I have never burned anything but burn piles. I have seen too many wildfires and the results of those fires to ever want to even do controlled burns, even though they are necessary. In fact, it is obvious people have stopped fires too many times and now our forests and other areas are loaded up with fuel.
That said, we had a pretty good windstorm here in the PNW about a month ago. No power for 4 days. Lines across my 2 driveways for 3 of those days. And we had 24 trees blow down. And when a tree comes down so do all those branches. So my wife and I have been collecting small branches and burning them.
Fortunately almost all of the trees that blew down were not conifers. Lots of conifer branches though. Anyway, we have had several fires in our big fire ring to get rid of the branches. We do have a
chipper but it is a pain to use. And the local rental place closed up so no we would need to drive 60 miles to rent a big
chipper. Hence the burning.
I use a squirrel cage fan that must be 70 years old if it is a day to provide a good wind for the fires. So I get the fire going with a weed burner, plug in the ancient fan, (hey, it's 4 years older than me so it must be ancient) and let it blow. Once the fire gets going and the fan is blowing the green stuff is converted to ash remarkably fast. And it is good white ash, no carbon left, so the volume is tiny.
So any branch larger than 1.5 inches in diameter is saved while the rest gets burned. We will have plenty of wood for heat next winter. 24 trees! Lotsa wood and debris.
Eric
