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.
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