Can someone identify this wood please?

[jix]

When I heated with wood, I had an Airtight stove. In the top of that stove was a catalytic Conveter that burned all of the combustion smoke again. It was a porcelain grid of 1/4" squares about two inches thick in the flue chamber of the stove. You could slide it in or out of the flue exhaust stream with a slide handle To light it off required a flue gas temperature of about 800 Deg F. You looked into a small hole in the top of it and when it was red hot, you closed the air inlets of the stove almost completely. The stove was quite small, steel, lined with firebrick, And that little 12cubic foot firebox stove heated a 1700 sq foot R24 bungalow without any other heat source quite comfortably. The stove had a small 120V fan the drew room air through an air jacket around the ouside of the firebox plate and blew the heated air into the room it was in. I burned about 4 cord of wood a year, every year for 17 years. My chimney was a Selkirk stainless steel insulated chimney rated at 1200 *F with a six inch internal flue and it was 18 feet long, right from the airtight to the roof peak, plus 3 feet. Although I swept it with a long handled chimney brush every year, I never saw any creosote in it, just some dry soot aqnd not much of that.

I burned almost all hardwood, beech, ash, hard maple, hophornbeam and yellow birch. Once I burned two cords of dried red pine. The best firewood that ever got was 12 cords of apple tree wood from an old orchard. Apple wood is very dense and burns like anthracite coal With a blue flame, and a pleasant smell. I moved and installed a geothermal open loop 3 ton heat pump in my next house. Wood used to cost me about a thousand dollars a year, (4 Cords) plus every weekend, cutting ,bucking, splitting and piling, and moving it. The stove would be stoked every 12 hours, usually.

I cannot do that kind of work anymore, and hardwood is not easily available for less than 400 dollars per cord and you neeed a woodshed to store it in, so the geothermal is both easier and cheaper than burning wood, plus my fire insurance is much cheaper. A house heated with a good woodstove is always cozy and warm, but then, so is a well designed heatpump system.... if my power goes out, then I run an oil furnace with my standby genny which also runs my refrigeration, a few lights and pressure water pump. Last winter I ran my genny set-up for 7 days when the power was off. Fuel cost me a hundred bucks for gas and 200 bucks for oil.

By the way, A Selkirk insulated stainless 1200*F rated chimney can easily withstand the heat of a chimney fire, so you can sleep in safety.

 

[Otto Syracuse]

The tree does not have seed pods in the spring, so that probably eliminates Cottonwood. I now think it is basswood too, it's very light even though it is green (not seasoned) still.
I have a neighbor with an outdoor furnace, I'll see if he wants to "clean it up" for me.