Rank your firewood...

[seabast]

Any wood will burn but you often get 20% or more heat if it is dried first. Last week we cut two truck loads of poplar and basswood logs for the mill as we are burning mostly beech and maple. Burn about 10 bush cords/ year to heat two houses. Switching to outdoor wood furnace in my old age....

Not sure if it's true but I heard outside wood furnace are a lot of work, feeling up big pieces of wood in the snow, but burn anything dry or not.

[Splaker]

Wow that's a lot of work!

Ya, might not reach old age at that pace!

[patvetzal]

A good quality OWB will burn big pieces of anything, but will also burn smaller pieces of dry wood and get good mileage from it. Ours is an old style Portage and Main. We already had our winters wood cut and dried for our indoor stoves so we burnt that. No smoke and lots of heat.
Friends have other makes and burn fresh cut crap. Lots of smoke and the woodpile goes down quickly.
With a system and a tractor it takes two of us a couple of days to fill a log truck with basswood/poplar. This could be burnt in the OWB but it is not great wood, even dry.

[yellow dog]

Oak, Sugar Maple, Iron Wood ,Apple and white cedar fir kindling. When I use to burn to heat my other home. Did that for almost 20 years. Never again !

[Splaker]

just took down some more ash and ironwood today... split and piled.. will probably burn some of that ash this year!

[Killarnehunter]

Hard oak and maple

[FishinScuba]

Standing dead elm is one of my favourites, for a couple of reasons , I can cut it in the winter and it's ready to burn and it burns hot with good coals. Sugar maple , oak , birch and iron wood ( I don't have a big supply of iron wood around so it's more of a -25 treat )

[patvetzal]

Not sure if it's true but I heard outside wood furnace are a lot of work, feeling up big pieces of wood in the snow, but burn anything dry or not.

We stored our wood in woodsheds up at the barn and brought it down to the house a face cord at a time (tractor bucket) to get stored on the front porch. This would last about a week or more.
Unless you keep your wood in the basement, at some point you have to go outside. We now have tenants who like a very warm (75F) house, so they stoke the fire...which should heat both houses.
Outside wood stoves WILL burn big wet wood, but they burn less wood when it is dry(20%). We cut and split much of our wood small enough so my 5'2" wife can put it into the fireplace insert. This wood burns fine in the OWB and gives as many BTUs as big heavy pieces...just takes a bit longer at this time of year to split and pile..