Why Try to Burn Water?

green firewood blog image

An Important Lesson about Drying Firewood

A cord of freshly cut hardwood from a northern forest (green firewood) contains about 24,000,000 British Thermal Units (Btus) and weighs about 4,500 pounds. After proper air drying, the same cord weighs only 3,500 pounds. The loss of 1,000 pounds of water at 8.34 pounds per gallon is about 120 gallons.

green firewood barrel

The next time you think about what it means to burn green firewood, imagine also burning two barrels of water along with each cord.  Does that make any sense?

Here is a link to the EPA's Burn Wise site for best wood-burning practices.

For more information on our wood boilers click here.

Wood moisture content vs. net Btus available per pound of wood
(Green wood is 45-50% water on average)

green firewood graph

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