Heating With Hardwood Chips (house, designs, trailer)

[Maine Writer]

Forest, I have a question for you, and for anyone else in the know. As some or most of you saw, friends have mine have a chip truck load of debarked hardwood chips on their lawn. They have a large wood furnace in their basement. Steve rejected the load of chips for the mill because they're too dirty.

They chips were trees Thursday so they're fresh and wet. Can my friends shovel them into the wood furnace like this or do they need to let them dry?

[Northern Maine Land Man]

They need to dry. Otherwise they will creosote up the chimney. Picture burning nothing but kindling wood. How often would you have to stoke the fire?

About 20 years ago, Dick Hill from the radio show, Hot and Cold, designed a wood chip furnace. Many are still working very well. They are fed by a screw auger.

[Maine Writer]

Thanks! I'll pass this on. There's room to spread them out and let them dry. I'm glad something good comes from this. The previous owner used chips but they didn't expect to so they hadn't looked into this.

[ElizaTeal]

I wouldn't burn anything dirty in a stove. We have a wood pellet stove it burns very clean and heats the house nicely too.

[Submariner]

Originally Posted by Maine Writer

Forest, I have a question for you, and for anyone else in the know. As some or most of you saw, friends have mine have a chip truck load of debarked hardwood chips on their lawn. They have a large wood furnace in their basement. Steve rejected the load of chips for the mill because they're too dirty.

They chips were trees Thursday so they're fresh and wet. Can my friends shovel them into the wood furnace like this or do they need to let them dry?

I do burn woodchips [and peat moss, and ....]

Some designs of woodstoves are better for high creosote fuel.

Anything that uses a 'gasification' process is better. [wood is heated and burned to release all volatile oils and they are taken to a separate combustion chamber, where they are burned. So you have two separate combustion chambers. One for the wood and a second combustion chamber for the gases. They are sometimes shown to double the Btu given off by each pound of fuel.]

It would not hurt for the chips to be dried.

However, I would burn them.

Shoveling a ton of chips is less work than cutting and splitting a ton of wood.

If your stove does not draft well. Or if your stove pipe is cool. Then the opportunity for creosote to cool and solidify inside the stove pipe is greater.

I do burn green unseasoned fuels. I do have a secondary combustion chamber. My stove pipe drafts real strong, it is straight, vertical, and does is not cool when in operation. I clean our stove pipe each summer, and it has not built up any creosote yet.

So I am fairly confident that I can safely burn that type of fuel.

Depending upon your stove design and draft, your friends' furnace might be fine. It certainly would not hurt a heating budget.

[Maine Writer]

Most of it is very clean but the overall load would have dirt in it and can't go to the mill. There are four to five cords worth of chips that had to be taken out of the trailer before the wreckers (three of them!) could pull the trailer onto the road. They're sitting in a couple of neat piles. The rest is on the ground so it will have to be removed.

[Northern Maine Land Man]

Good grief. That will be an expensive mistake. The load could have gone to a hog fuel plant. They take dirty chips.