There is hardly anything more comfortable than a stove! When the days are shorter, it is getting more and more uncomfortable outside, and you like to retire to your own home. A fireplace with the changing play of flames and the pleasant crackle of firewood spreads so much warmth and well-being that the whole room is in one Wellness oasis transformed. How many people long for the homely feeling that a burning fireplace spread.
Fireplaces will help you heat your house. Apart from the incomparable atmosphere of a fireplace, there are also convenient reasons, especially in times of high energy costs, to heat with wood in the cold season and thus to be more independent of price fluctuations on the energy market. Of course, it is essential to choose the right firewood so that the calorific value is as high as possible. The best suited are firewood that have the optimal degree of moisture and a high mass density.
The purpose of the following list of the ten best trees for firewood for your fireplace is to give you the essential information.
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You Can Light Your Fireplace With These Ten Types of Firewood
In general, it can be said that the wood of deciduous trees is more suitable for burning in the fireplace than the forest of conifers. Such is because hardwoods have a higher mass density than softwoods. When choosing the best firewood, it must always be considered that there is no over exploitation in our forests. Sustainable forestry serves to preserve our forests for future generations and is therefore in everyone’s interest!S is also why it is mostly only birch, beech, oak, spruce, and pine cut into firewood. However, the other trees are also suitable as firewood.
For a better understanding, a short preliminary remark: To better understand the suitability of the sorted types of firewood, it should be said that the calorific value means the highest possible amount of heat. The calorific value. – abbreviated: BW – refers equally to kilowatt-hours per room meter and kilowatt-hours per kilogram of firewood. A typical condensing formula, therefore, looks like this: BW = 1,900 / 4.3.
Here Are The Best Firewood Species
Maple: Maple wood with a calorific value of 1,900 / 4.1 is much too good to use as firewood, although it is ideally suited for it. But since maple wood is beautifully grained and is a sturdy wood, it is better to leave it out to use it for furniture and interior fittings.
Birch: The calorific value of birch wood is 1,900 / 4,3. The reason why birch firewood is particularly famous for firing open stoves is, on the one hand, that the wood burns very quickly without generating a lot of sparks. Such means that the fireplace gives off the heat soon, and, on the other hand, that the flame looks so lovely and blue Burn also a pleasant scent of essential oils distributed in the room. Even if beech and oak have higher calorific values, it is the properties mentioned that make birch wood so accessible when it comes to fuel for fireplaces.
Beech: Even more popular than birch wood is the beech firewood, which brings it to a calorific value of 2,100 / 4.0 and warms it for an unusually long time. What is particularly appreciated about these hardwoods is that they burn very quietly due to the lack of resin and do not spray sparks. The only disadvantage of beech firewood is that it must be stored for up to two years until the wood is dry enough to be burned. Such is due to the high density of beech, which makes up almost 15 percent of all native tree species.
Oak: With a calorific value of 2,100 / 4,2, oak firewood can be fired well and, above all, for a long time, since the dense wood burns only slowly. The disadvantage of the slowly growing oak, which accounts for almost ten percent of the tree population in Germany, is that it contains a relatively large amount of tannic acid. Sis manifested in the burning process when an unpleasant smell arises from the wood. Therefore, oak firewood is more suitable for closed fireplaces and not for open ones.
Ash: In addition to its good calorific value, the ash (BW = 2,100 / 4,1), which is a precious wood, is particularly impressive thanks to the particularly beautiful flame with which its wood burns in the fireplace. Since ash wood has high abrasion resistance, it is often used for furniture manufacture, as well as for stairs and flooring.
Spruce: Spruce wood, which is very suitable for burning, should not be burned in open fireplaces, as the bursting of resin bubbles can cause parts of the embers to shoot up, which is dangerous. In closed fireplaces, however, there is no objection to spruce firewood (BW = 1,500 / 4.5), especially since the spruce population is very high, with only a little under 30 percent of the total tree population.
Pine: Pines make up around 23 percent of the domestic tree population. The slightly soft pine wood is quite cheap to have because this softwood overgrows. The low price for pine firewood can compensate for the moderately high calorific value at 1,700 / 4.4. Other favorable properties of pine wood include the short drying time, the spicy pine scent, and the atmospheric crackling of the forest when burned in the fireplace. Caution should only be exercised about flying sparks, which can be expected from pine wood with its viscous wood substance.
Larch: With a calorific value of 1,700 / 4.4, the hardwood of the larch, which belongs to the conifers, plays a subordinate role as firewood, since it is only cut into wood in certain regions with a large number of larch trees.
Robinia: Robinia is also known as false acacias and comes from North America. The wood of these trees, which belong to the legume family, is highly resistant to rotting, which makes Robinia wood an ideal wood for garden furniture that is strongly exposed to the weather. Robinia wood has to be stored for about a year to dry sufficiently. But then this firewood delights you with an intense glow, even if the burning itself is not very easy.
Hornbeam (hornbeam): Despite its name, hornbeam or hornbeam is one of the birch trees and not the red beech. With an occurrence of less than one percent, this tree is not very common in native forests and is therefore rarely used as firewood (BW = 2,200 / 4.2). Primarily not because of the wood of the “iron tree,” as the hornbeam was also known in the past. It is so difficult to split. The hornbeam also owes this high degree of hardness to the fact that its wood is occasionally used for the construction of pianos.
