If you’ve purchased a wood furnace to heat your home, whether it’s an indoor or outdoor model, you are probably excited for the predictability and sustainability of your solid fuel: Firewood. While you can certainly harvest your own trees, cut them into logs, split them, stack them and season them over the course of 18 to 24 months, odds are good that even if you have the time and energy, you don’t have several cords of wood ready to go if you’re a new wood furnace owner.
This both means that you will probably need to buy appropriate firewood and that you can learn about what makes for good firewood if you do decide to produce your own. Many furnace owners don’t know a lot about wood and what makes for the best firewood, and this can affect the working lifespan of their furnaces negatively, and reduce the heat and efficiency of their furnaces.
Green, Seasoned, or Kiln-Dried?
While modern wood furnace manufacturers claim they can burn just about any wood, that doesn’t necessarily make it a good idea to burn low quality wood. The lack of guidance that this claim results in can lead to poor decisions that reduce the lifetime of your furnace. Green firewood has high moisture content. Even if your furnace is up to temperature, the moisture content of green wood can mix with ashes creating a corrosive substance that can significantly accelerate rusting and damage your furnace. Green wood also burns colder and generates creosote that must be cleaned out regularly to avoid damaging the furnace.
Seasoned firewood, on the other hand, is significantly drier and more suitable for burning. Seasoned wood has low enough water content that it won’t corrode your furnace and the build up of creosote is minimal by comparison meaning less cleaning is needed. It also burns hotter, and offers more BTUs in terms of output relative to mass or volume. It’s a good firewood for most firewood burning systems and it’s the traditional firewood of choice with usage going back farther than history itself.
The best option may be Kiln-Dried firewood though. Firewood that has been kiln-dried has the lowest moisture content. The logs are dried out in large building-sized kilns that heat and move air across the wood to dry it quickly and more thoroughly than seasoning outdoors. Kiln-dried wood therefore offers the least creosote and potential for damage to your furnace as well as the most efficient heat. It costs a bit more, but the cost increase is in line with the increased energy it offers for heating your home. This makes it a great value, since you can store more heating capacity in the same amount of storage space compared to normally seasoned wood.
What Species Are the Best For Firewood?
While species isn’t always something you can choose when buying firewood, it’s good to be able to ask your firewood provider what kinds of wood they’re selling and know how efficient and valuable than wood actually is. This isn’t an exhaustive list, but it does cover many of the most common firewood species.
Highly Efficient Firewood
These species when properly dried provide heat that equates between 200 and 250 gallons of heating oil per cord. In Maine and New Hampshire many of these are available, which are bolded in the list.
- Beech
- Red Oak
- Sugar Maple
- Soft Maple
- White Oak
- Yellow Birch
Moderately Efficient Firewood
These species when properly dried provide heat that equates between 150 and 200 gallons of heating oil per cord. In Maine and New Hampshire many of these are available, which are bolded in the list.
- Beech
- Red Oak
- Sugar Maple
- Soft Maple
- White Oak
- Yellow Birch
Storing Your Firewood
Once you have your firewood you need to store it in a dry, easily accessible space far enough from your furnace that there isn’t a risk of it catching fire accidentally. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution for this. However, given the snow we experience in Maine and New Hampshire, you can assume that an enclosure of some kind is going to be helpful, even if that’s just a tied-down tarp over a pallet. Here are a few common firewood storage solutions.
The Classic Wood Shed
New Englanders have been using wood sheds to store their dry firewood for centuries. Keeping wood dry and away from your home to prevent pests like insects and rodents from invading has been a problem for just about forever. There’s a reason that wood sheds are a classic solution for these problems. Sheds keep off the rain and snow. They also can get very hot in the summer, if they’re painted a dark color, which can help to further dry out seasoned wood. They also reduce the vermin that infest your stacked wood as long as they’re well built.
Wood Stack Holders
These have become more popular in recent years. Often they’re made with cinderblocks and 2” by 4” boards. This article shows off many DIY versions of this concept. These are a great way to stack and dry your wood, and with a tarp for keeping out moisture when it rains and snows you can use these for long term storage as well.
Your Garage
Keeping your wood in your garage isn’t the best option, since it can mean exposing your home to pests. However, a detached garage can be an ideal wood shed. Airflow is generally poor in garages and they don’t get very hot in winter in most cases. Overall this isn’t a great solution, except for one factor: convenience. Getting wood in from your garage is quicker, more comfortable, and safer, especially if the furnace operator is getting older or has issues with their balance or ice, stirring your firewood in the garage might be necessary.
The Day Logging Difference
As a family business started in 1946, we have a lot of direct experience with all kinds of firewood heating systems and just about every species of wood in Maine and New Hampshire. We proudly offer green, seasoned and kiln-dried firewood for sale by the cord. If you’re ready to buy firewood for your wood furnace, contact us today.