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[MNRVGuy]

Burning oak or maple which wood is going to give me more heat? If the same or close, give me maple way better to cut & split than oak... Thoughts?

[bajonesy77]

 Heres a firewood BTU comparison chart. 
http://chimneysweeponline.com/howood.htm

[willieG]

wood gives teh same heat if it is teh same moisture content a cord of oak will give more heat than a cord of maple because it is heavier (denser) 1 pound of wood gives approx 6000 btu that is 1 poundo f oak or 1 pound of maple or one pound of willow etc.

denser wood (such as oak) will weigh more per cord than maple, so you can say a cord of oak will give more heat than a cord of maple

but a ton of each will give the same btu as each other....clear as mud now?

[oldchenowth]

UUUUUUUUHHHH.  What he said

[BoilerHouse]

 Oak burns hotter but maple seems to leave a better bed of hot coals- IMO.

[MattyNH]

Oak is a wetter wood than maple. I takes for ever to dry oak...Oak puts out more btu's than maple..I actually like burning oak in my OWB.. I like maple in the house wood stove when I was running wood stove..

[Scott7m]

Actually.....   Red oak, white oak, and sugar maple all have practically the same btu per cord right at 24 million btu/cord.   They all weigh the same at 3757 per cord.

http://firewoodresource.com/firewood-btu-ratings/

[gspren]

Oak burns hotter but maple seems to leave a better bed of hot coals- IMO.

There are several types of maple as well as oak. The softer maples we have here in southern PA don't leave hot coals hardly at all while all of the oaks do. In mild weather if I try to burn all maple my fire will go out if it idles too long, throwing some oak or locust in with the maple keeps enough coals to reignite.

[tree climber]

suger maple&norway maple are good wood. red and silver maple not so good.i like any oak but takes a year to dry

[DeerMeadowFarm]

Burning oak or maple which wood is going to give me more heat? If the same or close, give me maple way better to cut & split than oak... Thoughts?

Mabe if you're talking white oak.... In my experience, freshly cut red oak is one of the easiest woods to split. I would often forego the splitter and use the maul on red oak as it was just much faster to do. Of course, red oak has it's drawbacks...one of which your stack will smell like tom cats peed all over it....

[dirtryder]

Mabe if you're talking white oak.... In my experience, freshly cut red oak is one of the easiest woods to split. I would often forego the splitter and use the maul on red oak as it was just much faster to do. Of course, red oak has it's drawbacks...one of which your stack will smell like tom cats peed all over it....

I totaly agree with the ease of splitting "fresh" red oak. It almost falls apart just seeing the Fiskars coming at it. I will take oak over maple anyday. I use much less and get longer burns out of it. What surprised me is how "lousy" black walnut is. I thought it would be good but it dries to a "balsa" wood weight. I actually gave my log length black walnut to my brother in-law who got it milled. He has over 1000 bdft in his pole barn drying.
It's funny you mention the "pee" smell, when I split oak it reminds me of being in my grandfathers basement around his wine barrels.

[willieG]

splitting? thats a thing of the past isn't it LOl

[tree climber]

i still like to split because it drys faster. i sell alot of fire wood and just cant keep it around for long

[willieG]

i still like to split because it drys faster. i sell alot of fire wood and just cant keep it around for long

oh yes splitting for sale for sure...split wood means more air, means less wood in a cord 

[tree climber]

better on the back