Burn piles

[ponytug]

I do my burn pile from time to time. I had a fair size tree - maybe 15 in diameter in the pile along with brush and branches. Everything went fine, I left the ashes to burn out overnight. The following weekend, despite a light rain shower during the week, I raked around in the ashes and found some hot spots. No problem, I just left it. I was amazed the following weekend when I checked and still found some smoldering spots after 2 weeks! It really wasn't that big of a fire.

This issue is why I am reluctant to burn much of anything.

After forest fires out here, it isn't uncommon to have tree stumps and roots burning for months afterwards unless extinguished.

CA Tree Still Burning, 10 Months Later - Videos from The Weather Channel

All the best, Peter

 

[roadkingdh]

.View attachment 771714

Great way to help global warming..(For real) Natural fires have been keeping the Earth in balance for hundred of thousands of years. They just put a ban on us last election (Democrats), I still light 'em up.

 

[deezler]

I just had my largest bonfire ever. Had a pile of old scrap wood, junk pallets, busted shipping crates, old wooden furniture... the pile kept growing all year but the weather and my schedule didn't cooperate. It was hot and dry all summer and making a massive fire didn't feel right.

Well finally we got a few inches of snow, which saturated the ground and plants and made it time to burn down! Plus the night before Thanksgiving was 45 degrees, with no wind at all. Let's do this.

Kids helped me light her off, no accelerants needed.

Pretty soon it was ragin. I reloaded pallets and scraps about 5 times with the tractor & forks before switching to the grapple and attacking the overflowing brush pile (took down 10 trees this summer so had all the tops to dispose off).

We were gone all the next day for Thanksgiving stuff. 48 hours later the pile still looked like this.

I made a little magnet sweeper out of a kid's rake and a leftover subwoofer magnet. It works great but is quite small, hard to sweep such a giant pile. I was still burning my hands through gloves trying to get the nails off it so had to give the pile another day.

Now 72 hours from lighting the pile, I still had flames if I raked up the chunky coals. Yikes.

Then it rained and put everything out for good, phewf. But I still found chunks of coals in the dry ashes under the top crust. A little help from some newspaper wads and we were into the very final burn down.

Apologies to whatever critters had made a nice Den under the pile this summer. Maybe rabbits, but the hole looks pretty large. Would have expected to see groundhogs running about, so maybe fox?

Finally after many rounds of magnet sweeping, the ground is clean again. I buried the ashes in a hole behind the bonfire spot.

This whole process took WAY longer than I expected to get done with. And the main lesson for me? Make a permanent bonfire spot. This was just a temporary spot, which meant I needed to clean up all the nails. UGH! Guess I'll take this bucket and some other metal up to the scrap yard to make a few bucks.

 

[ning]

I just had my largest bonfire ever. Had a pile of old scrap wood, junk pallets, busted shipping crates, old wooden furniture... the pile kept growing all year but the weather and my schedule didn't cooperate. It was hot and dry all summer and making a massive fire didn't feel right.

Well finally we got a few inches of snow, which saturated the ground and plants and made it time to burn down! Plus the night before Thanksgiving was 45 degrees, with no wind at all. Let's do this.

Kids helped me light her off, no accelerants needed.

Pretty soon it was ragin. I reloaded pallets and scraps about 5 times with the tractor & forks before switching to the grapple and attacking the overflowing brush pile (took down 10 trees this summer so had all the tops to dispose off).

We were gone all the next day for Thanksgiving stuff. 48 hours later the pile still looked like this.

I made a little magnet sweeper out of a kid's rake and a leftover subwoofer magnet. It works great but is quite small, hard to sweep such a giant pile. I was still burning my hands through gloves trying to get the nails off it so had to give the pile another day.

Now 72 hours from lighting the pile, I still had flames if I raked up the chunky coals. Yikes.

Then it rained and put everything out for good, phewf. But I still found chunks of coals in the dry ashes under the top crust. A little help from some newspaper wads and we were into the very final burn down.

Apologies to whatever critters had made a nice Den under the pile this summer. Maybe rabbits, but the hole looks pretty large. Would have expected to see groundhogs running about, so maybe fox?

Finally after many rounds of magnet sweeping, the ground is clean again. I buried the ashes in a hole behind the bonfire spot.

This whole process took WAY longer than I expected to get done with. And the main lesson for me? Make a permanent bonfire spot. This was just a temporary spot, which meant I needed to clean up all the nails. UGH! Guess I'll take this bucket and some other metal up to the scrap yard to make a few bucks.

If you don't do anything to encourage regrowth, it may be a few years before things are reasonably normal there; a fire like that is seriously sterilizing.
Remove the ashes, scrape up the dirt, add new topsoil, reseed.

 

[deezler]

If you don't do anything to encourage regrowth, it may be a few years before things are reasonably normal there; a fire like that is seriously sterilizing.
Remove the ashes, scrape up the dirt, add new topsoil, reseed.

Yeah I tried to scrape the ash off down to clean soil (not perfect) and then sprinkled some sandy soil back over top. I worked it a bit more after that picture but you are absolutely right. Would love to reseed asap but it's frozen soil time now. Probably throw some seed in May.

I have a dream to bring in my excavation guy and his dozer and turn this area into a larger flat area, maybe as a play/ball field, maybe for my future cash crop (lavender farm?). Not sure yet. So I wanted all the nails up, but dont mind burning the grass off this part for now.

 

[two_bit_score]

Ive never reseeded a burn spot and grass has always grown right back over them.

 

[goeduck]

I got scolded by the men in the big red trucks for this one. Wind came up and pushed the smoke to a development. I had my piles all lined up so I could do one after the other. First pile lit off hot and burned right up so I decided to do more than one at a time. As my luck went that day, I could not get the following fires hot and they smoked as you can see. Since then I have one burn pile and get it hot, then feed it with my grapple. No red trucks since.

Then

Now

 

[jaxs]

The men in big red trucks aren't as cranky as the one in red SUV.

 

[RjCorazza]

The men in big red trucks aren't as cranky as the one in red SUV.

The red SUV shouldn't even be there! They just complicate even the simplest job.

 

[deezler]

I got scolded by the men in the big red trucks for this one. Wind came up and pushed the smoke to a development. I had my piles all lined up so I could do one after the other. First pile lit off hot and burned right up so I decided to do more than one at a time. As my luck went that day, I could not get the following fires hot and they smoked as you can see. Since then I have one burn pile and get it hot, then feed it with my grapple. No red trucks since.

Burning bonfire piles hot and clear is the only respectable way to go, IMO. For your neighbors and for the environment overall. Feeding one ultra hot pile location with a tractor grapple is an excellent way to keep things contained and controlled, but also hot and efficient.

Not awesome when people leave them unattended to smolder and smoke for days. My neighbor used to like to try to burn wet, fresh cut brush too.... so smoky.

I was bad about this one time myself. I was burning brush that would have gone pretty hot and clear, but then my brother-in-law heard my plans and brought over a trailer load to burn up also. But his was fresh cut cedar branches full of pine needles. Each load of that stuff put on the fire erupted a THICK yellow cloud of nasty smoke, that promptly blew over to my neighbors house when they were trying to have a covid-friendly picnic with extended family. I swear its the only time the wind has blown in that specific direction, but I kinda filled the woods up with smoke that day. They came over and asked if I could put out the fire.... had to say, sorry, but no not really. I stopped adding extra bush, but the existing pile is going to burn until its done.