Anyone have any ideas of which kind of wood is the best to burn, I have been burning a lot of sycamore and it does not do to bad. I also have used oak, locust. What wood last the longest.
a pound of wood has about 8600 BTU init...so if you have equally dry wood..the heavier wood (denser) will have more BTU in it and last longer
also if you burn wet wood (unseasoned) it will take about 1000 BTU to evaperate each pound of water that is in the wood...so you can see it is very important to burn only seasoned wood
i guess (only my interpritation) that means if you have a 100 pounds of dry oak (20 percent or less moisture)
100 pounds of wood produces 860,000 BTU..less 20,000 to evaperate the moisture..leaves you 840,000 BTU of heat
100 pounds of green wood (60 percent moisture) same amount of BTU 860,000 less 60,000...leaves you 800,000
according to the wood charts i have seen (they must take into account the moisture of 20 percent ..a cord of dry oak weighs about 4000 pounds and produces 25.7 million BTUs
so wet would be another 40 percent less BTU's per cord...about 10 million ..so wet wood would lessen your available heat to about 15 million from 25 million
if my math is right..burn dry wood
try the link for a firewood chart
http://mb-soft.com/juca/print/firewood.html