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[MiHawkeye]

Looking through craigslist I am seeing many ads for chipper/shredders, which got me to thinking...  With the tree tops that I am not using, just basically putting them in a burn pile and burning right there, what about chipping them and burning them in the boiler?  Has anyone tried doing this?  It seems they would dry out pretty quickly, but it would also be harder keeping them dry.  Almost need to store them in a large barrel/trough.  Transport to the burner would also be a pain, but it would add a bunch of extra wood that I am currently wasting.....Any thoughts?

[farmboythegreat]

I been wondering same thing , could shovel a bunch in with the wood   ?

[slimjim]

I burn chips in our 250 gasser sometimes at shows when I'm running low on wood, we also have the enviro-500 that is designed for light comercial heating with wood chips, it is the fuel of the future!

[Wood Nutt]

I have not burned chips, but I have raked up the small pieces after splitting or dumping a load of wood and burned them.  They sure smoke a lot and don't last long and assume chips would be the same. 

The little I looked at chip burners, it looks like they run more efficiently with a feed system like a pellet stove where you can trickle them in at a somewhat controlled rate depending on how much heat needs to be produced.  On those days where you are around your stove, I would guess that you could throw a scoop or two in a few times thru the day.  Sounds like Slimjim can tell you more on how much you can add without choking up the stove.

Let us know how it works if you try.  Our tree companies are always looking for places to dump whole truckloads of chips.

[slimjim]

I've tried them in my old conventional Wood Doctor and they did not do well at all, lots of smoke, but my gassers like the chips on top of a nice bed of coals, really gets a nice secondary burn going as long as it's not overloaded. Yes the comercial chip boilers are much like a pellet boiler only much heavier in the build as it takes a lot of power to move coarse wood chips.

[CountryBoyJohn]

I heard a similar thing about chip piles. If you chip green wood, the sap acts like cement paste and turns your pile into a solid pile that can only be broken up with a backhoe bucket our something with hydraulics.

[astro_ss_340]

Wood chips will actually allow you a more controlled and uniform burn, if they are prepared properly you should burn less wood doing so.

[MiHawkeye]

What is the best way to prepare, dry, and store the wood chips?  Also, can these be just from the tree tops that were cut down, or need to be special parts?

[slimjim]

There are many different grades of chips, fuel chips are mixed species with small sticks and bark included like you would find being chipped by the town on the sides of the road, they burn well but not as many btu's as with paper grade that is pure hardwood, sized below 2 inches, a very small percentage of bark and sticks, they both burn well green or dry with controlled feed rate and air, as with a cordwood a boiler, ceramics is the key to a clean and efficient burn, the issue with chips is the feed system, it is expensive to build a drive system stout enough to handle the overage ( larger sticks and ends ) that are produced during the chipping process. You can learn a bit about it on our website, look for the video of the Enviro 500

[Sprinter]

Bump

[slimjim]

Sprinter, are you short on time this morning? What's with the abbreviations?