The Best Woods for Firewood

An efficient wood stove or fireplace can heat a house.

Using a wood-burning stove or fireplace can reduce your heating bills in addition to creating a warm, inviting atmosphere. Cutting and gathering your own wood takes time and a healthy commitment of labor. If you own property with fallen trees, you'll be cleaning up the debris and saving money. You will need a U.S. Forest Service permit if you want to cut trees in the forest, and some state agencies require permits. If you decide to buy wood, you should know which trees yield the best firewood.

Make the Best Fire

Softwood kindling is helpful when starting a fire.

In either a wood stove or a fireplace, a mix of hard and soft wood makes the best fire. Softwoods, like pine or fir, should be used to start the fire because they are resinous and burn easily. Use softwood kindling and, when the fire is going well, add a larger piece and follow with hardwood. Hardwoods like oak, cedar or eucalyptus burn longer, give off more heat and make good coals. These coals and hot ashes keep the fire going and ignite new wood as it's added. The most efficient combustion occurs when smaller amounts of wood are burned with sufficient air, rather than a large pile of wood with little air.

Use Seasoned Wood

All firewood should be seasoned or aged to burn well.

Wood must be seasoned to burn well and hardwoods, especially oak, require more than a year. Properly seasoned wood starts easily, burns well and leaves the least creosote deposits in your chimney or stove pipe. When buying wood, determine when it was cut and split, and avoid "this year's wood". Seasoned wood looks dry, dark or gray when compared to green wood. If you split a piece of seasoned wood, it's lighter on the inside and may be brittle with cracks running through it. Green wood has a fresh, damp-looking center with the bark tightly attached. It's usually heavier because it contains more moisture. Green wood is difficult to light, smolders and smokes and keeps going out

Best Hardwoods

All varieties of oak are hardwoods which make a hot, long-burning fire.

Hardwoods produce more BTUs of heat energy and are best for heating and cooking. Hardwoods are denser and heavier than most softwoods, providing fuel that sustains high temperatures and a long-lasting fire. Hardwoods are more difficult to light because contain less resin, so softwood kindling is helpful.

Madrone, one of the hardest, most dense woods, burns very hot for a long time, providing 30,000 BTUs per cord. (A standard cord is stacked wood piled 4 feet high, 4 feet wide and 8 feet long).

Oak costs more than softwood but produces 25,000 to 30,000 BTUs, and beech and birch provide 25,000 to 28,000 BTUs. Black walnut, black locust, pecan and eucalyptus are also excellent heat producers.

Best Softwoods

Pines are a rapidly burning softwood which produce fewer BTUs of heat.

Softwoods burn easily, making a bright, crackling fire with a fragrant aroma. Pine, fir, spruce, cottonwood are less dense but more resinous and burn faster than hardwood. Cottonwood produces 15,000 BTUs per cord, while ponderosa and lodgepole pine give off 19,000 BTUs. Incense cedar makes a fragrant, fast-burning fire with less heat than Western juniper, a medium-weight wood producing 23,000 to 26,000 BTUs. Alder, willow and sycamore are good fire-starters.

References

• The Firepit and Grilling Guru: What Is the Best Firewood?
• Master Sweep: Best Burning Wood
• Consumer Energy Center: Firewood
• The Log Rack: Firewood Guide BTU Rating Chart
• Ohio Nature: What Is the Best Firewood?