No matter how experienced you are with wood burners, every day can be a school day!
About a year ago, we have come across something very peculiar when our showroom display HWAM 4640C wood burning stove was burning out of control shortly after refueling. This was out of the ordinary, as we have always stocked up on kiln dried wood from a local supplier for many years without any issue and always check the moisture content of our logs.
We chalked it up as a one time strange occurance and didn't think any of it. Until... it happened a second time! This time, we had the second part of the log and were able to figure out what was causing the issue...
As you can see in the photo above, the log had an abnormally high content of sap which would have been undetected had we not split it beforehand. On the outisde, it seemed unassuming however the weight of the log was a giveaway that something was not quite right.
The woodman informed us that if a tree is cut late winter, he thinks the sap does not get time to rise evenly through the wood and instead forms a high sap burdened stump / trunk near the base.
Despite being dry and giving off extreme heat, this stuff is horrible to burn and give of a mountain of smoke. It burns so hot, it can easily over fire your stove.
If you ever see lots of wispy black smoke inside your stove but yet the stove is burning mega hot.. check outside at what’s coming out your flue / chimney. You want a clear heat haze - not all this pollution!
The problem here is the sap content. If you see these resinous layers, do NOT burn those logs. Typically, it’ll be some kind of pine / cedar type wood… so learn to identify the bark of these and split / check of in doubt before burning
Keep your stove and flue clean and clear. It’s our duty to be respectful of what we burn in our stoves and what they do to the environment.
You can watch our video here on the subject.
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