The fast answer would be dry wood. However , here are some ideas which should help you to select, process and store your firewood. For further information see our wood burning stove information pages.
Ash, for example, is typically treated as the best firewood, a claim which largely rests on its low moisture content, that means it needs relatively little seasoning. However , holding out for a provider of ash when you live in an area densely wooded with oak and beech isn’t sensible.
You must consider what kind of wood is locally available. Wood isn’t a fuel that’s sensible to transport over long distances. In Scandinavia you would burn lots of birch and soft-wood. In densely-wooded France you’re spoiled for choice. Britain, though sparsely wooded, has traditionally been blessed with plantings in many areas, of ash, elm, beech and oak, all superb firewoods, though elsewhere commercial considerations have led straight to large characterless areas of conifers. The actuality is that, when properly dried, all of them are excellent, warming fuel, and if harvested sensibly and sustainably, make good economic sense for you, the local economy and the planet.
Also , you should decide of you are prepared and able to process and manage your own wood supply. Self-sufficiency is highly cost-effective and deeply satisfying, but it’s not for everyone. It is time consuming, messy and laborious as well as requiring the utilization of a range of potentially lethal cutting instruments. If you want to do this you must start to know your wood types. Really hard types like eucalyptus become hard to split soon after chopping down. Holly, a decent burner, is densely knotted and troublesome to process. Alder splits easily, while birch is wonderfully straightforward to chop and split. The equation between work and reward speedily becomes obvious for different woods, and you’ll make your choices accordingly.
Is cost the most important factor? If this is so and if you’re prepared to scrounge carpentry off-cuts, pallets, old floorboards and other untreated waste wood, you can heat your house absolutely free or at least extremely cost-effectively. The more of the work you’re prepared to do yourself, the less expensive it will be to run your stove.
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Felling, cutting to size, splitting, seasoning, stacking all add extra value to the final product and the more of them that you outsource to your provider, the more you are going to be forced to pay.
Do you have the room to store plenty of wood? Ideally, you will want to store about 2 years ‘ worth of firewood at home to ensure that, even after a cold winter, you will always have some seasoned wood available for your stove, as well as allowing adequate seasoning time for your stubbornly slow-drying types like oak and conifers. If, you have limited storage space, then it makes sense to plump for woods that will dry out reasonably quickly like ash, birch or beech, and generally for denser woods that will give a larger calorific return on volume.
Are you too busy to spend some time chopping and stacking wood? There are some good providers around who will deliver large quantities of high quality kiln-dried firewood. Many of them also offer a stacking service, and if you only use your stove on occasion, this shouldn’t cost too much. Nonetheless it’s not cheap.
It’s good to have a mix of woods. Fast burning woods (softwoods and thinly-cut wood which will typically burn quicker) will heat a space up quicker and are helpful for getting a fire going or reviving it. Heavier logs and hardwoods will burn slower, yielding greater heat and giving you longer stoking intervals. Fires are easiest to keep going with a mix of different woods.
Heavy use of conifers can leave some unpleasant residues on the inside of your flue, so monitoring the health of your chimney and getting it regularly swept is important, but this shouldn’t put you off using them. Burn them dry and burn them hot!
The New Forest Woodburning Centre in Hampshire, UK has a wide range of wood burning stoves and is staffed with experts who will help you choose, install, maintain and enjoy your stove.