter when your fire dies down. 1 of the tree jobs I helped on , I told the customer rather then burn the silver maple in brush piles he should use it in his wood burner. He reluctantly cut a small portion up for his firewood. About a year later he said it burnt so well he wished he had cut more of it up.
I have seen people get their house to hot, open their doors or Windows to let heat out wasting the best woods whereas they could of been burning something a bit lesser and had less money and effort in it and their house wouldn't of over heated.
I don't burn willow or cotton wood, too much work for too much ashes. I have to let my fire die out (of my little fire place stove insert which heats my whole house) to remove ashes. I do burn a little pine, white, scotch, jack, this and that. Don't use pine when your chimney is not hot to avoid creosote. I haven't even looked down my chimney about 3 years. Took me a while to learn how important it is using dry clean wood when the chimney is cold. In my stainless steel chimney I have never in about 15 years had enough creosote that it needed cleaned other then the cover that goes over the top.

 

[Del_]

I've burnt all kinds of wood over the years and have never had a problem with any of it.
We just started burning though about 3/4 of a cord of Leyland cypress at the moment. It's a great firewood and even better when the fact that I made money on the removal is taken into consideration.

Our Jotul F-600 takes all kinds of wood in easy stride.

Here's that Leyland burning taken just a few minutes ago.

 

[alanbaker]

We have a tree up here the locals call "bam" or "bambagilia"....I believe it is a hybrid poplar or maybe jack's hybrid. They grow about a 100 feet tall and then the top almost always falls off usually on someone's cabin or something. They are very wet inside when cut and never seem to dry out but rot instead. If you burn them they burn faster than cedar making little heat and leave a weeks worth of ashes with just one stove full. Cut down probably more than a hundred on my property over the years and still have huge piles that I should probably burn this year. I always believe God doesn't make anything without a purpose but failed to ever found any from this tree. This year my dislike for them turned to love when I realized after they die and fall down and rot for several years an incredible tasting mushroom named herricuum ramosum grows on them and one can easily gather 10 plus pounds in an hour or so.

Balm of Gilead- it is a species of poplar. The buds are sticky compared to cottonwood Did you seed the mushroom or did occur on its own?

 

[alanbaker]

Willow smells like a week old litter box and sucks moisture on humid days. The only reason I burned it was the wood pile was much closer than hauling it to the woods. Also takes a couple of years to dry. Did have the willow logs sawn into boards and used them as flooring, soft like white pine but with more character- expands in the summer and shrinks in the winter. I have burned white pine after being split and stacked and under cover for two years with no creosote problem. I agree with other posts in the benefit of having dry soft woods or soft maples for late spring early fall just to take the chill off and save the high BTU wood for those 10 below nights we have been experiencing.

 

[lohan808]

+1 on willow of any kind. My worst was a load of corkscrew willow. That stuff smells like piss when burned, punky as hell and sprays sap everywhere when splitting it. Low heat too. Even a little work is too much for that junk.

 

[LuDookie]

Another vote for Cottonwood. When I was heating with wood I liked most of the pine I was burning and aspen. Didn’t have access to premium hardwood like today. I do a lot of hackberry removals nowadays. I wonder what that would burn like in a fireplace?

 

[kentuckyguy]

Why does everyone hate sycamore so badly? Where I’m at I could cut sycamore for the rest of my life and never put a dent in it. Seems I cut up 5 or 6 every year that fall on fences or in the pastures.
That’s a Echo CS590 with 20” bar for reference

 

[LuDookie]

Why does everyone hate sycamore so badly? Where I’m at I could cut sycamore for the rest of my life and never put a dent in it. Seems I cut up 5 or 6 every year that fall on fences or in the pastures.
That’s a Echo CS590 with 20” bar for reference
View attachment 959006

I’ve got a lot of sycamore to cut too. I’m living in the south now and people here get really picky about their firewood. There’s even species of oak they won’t touch.

 

[InTheNorth]

Balm-of -Gilead tree. Populus balsamifera. In the poplar family, obviously. Glad you found some virtue in them.

Hey thanks for letting me know the proper name.....funny how it was butchered in the name they call it