I spoke too soon!

Operation free heat hick-up! Chimney fire!


I came home from work one afternoon to see Shelley standing in the doorwaym with smoke billowing out, in tears. Apparently the elbow from the cook stove got red hot and  was pretty scary.

Luckily we are having our wood lot harvested, and the loggers saw the black smoke from the chimney and leaped into action. It just so happens they were volunteer firefighters too.

So once the stove pipes were all cleaned out we got to thinking. Is it a good idea to burn what we're burning? After a little further research I discovered that not only does all wood have the a proximate BTU per POUND, all wood produces about the same amount of creosote. There's a trick to this though... softwood CAN burn at a higher moisture content than hardwood, and is more tempting to burn before its properly seasoned. I think this is our problem.

We've decided to only burn only the dead standing trees I cut this past year, not the stuff that was still alive. I have heard larch takes quite a long time to dry. So hopefully, no more chimney fires.

As a byproduct of the timber harvest we've got about well over 15 cord of firewood, about half of it larch. Some of it I'll be sawing up into lumber with the new sawmill, but I think it will be ok to burn as long as we wait long enough. I need to get that split soon if we want to burn any of it next year.