Success at last using prunings as firewood. In the past when using pruned / chopped down wood, it has been still green/wet when burned, even though it had been ageing for two years in dry conditions!
In removing trees, I would chop off the leaves, then cut the firewood to length while still in situ, before stacking. The large bits were chopped with an axe. What really perplexed me was that the large axe cut pieces would dry. But the small diameter bits would still be wet.
What I found out, is that the bark was keeping the moisture in. So with a high moisture level, and small area of ends of the wood, it was trapping in the moisture. Where as in splitting up a log, it would have at least half, if not two thirds not covered in bark. Thus lots of area for the moisture to dry out from.
Thus the greeness needs to be sucked out by the leaves first before cutting up. So I have changed my system, and it know works perfectly. It is as follows:
With pruning (mostly citrus) or cutting back nitrogen fixers and/or hedges, the larger bits are left in the sun until the leaves significantly wilt. I try not to let them go brown as then the branches are harder to cut. But it is somewhat ad hoc.
Then I take loopers are trim everything off that can be easily cut with loopers / secateurs. They are then transported to a pile someplace to age a year.
This pile is then cut up, currently by daughters with electric scissor like chain saw and stacked into the shed in summer for winter us.
Tree Lucerne stacked over citrus pruning. |
What is even better is that my slave labor aka teenage children can do a large proportion of the work, once I have done the initial pruning and selection
I will upload a nice fire photo and a thermometer shot when we restart the fire, since the day hasn't been that cold.....
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