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Old 04-29-2012, 08:22 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by KegRiver View Post
When all you have is wood for heat, poplar turns out to be one of the best.

Softwood such as pine and spruce are not good, it produces way too much creosote.

Birch is okay but it`s heavy in relation to the heat produced, hard to split, and hard to find.

Poplar is low creosote, easy to split, readily available and relatively light in relation to the heat produced.

Although different charts show different values, most charts show poplar as producing about the same amount of heat per cubic meter, or chord as Pine and Spruce.

Here are some figures from one such chart.


Million BTUs per chord. Pounds per chord dry

White Birch 20.3 3179

Poplar-Trembling Aspen 17.7 2400

Pine 17.1 2580

White Spruce 16.2 2520

As you can see, poplar produces very nearly the same amount of heat, pound for pound as birch, and considerably more per pound then either Spruce or Pine.
I agree with your order. I won't burn coniferous inside my house because it's dirty, sappy and it throws sparks. I don't care how much wood weighs when I burn it and it isn't sold by weight.......just sayin' that weight isn't any factor that concerns me. The more it weighs (dry) the more heat you are going to get out of it.

Used to burn nothing but maple, beech, oak and ash back in Ontario.

Green wood will produce less heat and more creosote.
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