burning tips

   / burning tips #11  
My last fire last spring lasted almost a week. It was a pile of beams from my barn that we are restoring and brush from the last 2 winters. I started it with deisel and drain oil. As it burned I kept pushing more brush and debris onto it. The pile was about 12wx12hx20L when I started and packed tightly from sitting for years. The ground was soaked and the weather was damp all week. I buried the fire the next weekend. It was still red hot with embers down under. This next spring I will dig it out and finish burying it. I am already adding more to it now for the coming burn in the spring.
 
   / burning tips #12  
I recently burned two piles with the very gracious assistance of my local township volunteer fire department. I called them to find out what the rules were and they told me just to let them know when and they'd be happy to send a couple guys out with a pump truck to pretty much do everything.

I had one pile the size of a single car garage and another twice that size. I provided the diesel fuel and they used their flares to start the fires. They wetted down the surrounding areas and I used my Deere FEL to bank the fires when necessary. After three hours and 250 gallons of water they were satisfied I'd be in good shape so they called it a day and I tended them from there.

The only negatives were getting caught by a gust of wind on this incredibly calm day while I was banking the fire and getting buried in smoke and ash for a moment, burning a bit of paint off my bucket and lighting my shirt on fire for a few seconds. Other than those things, it went perfectly. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 
   / burning tips #13  
gary: hummm setting the shirt on-fire that would rate a litel higher on the not so good of a day scale! /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif

yep lots of times old building around here can be burnt if there are a few rules set and handled by the FD as training. though I have not heard/seen this for many years. usually due to concerns over lead paint and such.

Anyhow I am getting ready to mow front and back of my town property and then head to farm where I have 2 piles still waiting but I have slots of work PRIOR to lighting,

Hoping for aweekend prijkect with no or low wind, these two are well pritected by tree and ravine lines. with everything GREEN it helps to prevent any cros fires too. just knock down all the surrounding vegitations.

Mark M
 
   / burning tips #14  
<font color="blue"> "Gary...setting the shirt on-fire that would rate a little higher on the 'not so good of a day' scale!" </font>

Fortunately, it was a T-shirt I wore for welding and it already had a number of little holes in it. The funny part was I noticed the little burn but thought that, like a welding spark, it would go out in a second or two. When it didn't, I looked down and had about a 3/4" flame at the edge of a then quarter sized hole. I immediately tried to swat it out with my gloved hand to no avail. Finally I took both hands and pulled the shirt away from my chest and rubbed the flame out between them.

The red mark went away after a few days but the emotional scar of embarrassment lives on. /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
 
   / burning tips #15  
Brett,

Not to complicate the issue, but I don't burn any more. I used to burn 3-4 times a year. As you know, fighting mother nature constantly creates a lot of brush etc. Once I got my tractor, I started hauling it back into the woods, well out of sight of the house. I have a pretty large 'bone pile' back there - - I just keep on adding to it. I normally pull large items like trees into the woods with my bucket hooks, then use the FEL to push & pile it up.
I did not stop burning because of environmental or legal reasons, but because burning seems to me to take longer. A good size brush pile can burn for hours. I never felt good about leaving it when it is still active. I feel I save considerable time using the tractor to haul it to my bone pile.
Besides, it's a LOT more fun than burning.
 
   / burning tips #16  
</font><font color="blue" class="small">( Lots of good advice. I use those fire logs you get in the grocery store to start my fires. I just cut a plug off and they match light. It's the easiest way I've found. )</font>

Great Idea! I burn several BIG brush piles a year from making wood. Usually build a small pile of drier/smaller wood on top of paper as far in as I can reach on the downwind side, dowse with diesel and start. Many times I have to sit there handfeeding small twigs, branches to get the starting fire going, the fire log sounds like it will solve that problem.

Going to be an experience next winter as my piles are completely surrounded now by 7' tall grass. Will wait until there is several inches of snow before I even attempt it.

Harry K
 
   / burning tips #17  
The only difference in my technique is, I tend to use waste motor oil rather than diesel. This serves double duty by getting rid of the stuff and lighting up the brush.

I light the fire with a diesel soaked rag on the end of a pike. The pike is a piece of pipe with a spike sticking out the end, also used to police up trash. The result is something that looks like a Hollywood medevil torch. I can thrust that just where I want it in the pile, and pull the pike out. The "torch" provides a lot of heat. to get the fire going.

Gasoline splashed into a pile will tend to ignite with an explosive effect, and is scary stuff. Don't ask me how I know this. /forums/images/graemlins/crazy.gif
 
   / burning tips #18  
I burn a lot of brush piles and what I do in the summer is bushhog aroud the pile a few days ahead of time and burn at night, heavy dew on wet grass is not very flammable. There is not a bruch fire yet that I haven't had get out of hand, I'll usually use a bale of straw for ignition (we have a bunch of it, cheap commodity here) and if its doesn't go them i'll add a mix of deisel fuel and oil, or just straight used mtor oil, or just deisel fuel but of course whenever it extenguishes itself. In late winter early spring if I have a big pile to burn I have been known to take a rather large disc around a field to create a good fire break and just burn the pile and field off at the same time. I prefer this way because it's easier to control, disc the downwind side and the edges real good, light the downwind side first and you have created a fire break, then light the upwind side 5-10 feet from where you disc'd it and monitor the cold burn areas to make sure they don't creep across your dirt fire breaks. Usually I have a buddy or two with me in the field and we are all on four wheelers which makes it easier to monitor/extenguish/light. let the field burn and the brushpile will probably catch fire and go, if not add deisel fuel and light her up.
 
   / burning tips #19  
Hi All:

Just got done burning for the 2nd day straight... 2 ave sized piles. one today had lots of old maple tops that blew down in winter. seering hot for about 15 min!, then amber/coals could cook a 1/2 steer in 20 min flat lol. Oneyesterday burned most of day and I kept adding to it as it burnt. 4~5 FEL loads of dead fall branches. it was still WARM this AM when I started the 2nd one. It had a few LOGS and ROOTS left so I pulled them out and FEL load into the OTHER fire.

I started both with the proipane tank from the grill and a GRASS burner, which is capable of SMELTING so temp is 2000 deg F +! starts VERY FAST /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif I loaded a bunch of WET logs out of the creek onto the 2nd fire today actually onto the coals. I use my BOX BLADE and knock down around the fires for 20+/- out from the pile. and this pulls uot weeds and bunches them up and I push the weed piles up to the burn pile. which forms a green fire break. makes the weeds smolder some and dries them for the next fire...


Mark M
 
   / burning tips #20  
I have a huge brush pile about 800 feet from the house that has been growing for the last five years....this one is about twelve feet high and 25 feet long and about 30 feet wide....all my neighbors, my brother, etc. contribute to the pile.

My township will only let me burn something this size during the middle of winter, and even then I need a permit and the fire department needs to inspect it. They frown upon people using any type of petroleum products to start fires so I usually just use newspapers soaked with charcoal lighter or paint thinner in about half a dozen places in the lower regions of the pile and light them all. One year I used leftover kerosene from my salamander heater and tossed in a lighted road flare and it lit up really good, but the fire chief lived about half a mile away then and he saw the black smoke and decided to pay a visit. /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif

In the winter there is no need to have a hose handy nor do you need a bucket of dirt but they expect you to have some means of putting the fire out /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif if required, so in the past I had a friend's Ford 1520 with a loader handy. This year I will have my JD, but as big as that pile is, I don't even want to THINK about getting near it when it's going full blast. Of course, everybody who contributes to the pile wants to be around when I light it, which is pretty hard to arrange...and THAT's why it's gotten so large over the last few years...I can't get everybody together at one time so the pile just keeps getting larger.... /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
 

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