Most types of hardwood, for instance Ash (generally regarded as the best), Birch, Beech, Oak and Elm can be used. However, avoid burning woods with a high resin content. As a rule of thumb, the heavier the wood, then the greater the heat output and the longer burn time – the time between refills.
Seasoned hardwoods make the best firewood. Hardwoods like oak, cherry and maple are denser than softwoods like pine or cedar. Due to their density, they burn longer and produce more heat or BTUs.
Hawthorn: This wood will burn slow and hot, great for wintery fires. Maple: Found in different regions of North America, this is a popular hardwood for fire burning. Oak: When seasoned well, oak burns slowly and steadily for a long time. Pine: This softwood burns well and smells festive.
Watch out for any wood covered with vines. Burning poison ivy, poison sumac, poison oak, or pretty much anything else with "poison" in the name releases the irritant oil urushiol into the smoke. Breathing it in can cause lung irritation and severe allergic respiratory problems, the Centers for Disease Control state.
Wood burned inside the home should always be dry and seasoned for at least 6-12 months. Wood burns most efficiently when the moisture content is at 20% or less. Damp wood burns at a cooler temperature, resulting in incomplete combustion, more smoke, and dangerous creosote build-up in the chimney (a fire hazard).
Oak. Oak is the slowest wood to season, at approximately 2.5cm a year and ideally should be seasoned for a minimum of two years. Because of its density, it is a wood that's slow to burn as firewood and is best used in a mix of faster-burning logs. This wood can help to keep the fire burning at night if required.
Hardwoods also burn hotter than softwoods. However, not all hardwoods provide an equal amount of heat. For example, hardwoods like oak, ash, birch and hickory have a higher heat value than hardwoods like walnut and elm. But all of those woods have higher heat values than softwoods like pine and cedar.
Pine Wood. Pine, a softwood, is resinous. That means when burned, it emits a lot of soot that adds dangerous creosote to your chimney walls. It also burns more quickly than hardwood, so it's less efficient, though it can be used as kindling.
The dirtiest fuel to use in a wood burner is coal, and the cleanest is dry untreated wood with less than 20% moisture.
Basswood. Basswood is the best wood for wood burning in my opinion. It's very soft and easy to burn, there are practically no grains.
Wood burns best at a moisture content of less than 20 percent. Test wood with a wood moisture meter before you burn it. Start fires with newspaper, dry kindling, or all natural fire starters, or install a natural gas or propane log lighter in your open fireplace.
In your fireplace, put two or three logs down as a foundation. Then place two or three more logs on top of those in a crisscross manner. “This allows for plenty of oxygen for the wood to burn,” says Hite. “The more oxygen the fire has, the hotter it burns.”
As wood burns, the mix of expanding gases and cellulose breaking down makes the pockets of trapped steam burst open from the wood, one by one. This is why you hear the crackling and popping noises. So the more water and sap there is inside the wood, the noisier the fire will be.
Hardwood burns the slowest, produces the most intense fires, and produces hot coals that remain hot long after a fire has gone out.
For most campers, 2 to 5 bundles of firewood a day (10 to 25 logs) should be sufficient, but your needs will vary based on your personal campfire habits.
During the winter, treating wood is more technical because of the moisture present in the air. Unfortunately, the fungus that produces the dry rot loves the moisture. The fungi will eat away the wood by breaking down the cellulose and hemicellulose of the wood.
Your wood needs to dry below 20% moisture content before it is ready to burn. Cut wood takes at least 6-12 months to dry, but there are a lot of factors that affect it. Drying time depends on weather conditions, how covered it is, airflow, and the type of tree the wood comes from.
Wait at least 6 months and up to 12 months for dry firewood depending on type of wood. Hardwoods like oak and maple dry more slowly than soft woods like pine and spruce. To ensure dry firewood, wait at least 12 months before burning. To test, bang two pieces together; dry wood sounds hollow, wet wood sounds dull.
The bottom line is that you can split both wet and dry wood. The latter is usually easier to split, though many people prefer to split the former so that it dries out more quickly. But if you use a log splitter, you shouldn't have trouble splitting either wet or dry wood.
#1 The Wood Isn't Seasoned
If your wood isn't dry enough then the moisture content still in the wood isn't allowing the fire to get hot enough. And if the fire isn't getting hot enough, it's not producing enough warm air to push the cold air in the chimney up fast enough. The result is no fire.
The hardest wood to burn is cedar, but there are other types of wood that can be just as difficult to ignite. When choosing the right kind of wood for your fire, it's important to consider the smoke output and the amount of sparks that it produces.
Heat Treated (HT), Debarked (DB), and Kiln Dried (KD) stamps generally mean the pallet wood will be safe to burn, however remember that pallet wood burns hot and fast, so care should still be taken when using it as firewood.