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I feel really pleased as I aquired a boot full of wood for winter,I got large bits and kindling a sight to behold.

Excellent.
From Experience though I would not think about just burning that, either use it all as kindling for coal, or logs. Otherwise you will be up and down stocking it every ten minutes, set your chimney on fire and run out in about a week!
But it's still great!

goodness no,I will use with logs as, yes, that does burn quickly.I use it to top up well about half/half as I only use the woodburner most of the time the oil is too pricey for the heating.....

Looks like a grand haul to me.

Well done.

Zoe

I once burnt up an old shiplap fence that had blown down in the winter. It burnt up a treat. So much so, that the flue started glowing orange and the wood burning stove started to vibrate!

We vacated the house and went outside, only to see large orange flames shooting out of the chimney, luckily no harm was done. Although when the chimney-sweep came to clean the chimney he couldn’t find any soot – must have all been burnt up.

Does anyone know if there a potential hazard with burning off cuts (or old bits of scrap wood from tips/waste from building sites etc) in home boilers. An obvious example would be painted wood, say bits of an old door as paint has chemicals in it that are toxic. Also alot of wood is treated with formaldehyde so that can't be good.

http://copd.about.com/od/livingwithcop1 ... stoves.htm
http://www.ehow.com/list_7287976_danger ... wood_.html
http://www.healthybuilding.net/formaldehyde/

Perhaps I have answered my own question here, but being a newbie to this just wanted to see what those in the know have to say about this.

I picked up a boot-full of skip wood today from a friend's building site. I'll just burn it and keep my fingers crossed.

Zoe

I suppose it depends how cold you are whether you can risk burning something in an enclosed box with a direct flu depositing the smoke 20 meters away?

Personally I would never burn treated, stained or painted wood. Even if you can avoid breathing in the poisonous gasses yourself, you're releasing them into the environment.

At least in/on the wood the poison is contained in a limited space. Not ideal, but better than out there. Just like a can of paint is better than chucking the content of that can into a river or on the soil. Or cleaning a paint brush with thinner and then throwing that down the sink.

All in all, one can even make a case for heating with natural gas being more environmentally friendly than wood. It is not renewable, true, but when I walk through the neighbourhood smelling the wood smoke of our neighbours' wood stoves, I know i am breathing in fumes and fine particles which are as healthy for me as cigarette smoke.

When wood smells acrid and or fills the air with muck it is because it has not been properly seasoned. Too many people buy/sell wood as firewood which has only been cut for one season - often that same year!

Wood must be kept a minimum of two years after cutting and, if you've any sense, for three or more years. You get more heat and a cleaner burn. And the air outside around the house will smell either of nothing or quite fragrant.

offgrider wrote:Does anyone know if there a potential hazard with burning off cuts (or old bits of scrap wood from tips/waste from building sites etc) in home boilers. An obvious example would be painted wood, say bits of an old door as paint has chemicals in it that are toxic. Also alot of wood is treated with formaldehyde so that can't be good.

From what I've been told from sources in the building industry and from my father who was a furnace operator the important factor is the temperature of the combustion. I can't remember the actual figure ( but I suppose they are out there if you google it) but domestic fires burn relatively cold and will produce dioxins from all these chemicals. A furnace which has a forced air input will burn hotter ( I think over 800 celsius) and destroy the toxins.
I don't personally burn treated timber and try to avoid paints too. If the wood is a green colour or has a "chemically " smell then don't use it. Some timber treated by a method known as vac vac smells and sometimes has a sort of oily feel to it if it's new. Older timber that has been taken out of a building is a bit more hit and miss as it may have been treated insitu and some of the older chemicals were nastier than modern ones.
Some pallets are treated too but these tend to be euro pallets (if memory serves 1.2m square) so look for smaller cheap pallets such as the ones used to transport roof tiles, these normally end up in the skips as they are classed as pretty much worthless.


Pete

I usually get windfall timber from a friend's wood. It helps clear the area for him, makes it safer and gives me free fuel. We are just logging a huge horse chestnut that is hollow (which made for challenging safety issues). It'll take a while to season but if it's anything like the Ash tree I was given some years ago (3 feet across), it should last for ages. So good to get free ... and to help builders clear their yards, even better !

Has anyone tried driftwood from the seashore ? We used to collect it as children and then during the strikes as young adults. Nowadays, we only tend to get it when we remember. When dry, the salty wood burns with an incredible sparkle and constantly changing colour flame.

Never tried it but it sounds like a pretty fire

I think it best to avoid painted / treated woods. In principle, nothing that is in the paints or coatings for wood in general use should pose any problem, but come across something a bit special, PVC based coatings or wood with PVC fittings, for example, then you could really be chucking out some nasty byproducts.