Firewood Hints, Tips & Advice

If you store firewood in the cellar, pour a concrete floor first. This will make for easy cleanup. If you need firewood fast, cut ash. Unseasoned, it burns better than any other wood. Seasoned, it’s excellent. Long rows of stacked firewood are likely to tip over and tumble like dominoes. If you stack your firewood in rows, crisscrossing the ends of the rows will provide some stability. When cutting firewood in the spring, wait several weeks after felling a tree before you limb it and cut it up. The leaves will draw water out of the wood, giving you a head start on drying it and making it lighter to transport. Oak makes excellent firewood but needs to be well seasoned. It sometimes sizzles and spits even after a year under cover. Avoid stacking firewood against a wooden building, since wood in direct contact with a building will encourage the building to rot. Earwigs are attracted to damp wood and are often found in firewood stored in the house. Don’t bring in any wood that’s damp or starting to rot unless you put it on the fire right away. Stack your firewood in a way that permits the air to circulate through it. If you stack your wood densely, it will dry very slowly. Don’t bother to burn wet or green firewood. Aside from the creosote problem it causes, it takes a lot of heat to boil the moisture out of wood, and that heat isn’t recoverable.